Challenge:
Marketing needed to prove their value to sales and drive enough "Qualified Leads" by tracking and presenting analytics and KPI's on a monthly basis. We need to increase qualified leads or MQL by using Eloqua (E10).
Goals:
Hit revenue targets with Eloqua by hitting a preset amount of qualified leads. Also gaining the ability to predict the amount of qualified leads that can be driven that will be attributed as lead source to marketing originated. Predicting qualified lead and revenue with Eloqua can help marketing request more budget and improving marketing spend - meanwhile keeping sales happy
Benchmark or document current state:
We need to define what Qualified lead was or each of our lead stages. We used revenue, lead source original to see lead originating from marketing,open, clicks, form submissions, and explicit feedback from sales.
Strategic Initiatives:
1) We setup lead scoring in Eloqua with a low of ZERO and and max of 100. Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) = 40
By using best practices taught be Eloqua University to score implicit and explicit information in prospects.
Marketing agreed with sales on what were key determinants in make a sales ready lead. Once lead scoring was set in Eloqua.
We used Eloqua's Closed Loop Reporting and Analytics to proof Marketing Value and Display Key Performance Indicator's on a regular basis.
KPI = MQL, Cost Per Lead per MQL, Revenue, MQL to close ratios, lead velocity model of drop of each lead stage to stage.
2) Our main strategy was having interesting or great content. Backed by the core channel of driving it with Eloqua's Email Marketing. Email Marketing is the lowest cost to reengage your prospects at best value to your website. With using closed loop reporting and Eloqua advanced tracking to track a buyers long journey.
3) Other minor issues were improving data quality since sales would complaining that leads were being routed wrong or duplicate. We setup standard for importing data in Eloqua and Cleaning up our current database. Another point is we stopped buying lists, which is not recommended by Eloqua University.
We focused on having topics or content that the buyer would be interested in hearing early stage. Which was taught in the Eloqua University RPM Courses, which teach demand generation best practices.
Key Take Aways
- Email Marketing and great content is a best way to drive qualified leads at lowest cost on your current database.
- Eloqua is not just for emails, but a good way to prove marketing value to sales and predict revenue / qualified leads.
- Data Quality is important and Sirius Decisions says companies with strong data quality drive 7x qualified leads.
- Proving marketing value to sales and the c-suite is important and Eloqua provides KPI tracking that will show marketing value.
- Lead scoring should be setup to have both implicit/explicit and minimum and maximum.
- Eloqua is only as good as the people and processes that use it.
Key Impacts or Results
We were able to track and show how many MQLs marketing generated month to month or quarter to quarter.
We used lead source original and lead source most recent to track were leads originated from. And calculate Cost Per Lead MQL. To see which marketing channels were performing best. Having strong data quality standards and processes facilitated the ability to gain clear insight into our reporting.
Things we would have done differently
- Building Engagement Streams of recycled or inactive leads.
- Stronger standard on data import into Eloqua to ensure good data is being imported with a system of check and balances.
- Set SLAs with Sales on how long it takes done. IE event list upload, ad hoc campaign runs.
Helpful Eloqua University Classes
These classes below were helpful in learning about best practices of demand generation and of setting up Eloqua.
Eloqua 10 Lead Scoring
Eloqua 10: Closed-Loop Reporting
RPM: Introduction (WBT)
RPM: Targeting & Segmentation
RPM: Effective Nurturing
Topliners
Was a great help when looking for ad hoc information when running into day to day challenges of administrating Eloqua. And finding documentation on Best Practices. And how to integrate Eloqua with Webex (webinar tool) and other apps.
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