The purpose of this blog post is to share how to use the cloud connector Form: Submit to send leads from Eloqua to your CRM system.
Eloqua has a great lead scoring tool that allows you to automatically assign values to contacts to provide your sales reps with a value based on how well the contact fits your definition of what a lead is. Unfortunately, for my company, we were not at that stage where we could assign lead scores properly to our contacts as there were different requirements for different groups that were submitting campaigns. This is a goal for us in 2015 to get everyone to follow the same process, but for now, we could not use the automated lead scoring tool.
Our goal was to get over contacts that seemed really interested in our offerings from individual campaigns without using the automated lead scoring tool.
With this new goal, the plan was communicated to our project managers to incorporate lead scoring on an individual campaign basis if the campaign warranted generating leads. Now, a campaign would be submitted to our marketing operations team, and what was required from the project managers was criteria to pass leads over to our CRM system. Some campaigns contained more premium assets and some contained a lot of short, smaller pieces so the criteria for qualification for each campaign was different and that hasn't been fully defined but we are getting closer to a common ground. Let's just say for simplicity sake, one campaign had 3 emails, each with one call-to-action, and the project manager wanted to send over anyone that performed one of the calls-to-action to our CRM system as a lead. What we did, was build a filter for each campaign, with all of the possible scenarios that this contact could be passed over as a lead. So in this case, because there were 3 assets, and all they had to do was download 1 of them, there would be 3 criteria all separated by OR steps.
In this example, here is my filter - I have a custom object that houses all of our downloads and if they performed the action, they would go into this CDO. If they downloaded at least one of these three, they would get captured in the filter. It could get really complex, but if for example you wanted to have the person download two of three assets to be considered a lead, you would have to bracket each of the scenarios (i.e. Download Asset 1 and 2, Download Asset 1 and 3, Download Asset 2 and 3 would be your filter criteria).
Once you have your filter criteria saved, you would add it to your canvas towards the end of the campaign.
So what happens here is after the contact receives the 3 emails, they would then go to the filter that you created. If they meet the criteria to be passed over as a lead, then they would be sent to the Cloud Connector Form Submit: Contact.
The reason that the contact gets sent to the cloud connector is to:
1) Attach a campaign ID to the contacts record
2) We have built in our database a field BANTC that if it is checked, sends the contact to a program to pass them over to the CRM system
3) Populate the contact record with all of the required fields to get the contact through the program successfully to the CRM system
4) Share any comments with your sales reps about the contact/campaign
Before you go into the cloud connector, you need to create your form that will be automatically submitted. Nothing special needs to be done on the processing steps (although I had a program that automatically updated Source Type Original based on Source Type Most Recent if Source Type Original was blank and the other value was Update Contact with Form Data).
When you log in to the connector, you must hit "Go" and not worry about the info populated.
Once in the connector, call it something that you will remember, and Save Settings
Once saved, then Edit Fields to match the fields on your form.
I then enter as static data, all of the values I want (so Marketing for lead source, my campaign ID and campaign name and campaign status, etc.). For the sales reps, the most important info is the field we call "Assistance Requested". In this field, I would put a static value of "Contact was a part of the ABC Nurture Campaign and performed one of the three actions and is therefore considered a lead. Please reach out to this contact and begin the conversation." This then goes over to CRM for our sales reps so they know to reach out to the contact and what they did. The other important one for us is BANTC to have that set to True because this pushes the contact over to our program to send to CRM.
Once I set the values and save settings, I do a quick test to make sure everything was working and my data is getting populated:
And then I go to my form and check the form submission data to make sure the data came through.
Then I enable the program
Once I have done this, now anyone that goes in to my nurture campaign and completes the action to be sent over as a lead, is captured in the filter and sent to this cloud connector, the form is submitted (fields values that you set are populated on the contacts record), and because they have BANTC set to True, they will go over to CRM as a lead.
When the sales reps go in to the CRM tool, they see now that the contact is a part of the campaign and the comments associated with the campaign that you inputted appear so they are prepared with what was done when it is time to reach out to the contact.
The courses that helped in turning this idea into action were: System Integration, Program Builder Overview, Events in the Cloud, and Lead Scoring.
System Integration helped us ensure that external calls were in place to create new leads in our CRM system
Program Builder Overview was necessary in building the programs to ensure the leads were getting passed over to our CRM system. It was also handy for building a program that would allow us to create something for our Source Type Original. A program was configured that update Source Type Original if the field was blank and they submitted this form via the connector.
Events in the Cloud opened up my eyes to the different cloud connectors that were possible and I began to search for ones that would be of value to our organization.
Lead Scoring showed us that there are different ways to score contacts depending on behaviours and job levels. At this moment in time, job levels were not as important to us and behaviours were the driving force in determining what a lead is. We wanted to incorporate lead scoring but because levels was not of value and we did not have operations in place to house all of the different actions contacts did, we had to improvise and come up with another solution that was similar to the automated lead scoring.
While I can't detail results, I can say that this has had a positive impact on our business. First and foremost, reps are informed when leads are passed over. In the past, they were unsure why the lead was passed over. Now, a description is going over explaining what the contact had done and what the rep had to do. Next, if leads aren't being converted, they are at least being nurtured and sales is building a relationship with them. Lastly, as we have done more and more campaigns, we have learned that typically 2-3 actions completed in a campaign warrants a trigger to go over as a lead to speak to a rep. Less than that and it is a bit intrusive and we have learned and incorporated this in our process.
The one drawback I will say about this is that unfortunately the cloud connector you incorporate on one campaign CAN NOT be reused on another canvas. You will have to recreate this for each campaign that you do. However, it does take 10-20 minutes so it is not a lengthy process. You can reuse the same form if you like but the cloud connector must be reconfigured each time. Hopefully Eloqua will look into this and allow these to be reused in the future.