'Net Features : eloqua

Eye-Opening Email Marketing Stats

Michael Garrity — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 19:30:00 GMT

Email remains one of the most important avenues for marketers trying to reach relevant customers on the Internet.

However, the Web is (always) evolving, and the best practices of yesterday don’t necessarily hold up as well as we approach 2013. Add to that many of the common misconceptions or misunderstandings about email marketing, and some marketers may find that their campaign operations are largely ineffective.

This is why it’s always nice to pay attention to new data coming from experts in the field, such as marketing automation platform provider Eloqua, which recently released “5 Charts That Could Change Your Email Marketing,” a recently released analysis which gives email marketers a fresh perspective on what an effective campaign looks like today.

Let’s take a look at those charts:

“How Frequently Should I Email My Database?”
Email frequency can have a direct impact on conversions, especially if a marketer is sending too few or too many emails, with the latter being particularly detrimental. In fact, Eloqua warns that “more emails don’t mean more click-throughs” and says that while increasing the number of emails you send out will probably mean that they are read more often, but it doesn’t really have any effect on click-throughs/conversions, ultimately making the whole effort fruitless. In other words, less is more.

“Weekends are the Best Time to Send Email”
It would seem that because most people have more free time on the weekends to spend using the Internet for personal endeavors, they are more likely to pay attention to and convert on emails sent to them during the weekend, which comes from an analysis of 1.5 billions emails. Eloqua actually found that the highest click-through rates (CTRs) were registered on Saturdays, probably while users were sitting around marathon viewing TV shows on Netflix and checking their emails (note: this is totally author speculation). Interestingly, the study also found that most marketers don’t actually take use the weekends to send out emails.

“Personalized Subject Lines Key to Email Open Rates”
A little personal touch can go a long way in resonating with your target audience, and by adding a recipient’s name and an additional bit of personal information (such as their location) into an email’s subject line, you will see a significant increase in open rates.

“Personal Signatures Increase Email Open Rates by 500%”
Yes, you read that right; it does say 500 percent. Simply personalizing the signatures in your emails can increase open rates five times as much as emails without them, and will also improve CTRs by 350 percent. That’s a pretty impressive impact and definitely makes it seem worth it to attach a personalized signature as you sign off your email.

“Email Still Drives More Traffic than Social”
Finally, just to reiterate what we’ve been hearing for years now, email still leads social media in referral traffic, despite social’s dramatic increase of 331 percent from the same quarter year-over-year. Eloqua analysis showed that over several quarters, email consistently drove more traffic than social. So, it looks like marketers are going to have to divide their time between the two channels for the foreseeable future.

In Email Marketing, Remember Your Manners

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:30:00 GMT

The use of “Thanks” or “Thank you” isn’t just polite, it’s also good business.

A study of 875 million messages from marketing automation provider Eloqua found that the use of those words resulted in a higher open rate – 14.29 percent higher in fact – and a higher (by 1.93 percent) click-through rate too. The downside? Email marketers say “thanks” less than one percent of the time.

While the use of the word “thanks” typically indicates some action has already been taken by the user (such as requesting a demo or downloading a white paper, etc.) and the messages are expected or even necessary to open to confirm for recipients, squeezing in a thank you here and there might really benefit your next email send. Something to consider.

Eloqua Adds Data-Driven Targeting to Lead Collection Tools

Michael Garrity — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:15:00 GMT

In an effort to add robust, data-driven targeting and testing capabilities to its lead data collection tools, marketing automation software company Eloqua has teamed up with the dynamic targeting and testing platform Get Smart Content.

Get Smart Content’s extensive and powerful targeting and testing features can now be utilized by Eloqua customers to serve dynamic content to anonymous site visitors based on their keyword searches, locations, content interests, site visitation frequency and even their previous interactions with the brand’s website, email and social media profiles.

It also allows the customers to conduct A/B tests on their website and landing page content, meaning they can discover the most effective marketing messages for their different audience segments before turning the content live, thus improving their chance of conversions.

Moreover, Eloqua users are able to serve their content to known leads based on the data gathered by their use of Eloqua’s lead collection tools.

Customers can personalize the individual experience of each of their visitors thanks to the Get Smart Content-Eloqua integration. These experiences can be segmented by Eloqua Segment, Eloqua Lead Score or Eloqua Nurture Mode.

“Get Smart Content extends Eloqua’s capabilities in a way that makes cross-channel marketing even more targeted and therefore relevant to leads,” says Get Smart Content’s director of platform partnerships, Megan Neely.

Add Pinterest Pin and Follow Buttons with One Click

Linc Wonham — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:30:00 GMT

It was never a question of if, only who and when. And now Eloqua says it is the first marketing automation company to provide customers with the ability to natively drag and drop the Pinterest Pin It and Follow buttons to their most valuable content.

Using the Pinterest component from the Eloqua AppCloud, marketers can embed the Pinterest Pin It and Follow buttons to their landing pages with one click. The Pin It makes it possible to add content to a user’s Pinterest account without leaving the landing page, and the Follow button means a user can immediately follow a brand’s Pinterest page.

“We all live in a visual world and marketers know that quality of design often means the difference between content that spreads and content that stalls,” says Steven Woods, chief technology officer at Eloqua. “The best marketers in all industries are realizing this. But with any new platform, there’s initial anxiety. We’re making it easy for our customers to extend their reach on one of the hottest social platforms by making it simple for their buyers to ‘pin’ their high-value content.”

In conjunction with the announcement, Eloqua unveiled its own Pinterest page. The new Pinterest component is available now in the Eloqua AppCloud.

Eloqua Brings Social to Demand Generation

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:45:00 GMT

Eloqua, a provider of revenue performance management solutions and a company referenced on Website Magazine's Big List of Marketing Automation Software, has released a set of applications that enable B2B marketers to use social media to foster demand generation, drive leads and revenue.

A quick side note; demand generation is a marketing classification that focuses in on driving awareness and interest in products and services. The integration between Eloqua's marketing automation platform and social networks including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter is by no means new in its approach, but does show the company's commitment to helping its clients tap into social in order to improve campaign performance.

Marketers using the Eloqua platform can enable prospects to share content across social networks, let buyers see who in their networks have interacted with which content, and even allow them to use social sign-on (Facebook ID, Google ID) instead of lengthy forms. Eloqua customers will also be able to pull in buyers social data from social networks and segment messaging based on influence using Klout and Twitter. Finally, users can also track and measure their campaigns.

"There's no doubt that social media has dramatically reshaped the marketing landscape," said Paul Teshima, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Eloqua. "But for marketers focused on driving demand, social has been a bit like shaking the Magic 8 Ball. With Eloqua Social Suite, those marketers can finally realize the potential of social for identifying influencers and tapping into prospects' trusted peer network, lowering the common barriers to driving higher conversion rates and getting a full view of buyers' digital behavior. With that level of insight, our customers can at last see how social can truly drive revenue performance."

Big List of Marketing Automation Software

Administrator — Tue, 17 May 2011 18:35:00 GMT

Marketing automation software is here to stay. No longer an emerging trend or the domain of a select few savvy businesses, these software platforms streamline sales and marketing departments by replacing high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated solutions. Sounds good, right? But what do these solutions really enable your organization to do, how can it benefit search marketing efforts and who are the real leaders in the space?

Users of marketing automation software platforms, typically those responsible for marketing a website or business (search, email, social, advertising), are able to specify criteria and outcomes for tasks and processes that are then interpreted, stored and executed by the software. While that undoubtedly sounds complex, the objectives are simply to increase efficiency and reduce human error. One possible cause for a lack of adoption in small and medium size businesses is that these solutions come in a variety of forms with a lot of feature cross-over. Before moving forward it is important to understand the various classifications of marketing software.

- Marketing intelligence software tracks behavior (what activity did the user engage in and where) for the purpose of understanding intent, enabling marketers to improve targeting based on interest and vertical market. Appropriate for any size organization.

- Marketing workflow focuses more on budgeting and planning, workflow and approvals, collaboration, asset creation and management internally within an organization. Marketing workflow solutions are typically designed for larger enterprises.

- Marketing automation software focuses on lead generation with marketing programs to drive awareness and interest in products/services. The best solutions on the market couple marketing technology with sales processes as delineated by a CRM program.

These are very broad definitions of the marketing software classifications that should help identify what type is appropriate for your business and in particular your search, social, email and advertising campaigns. Ultimately, any marketing software should aid in performing functions and tasks including analyzing marketing campaigns (and customer behaviors), managing those marketing campaigns, and organizing and storing customer data. So who are the best of the best in the marketing automation software business? WM has listed a few top tier vendors below.

'Net Features : eloqua

Eye-Opening Email Marketing Stats

In Email Marketing, Remember Your Manners

Eloqua Adds Data-Driven Targeting to Lead Collection Tools

Add Pinterest Pin and Follow Buttons with One Click

Eloqua Brings Social to Demand Generation

Big List of Marketing Automation Software

Eloqua

Marketo

Pardot

Optify

InfusionSoft

RightNow

Genius.com

NetSuite

Aprimo

Loopfuse

Silverpop

Unica