Part 3. Eloqua Marketing Systems Architecture

May 24, 2022

You need to always know what other systems your Eloqua instance is integrated into.  If you don’t you are going to have a bad time.  You need to fully document everything before testing and release.  Your Eloqua Marketing Systems Architecture section is exactly where all this will go.  If you have not already done, please start from the beginning: Part 1. Eloqua implementation post Smartstart.

Greg Staunton

If your CEO asked you for a high level overview of what other platforms Eloqua connected, could you provide it?

As business grow and their needs change, marketing and sales departments become increasingly reliant on increasingly sophisticated technology and complex integrations.  Most organizations can tell you what platforms they think they have but they couldn’t articulate their platform and integration infrastructure.

It is best practice to develop an Eloqua Marketing Systems Overview so that companies can understand their technical infrastructure.  By having this overview companies:

  • Have a 360’ view of what Eloqua is integrated to
  • Reduce time and costs in platform migration
  • Identify gaps in potential unitized marketing channels
  • At a glance understand their underpinning technology

How to develop an Eloqua Marketing Systems Overview

My Eloqua Marketing Systems Overview guide has been developed so you can create your own overview of the technology that is being utilized by Marketing putting Eloqua at the center.  The next couple of sections will tell you what your Eloqua Marketing Systems Overview should consist of, how to build it so you can add in into your Eloqua Architecture Overview Document.

Eloqua Marketing Systems Overview

The Eloqua Marketing Systems Overview is divided into four sections:

  • Section Background
  • Eloqua Marketing Systems Platform Overview
  • Eloqua Marketing Systems Mapping Diagram
  • Eloqua Marketing Systems Integrations Table

Section Background

The Section Background is a paragraph of text that describes what is contained in this section so that a reader can understand its contents.  This should be kept brief; there is no need to go into any of the Eloqua Marketing Systems Overview specifics.

Eloqua Marketing Systems Overview

The Eloqua Marketing Systems Overview is a list of all the platforms and databases that are being used by marketing or that are being sent data from marketing.

There are five columns that should be used:

  • Name
  • Symbol
  • Type
  • Description
  • Owner

 

The name donates the name of the platform simply enter the name in the respective row.

The Symbol is usually the platform logo.  If a platform logo does not exist then use your own logo and put the name you use for the platform underneath it.  Examples of this could be a bespoke backend database that holds full purchase history that was developed by your own IT organization.  The Symbol will be used for a visual reference in your Eloqua Marketing System Mapping Diagram.

The type of platform describes what the platforms function is. In the diagram above you can see a number of different types listed.

The description describes the purpose of the platform.  This allows the user to understand it’s function in the Eloqua Marketing Systems Overview.

The platform owner field is populated by the platform owner and their department.  This allows the user to determine who the main go to contact is for that platform.

Eloqua Marketing Systems Mapping Diagram

The Eloqua Marketing Systems Mapping Overview is a diagrammatic top level overview of how these different systems are connected to each other and the different marketing channels they are used for.  It also show the way in which the data flows between each platform.

Eloqua Marketing Systems Mapping Example

XYZ Inc. has developed a mapping of their Marketing Systems so they can know, at a glance what different systems they are using and how they are integrated.  In this example you can see that there is a bi-directional flow of data between:

  • Eloqua / SFDC
  • Eloqua / SRM
  • Eloqua / GoToWebinar
  • Eloqua / LivePerson

From this overview we can now see that Eloqua is at the center of all marketing systems.

We can also see from this example uni-directional flows of data / information in relation to marketing channels.  The specifics of what the data is will be held later in the Eloqua Architecture Document but for now this information will suffice because this only a high level overview.

Eloqua Marketing Systems Architecture

Eloqua Marketing Systems Integrations Table

The Eloqua Marketing Systems Integration Table is used to identify each of the different integrations / manual data push that are taking place between the different marketing systems.

There are four columns used for this table:

  • Integrated Platforms
  • Data Flow
  • Description
  • Remarks

Integrated Platforms refers to the platforms that have been integrated together.  This is the direct connection, not co-dependant integrations.  In the example mapping above you can clearly see that most data is flowing through Eloqua from different platforms before ultimately ending up in SFDC.  We are not concerned at this overview level of the specifics of the integration, just that it exists.

The data flow can one of two things:

  • Uni-Directional
  • Bi-Directional

It would be worth noting that you can separate this out to automated, semi-automated and manual.

An automated integration is one where your technology has been setup to automatically pull or push data from one platform to another.  An example of this would be contact data being synched back and forth between Eloqua and SFDC when a contact is updated in either system.  When you set up your autosynchs during integration between the two platforms you will have instructed Eloqua to update all contacts that have been modified in SFDC over the last half hour.  This is done automatically, hence being called automated.

A semi-automated integration is one that includes a manual step as well as a level of automation.  An example of this would be importing data from an external database.  An external database would do a data pull and load that data to an SFTP server for marketing to import into Eloqua.  Eloqua can not import the data unless it is already on the server.  Someone needs to tell the external database to create the segment and place it on the SFTP server.  Once this has happened someone needs to tell Eloqua to import this data and do something with it.  There are both automated and manual steps to this process so it is called semi-automated.

A Manual integration is one that is done completely manually.  For example, a company attends a 3rd party tradeshow and they are given scanners to scan the badges of contacts that come to their stand.  When the tradeshow is over the organizers send over a contact list of all contacts that visited the companies stand.  This list is then imported into Eloqua and a post event email is sent.  This process has been completed manually, hence being called manual.

The description field is used for a brief description of what the integration between the two platforms does.

The remarks field is used to put in the different subsections that the Eloqua Architecture Document contains that have up to date, detailed information on how the integration / process works.

Part 2. Eloqua Architecture Document

Part 2. Eloqua Architecture Document

If you do not have an Eloqua Architecture Document you are going to have a bad time.  You need to fully document everything before testing and release.  Your Eloqua Architecture Document will detail all the customized back end parts of your Eloqua setup so if there...