Marketing Automation Tool Mixes New Channels with Old

A Canadian company, which helps marketers and their sales teams to reach out to prospects, using e-mail, direct mail, and other channels will support three new ones in its product offering: RSS feeds, speech-to-text, and fax.

Eloqua’s move comes as consumers and businesses alike continue to change where and how they buy products.

“We find the marketing organization is involved throughout the buying process. What our application helps our marketers do is engage with prospects throughout that cycle, not just at the top of the funnel,” said Mike Zavershnik, Eloqua’s senior product manager.

In addition to e-mail and direct mail, existing channels that Eloqua serves includes chat, Web forms, ads, and keywords.

A second component to the product roll-out is a campaign composer. “We know that marketers think in terms of campaigns,” said Zavershnik. “A campaign for a marketer isn’t just a single thing; it’s a combination of tactics. A marketer can create a number of assets.”

Working on the same theme or campaign, marketers can create and execute communications through multiple channels. While the campaign can span multiple channels, and even encompass online and offline touchpoints including direct mail, e-mail, and RSS, marketers can associate all pieces as part of the same campaign. “You can compare activity and role them up, and can see how you’ve done across those assets,” said Zavershnik.

Each channel or asset is categorized as a bucket. Marketers can set parameters to collect data such as time period, channel, customer, or event. Eloqua is a software as a service (SAS) solution.

Sybase, Inquira, Taleo, and Forex have signed on for the new release of Eloqua’s services. Existing Eloqua clients include VeriSign, USAA, Procuri, National Instruments, FairIsaac, Citrix, and Captaris.