TalkTalk
TalkTalk Business is one of the UK’s fastest growing B2B telecoms providers, offering a full range of business-grade communications products and services, spanning internet access, data, voice and mobile. Their mission is to deliver what matters most to our 180,000+ business and public sector customers, and 800+ Partners, through reliable, easy-to-use, innovative, great value solutions.
Client Challenge
HMH approached Automate2Revenue who I was contracted to with the following objectives:
- Deliver SFDC CMO dashboards in Early 2021 that reflect current lead management state
- Agree on an approach for lead and campaign management using industry best practices
- Demonstrate how implementing the proposed Lead Management and Campaign Management strategy will:
- Meet both current and prospective customer needs
- Help achieve transformational goals and revenue objectives
- Address internal data pain points
Their issues surrounded two distinct areas that needed to be addressed in order to facilitate accurate CMO dashboards in SFDC that would allow granular reporting that was robust enough to drill right down into the return on investment of each campaign on each medium.
As well as optimizing their approach to campaigns so we could build the SFDC dashboards the following other issues needed to be addressed
Lead Management
- Missing key data on lead and contact records
- 43,924 leads rejected this year. (26k in September likely due to a clean up)
- Too many values for lead status
- No consistency between lead and account status
- 41,258 with no Original Lead Source
- Inadequate user experience due to digital experience with forms on website
Campaign Management
- Channels are inconsistent and often not accurate
- Campaigns are created in Workfront with little to no connection to Eloqua
- Social campaigns created in Sprinklr
- Google Ads inconsistent and not able to be tracked currently in Eloqua or Salesforce through automated means
- Campaign responses are inconsistent
- Webinars are not currently tracked effectively
Approach
I took a backwards approach, back tracking from the goal, namely creating these CMO dashboards in Eloqua. Below is an overview of the technical solution design.
Solution overview
I broke out the following areas that needed to be addresses in order to facilitate Eloqua feeding SFDC the appropriate data to facilitate custom CMO dashboards.
- Minimum mandatory fields
- Eloqua / SFDC integration app migration
- Standardize campaign templates
- Sprinklr / GA / Eloqua integration
- Template form types
- Marketing lead status
- Workfront integration
- Rejected & recycled lead program
- 2020 lead source program
Solution 1: Minimum mandatory fields set
The following items were addreses
- Minimum mandatory fields needed to be for contact data
- Picklists created for:
- Lead status
- UTM Medium
- UTM Source
- UTM Campaign
- UTM Term
UTM Source, Campaign and Term are self explanatory, UTM Medium was finally agreed and the marketing lead source set to this:
| Lead Source (UTM_Medium) | Description |
| CPC | All digital paid advertising, including paid social |
| Internal HMH customer-facing emails | |
| SOCIAL | All organic posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube |
| Print advertising booked through the agency | |
| PAID MEDIA | Digital advertising booked through the agency for education-specific sites and emails with limited audiences |
| DIGITAL PRINT | Digital versions of the print ads above |
| EXTERNAL EMAIL | Subset of paid media; dedicated, advertorial emails sent out through partners. |
| MICROSITE | A specific subset of paid media; |
| DIRECT MAIL | Print materials (brochures, flyers, postcards) distributed through mail, sales reps, and online |
| SEARCH | Incoming traffic from Search engines |
Solution 2: Eloqua / SFDC integration app migration
As of the 21st February 2021 Oracle no longer supported Eloqua native integration studio
This presents the opportunity to:
- Redesign and fully map the SFDC integration
- Implement closed loop reporting – even though our actual reporting was to be done using lead, contact, campaign member and opportunity objects in SFDC.
Solution 3: Standardized campaign templates
We developed standard campaign canvas workflow templates for:
- One shot emails
- Lead nurture
- Tradeshows
- Webinars
- Sampling site
Solution 4: Eloqua / Sprinklr integration
Install and setup Sprinklr integration apps:
- Sprinklr / GA integration
- Sprinklr / Eloqua integration
Solution 5: Template form types
Template forms for were created for all form types
We then used this opportunity to move into progressive profiling but that did mean a landing page template standardization by type
Solution 7: Workfront integration
We explored Eloqua / Workfront integration how ever it ended with not being required – The Workfront integration still isn’t suitable for Eloqua, you can read more about it in my in depth blog post: https://greg-staunton.com/eloqua-workfront-integration – Seriously though you are better off with Oracle Content Manager or Compendium in old money.
Solution 8: Rejected and Recycled lead program
REJ leads will be analyzed and the profile model will be updated
REC leads will be analyzed and the engagement model updated, they were then going to be put into a lead nurture program
* Best in class:
MQL -> SAL = 90%
SAL -> SQL = 70%
Solution 9: 2020 lead source program
We created a program to assign:
- Lead source original from lead CDOs
- Create a lead source washing machine
Impact
I don’t really feel the need to talk about the impact to be honest. The images tell you everything you need to know.
This project taught me a hell of a lot about how to create really good Campaign dashboards in SFDC. For years I have been telling marketing manager/directors that they need to do their campaign reporting in SFDC, not Eloqua closed loop reporting. Your numbers will not match up with SFDC and since sales uses SFDC and they are seen (real world attitude here) as the ones that bring in money you are going to be screwed when you come in using Oracle closed loop reporting, especially if it has been a bad quarter. Do yourself a favour and get campaign reporting set up in SFDC ASAP!
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Return Path
Return Path is the leader in email deliverability. Every day, tens of thousands of customers trust Return Path data and insights to help them optimize their email marketing. Partnered with best-in-class email service providers, we help marketers take their email programs to the next level by driving more response and increasing revenue.
Return Path was acquired by Validity in May 2019. The combination of Return Path and Validity provides organizations with the most comprehensive technology solutions to target, contact, engage, and retain customers effectively.
Client Challenge
Return Path had challenges in three key areas:
- Personas
- Database health
- Lead scoring
All of the problems in each area essentially fed each other. Poor database health, meant that they could not perform detailed profile scoring and in turn, incomplete information meant that they could not adopt persona marketing for their outgoing communications and campaigns.
Return Path did not previously have a lead scoring model in place and all leads from sender score got sent straight into a lead que that was then profiled and called up by two dedicated tele-services teams.
In essence their challenge was that they were sending one shot generic email communications to their entire database. In turn they were routing anyone that signed up for their Sender Score product straight to an expensive teleservices team that was there to pre-qualify everything.
Approach
Each area was dealt with as a separate stream. These were then dealt in a three phased sequence:
- Database health
- Persona development
- Lead scoring
Database health
The first step being able to facilitate persona development or lead scoring was to have a clean, healthy Eloqua database. Several options were considered:
- Teleservices canvasing
The teleservices team would be engaged to run a huge outbound call campaign on the database the missing information. - One time data cleanse
The database would be uploaded to a platforms and set against certain rules and then data appended – one time only, then resent back to Return Path for import - Database append service
An external service such as D&B could be bolted on to Eloqua and have the data they were looking for constantly refreshed with the most up to date data that D&B had. - Profile update campaign
An Eloqua campaign would be set up that would have gated content which would update the contact record facilitating gaining the most up to date information
| Option | Cost | Speed | Reliability | Future proof |
| Teleservices canvasing | 🔴 | 🟡 | 🟢 | 🟡 |
| One time data cleanse | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🟡 | 🔴 |
| Database append service | 🟡 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 |
| Profile update campaigns | 🟢 | 🔴 | 🟢 | 🟡 |
Return Path chose the Database append approach so this was implemented.
Persona development
Now that we had the most up to date information about our Eloqua contacts this information was sent through to SFDC, the data crunched and personas started to identify themselves:
- VP Marketing
- Email Marketing Manager
- Email Marketing Analyst
- Deliver Systems Administrator
- Operations Manager
- Director of Security & Risk
- Abuse Desk Manager
We then developed a Return Path product usage matrix and utilizing our new persona tool we could leverage this for persona based messaging using Eloqua dynamic content blocks in emails and develop more sophisticated lead nurture and accelerator campaigns.
Lead scoring
Data analysis was carried out and it was found that:
Incoming leads breakout:
%
North America
%
EMEA
%
ROW
The lead status though yielded some alarming results:
%
Disqualified
%
In Progress
%
Qualified
46% of leads were getting passed directly to a teleservices team that were disqualifying these contacts. This was a massively unacceptable volume and drain on resource.
A lead scoring model was swiftly implemented which drastically reduced that volume of “leads” being passed over to sales and thus had a huge impact on resource spend.
Impact
Quantitative analysis took place in three key areas and found that:
%
Form conversion increase using data append
%
Email click through increase using personas
%
Teleservices cost reduction
Whilst the engagement was a success for the business, neither the marketing department or the teleservices team were briefed of ready for the impact.
The marketing department were bonused on volume of leads being sent to teleservices and the teleservices team (external) had to lose people from the team since there were less leads coming though.
From now on I remind clients that a lead scoring model is not a silver bullet that generates loads more leads, it generates less lead volume but better quality, thus improving sales numbers whilst lowering the cost of sale.
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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
For more than 185 years, HMH have inspired all learners to activate curiosity, elevate potential, and find their moments of brilliance and breakthrough. These are the learning moments that define us—all of us.
As a global leader in K–12 education, HMH provides comprehensive learning solutions to help all students achieve their maximum potential. Reaching more than 50 million students in over 150 countries worldwide, HMH also delights readers throughout the world with award-winning children’s books, novels, non-fiction, and reference titles.
Continuously adapting to and shaping the changing education landscape, our programs are uniquely designed to offer students, teachers, families, and administrators a path to success from the first day of Pre-K to graduation day.
Client Challenge
HMH wanted to create a set of CMO dashboards in SFDC so they could analyse the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns in the same system as sales. The project was very high profile and had a lot of stakeholders.
One of the major problems we faced was that there had been numerous stakeholders over the last 15 years working on the Eloqua integration with SFDC, no-one really knew exactly how the integration worked but that it did work.
The Eloqua integration with SFDC was to be the major component that we had t get right in order to facilitate the building of custom CMO dashboards in SFDC.
Then since it was the tail end of 2020, throw COVID in the mix and you have a recipe for a challenging project!
Approach
I was thrown in on the deep end with this one. As soon as Kimberly from Revenue2Automate had an interview with me I was in front of the client. I took a 4 step approach to this:
- Identify the fields that we needed to be sent through the SFDC in order to facilitate the CMO Dashboards
- Identify the different objects that we need to be set on those fields so we could:
- Architect the dashboard ahead of time
- Identify which additional fields needed to be passed back from Eloqua
- Standardize Google Analytics UTM fields across each medium and source
- Integrate additional 3rd party Martech software with Google Analytics so that data could be automatically passed back to Eloqua and in turn get pushed to SFDC so the dashboards could be created
Impact
The dashboards are all up and running and now HMH have a 360’ revenue performance management view of how their campaigns are performing.
Sadly the engagement for me is over so it is not possible to give you quantitative statistics on how much money has been saved, reinvested in other channels and the uplift of said reinvestment but I believe that this engagement will propel them in the future.
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SSE Electricity
SSE is a UK-listed energy company with operations and investments across the UK and Ireland. It is primarily a developer (which includes being a builder), an operator and an owner of low-carbon energy assets and businesses, with a strategic focus on regulated electricity networks and renewable energy.
More broadly, SSE is involved in the generation, transmission, distribution and supply of electricity, the production, storage, distribution and supply of gas and in the provision of energy-related services.
Client Challenge
SSE needed two people to join their DevOps team. The SSE DevOps team mainly consisted of people that worked primarily on the integration between their backend databases and Eloqua.
There were a number of initiatives that took place and this role was primarily spent researching additional enhancements to Eloqua.
The majority of the work was dealing with things that the marketing department and campaign manager contractors could not handle.
Approach
This job was a DevOps team with standard three week sprints. SSE were in the process of moving from waterfall to Agile methodology and all of the team were getting used to this new way of doing things and my managers were also doing agile courses at the same time as their day jobs.
My work was sporadic and in all sports of different areas so it is hard to define the exact approach as it was ongoing requests based off whatever heavy lifting or research in to integration that the marketing department required.
Impact
First of all SSE Retail got bought over by OvO, then when COVID hit, I lost my job so I was not able to find out what impact the Eloqua work had.
I hope that the SSE DevOps team will be alright. All their platforms are changing with the OvO buy out and they had all worked there for very, very long time. I think the new guy to the DevOps team had worked there for 18 years and the longest serving member celebrated his 40th Anniversary working for SSE!
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Deltek
Headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, with over 3,000 employees worldwide, Deltek is the leading global provider of enterprise software and information solutions for project-based businesses.
Better software means better projects. Deltek delivers software and information solutions that enable superior levels of project intelligence, management and collaboration. Theeir industry-focused expertise makes their clients projects successful and helps them achieve performance that maximizes productivity and revenue.
Client Challenge
Deltek needed an Eloqua partner to help them with a one off campaign. The campaign was targeting their top 100 key accounts. The campaign was an integrated on and offline campaign driving contacts to a central microsite that would change based on their persona and company information.
Approach
A microsite was built using PURL pages. Dynamic content would change bullet points on the microsite based on the contacts persona. The segment of contacts for the campaign went into an Eloqua multistep campaign. From here their mailing address details were sent to a mailing house where they got sent a box containing gloves, umbrella, etc, things for winter time. In the card that came with the box had their PURL address. If the PURL address was not activated this would then stimulate a series of emails getting sent driving them to the page. If it was activated and they had not filled out the form the contact wold then be sent to a teleservices tier 2 que to convert them.
Sadly with some engagements you only get to be with the client for a limited time. The response was good and although this was in 2013 it is rare as hen’s teeth to find a client that goes all in with different channels on a campaign.
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Rockwell Automation
Rockwell Automation connect the imaginations of people with the potential of technology to expand what is humanly possible, making the world more intelligent, more connected and more productive.
Throughout the world, their flagship Allen-Bradley® and Rockwell Software® product brands are recognized for innovation and excellence.
Client Challenge
Sony Professional Services Europe is the leading provider and innovator in AV and IT solutions across a broad range of sectors, including Media and Broadcast, Sports, Theatre, Healthcare and the Corporate and Education markets.
With a winning combination of technology and creativity, Sony partners with businesses to push boundaries and drive innovation, offering transformational customer services and solutions.
Approach
Sony Professional Services Europe is the leading provider and innovator in AV and IT solutions across a broad range of sectors, including Media and Broadcast, Sports, Theatre, Healthcare and the Corporate and Education markets.
With a winning combination of technology and creativity, Sony partners with businesses to push boundaries and drive innovation, offering transformational customer services and solutions.
Impact
Sony Professional Services Europe is the leading provider and innovator in AV and IT solutions across a broad range of sectors, including Media and Broadcast, Sports, Theatre, Healthcare and the Corporate and Education markets.
With a winning combination of technology and creativity, Sony partners with businesses to push boundaries and drive innovation, offering transformational customer services and solutions.
Blah Blah
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Rolls Royce
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is the world’s pre-eminent super-luxury automotive brand. A wholly-owned subsidiary of the BMW Group, it is based at the Home of Rolls-Royce at Goodwood, near Chichester, West Sussex, which comprises its global headquarters and Global Centre of Luxury Manufacturing Excellence – the only place in the world where Rolls-Royce motor cars are designed, engineered and meticulously handcrafted.
Client Challenge
From the end of 2020 Rolls Royce wanted to launch a number of journeys that were communicating to new and existing RR customers throughout the lifecycle of purchasing and subsequently owning a new RR model.
These journeys were to be broken into 4 parts:
|
Journey name |
Journey description |
|
Lead Journey |
The lead journey is the initial journey that will be used to generate leads from click-throughs on the email different emails that are sent which in turn get pushed over to the CCT team in order to categorize them into one of three tiers of potential lead. Tier 1 contacts will get pushed through to the dealers so that they can then enter into the prospect journey. |
|
Prospect Journey |
Deployed through distributed marketing (dealer portal), the prospect journey is a much more targeted journey that the contact will be marketed more detailed information specific to the model of interest. The aim of this journey is to get the contact to engage with the dealer and subsequently purchase their desired model of car. |
|
Order Journey |
Once an order is placed the order journey maintains contact with the customer informing them which stage of build their new car. This journey culminates in the delivery of their new car. |
|
Welcome Journey |
Once the car has been delivered, the welcome campaign then informs the customer about warranty and ownership packages and completes the customer journey with a thank you for purchasing email. |
Approach
A number of workshops took place to establish all the finer details of how the campaign would be developed. It was established that:
- Dynamic content would display the car model of choice
- Contacts could be pushed into different campaigns depending on if they had purchased
- Additional integrations were required as and when so local dealers could facilitate test drives
Overall it was quite a complex campaign with many nuances and was far from simplistic.
Sadly I don’t have any results I can share with you as at the time or writing the campaign is still underway.
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VMware
VMware believe that software has the power to unlock new opportunities for people and our planet. They look beyond the barriers of compromise to engineer new ways to make technologies work together seamlessly. Their compute, cloud, mobility, networking and security offerings form a digital foundation that powers the apps, services and experiences that are transforming the world.
Every day, they work to solve our customers’ toughest challenges through disruptive technologies like edge computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain, machine learning, Kubernetes and more – to define the digital foundation that will accelerate the next wave of innovation.
Client Challenge
VMware needed an Eloqua partner to deal with all their day to campaign execution as well as handle their much larger annual lead nurture programs. Since it was VMware the challenge they had was with volume. They had emails going out in 28 languages. On top of that multiple platforms that they were marketing, they were on Eloqua 9, had a database size of 6 million which of course dramatically slowed their system down.
Approach
Day to day business campaigns needed a well thought, automated campaign delivery process. As such one was created using Zoho ticket. That was the easy part.
When the major campaign for the year hit this was a huge effort. I only had a small team and had to enlist the help of a friend of mine, Chris Corney, fly him out of Singapore and back to Britain for a few weeks.
In the end we got the campaign delivered on time, in budget but yes, it was a rollercoaster.
Chris will hate me for saying this but he met a friend of mine who was on the team, they fell in love, both moved back to Singapore and now on to Dubai. That project and client will always remind me of that!
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Aberdeen Standard Life Inmvestments
Aberdeen Standard Investments is dedicated to helping investors around the world reach their desired investment goals and broaden their financial horizons. To achieve this, they offer a comprehensive range of investment capabilities, as well as the highest levels of service.
Overall, they manage £455.6bn (€501.2bn/$562.9bn)* on behalf of clients in 80 countries. In managing these assets, they employ over 1,000 investment professionals and provide client support from over 40 client relationship offices globally.
Client Challenge
Sony Professional Services Europe is the leading provider and innovator in AV and IT solutions across a broad range of sectors, including Media and Broadcast, Sports, Theatre, Healthcare and the Corporate and Education markets.
With a winning combination of technology and creativity, Sony partners with businesses to push boundaries and drive innovation, offering transformational customer services and solutions.
Approach
Sony Professional Services Europe is the leading provider and innovator in AV and IT solutions across a broad range of sectors, including Media and Broadcast, Sports, Theatre, Healthcare and the Corporate and Education markets.
With a winning combination of technology and creativity, Sony partners with businesses to push boundaries and drive innovation, offering transformational customer services and solutions.
Impact
Sony Professional Services Europe is the leading provider and innovator in AV and IT solutions across a broad range of sectors, including Media and Broadcast, Sports, Theatre, Healthcare and the Corporate and Education markets.
With a winning combination of technology and creativity, Sony partners with businesses to push boundaries and drive innovation, offering transformational customer services and solutions.
Blah Blah
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Sony Professional Services Europe
Sony Professional Services Europe is the leading provider and innovator in AV and IT solutions across a broad range of sectors, including Media and Broadcast, Sports, Theatre, Healthcare and the Corporate and Education markets.
With a winning combination of technology and creativity, Sony partners with businesses to push boundaries and drive innovation, offering transformational customer services and solutions.
Client Challenge
Sony decided to adopt marketing automation across the different product lines that they had. Each product line previously worked in a silo and had their own creative agencies, email platforms and marketing teams. The vision was to streamline this all and have all campaigns being executed using one technology agency and two creative agencies.
The different marketing teams did not like this approach so the CMO got rid of pretty much every single member of the entire marketing department. He then recruited some heavy hitters on staff to wield these agencies and then build Sony marketing department 2.0. A marketing department that was all about marketing automation.
They also wanted to harness the power of Eloqua to create lifecycle campaigns which would be fully automated of the back of an integration between Eloqua and SFDC. This was an ambitious project which I have written up in my blog. In the end it won the best lead nurture program in the Oracle Markie awards and was producing and additional, fully attributable to campaign, £1 Million per month.
Approach
Campaign execution was streamlined utilizing a ticketing system, not too dissimilar to the one that Pl8ypus agency are using. It eliminated error with sends because all emails and deployment methods were standardized for Eloqua campaigns. It also allowed for an audit trail allowing, at a glance, Sony to see the status of all their campaigns.
Development was very different. There were two major initiatives. One was a lifecycle campaign for videographers. Videographers were business that purchased Sony video recording equipment.
Sony videographer lifecycle campaign
The lifecycle of a Sony video camera was set to two years. This allowed for three distinct phases.
The first phase was getting started. The getting started campaign was a series of emails that would be pointing their new customers to product information, showing them educations videos and getting them to sign up to the various user forums they might be interested in.
The second phase was mid lifecycle. When contacts were in this phase they were generally sent the monthly newsletter.
Finally end lifecycle. End lifecycle kicked in about three month before the two year point from when they purchased, which was also when their warranty would run out. Contacts would get sent a series of communications about their product and what additional features the next generation product has, this putting Sony and the project at the forefront of the clients mind.
Sony PrimeSupport
The offshoot of the Sony videographer campaign was what if contacts did not purchase a new product? The catch all for that was to automate emails getting sent out to allow clients to extend their Sony PrimeSupport warranty by another two years with the dealer that they originally bought from.
Impact
Campaign execution was streamlined, no email errors occurred with the efficient, robust system and processes that were put in place. Sony had us do all their Eloqua campaign execution work. These processes combined with a no nonsense rate card, a very favourable hourly rate and a 3 day SLA ensured that Sony had no problems at all with campaign execution.
The development projects generated serious amounts of revenue for Sony. These pioneering projects were then rolled out on to Sony’s other product wings.
Sony was an absolute pleasure to have a client. Pro-active and not afraid to try new things, together we achieved amazing projects together.
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