DATA VIRTUALIZATION FOR AGILE MARKETING WITH GREATER ROI

Background

This case study provides insight into the company’s marketing operations, highlighting a reliance on Salesforce as the core CRM system and Eloqua as the primary marketing automation platform. For the company known for its extensive range of security products, Eloqua serves as the primary outbound marketing platform.

A critical aspect of the company’s marketing strategy lies in providing tailored security product awareness to prospects, contingent on factors like product engagement, journey stage, and geographical region. This necessitates access to accurate and up-to-date data, ensuring that the content remains relevant and effective.

The company was using an integration app between Salesforce and Eloqua for an extended period to manage its marketing needs.

Challenges

But the integration app had its own share of challenges.

Data Duplication: The need to import data into Eloqua’s custom data objects created a redundancy. The company found itself tasked with managing a source dataset in Salesforce and a target dataset in Eloqua, each being accessed and manipulated by distinct teams. This created a synchronization challenge, introducing complexities in data handling.

Real-Time Data: The existing integration could not deliver real-time data on demand. As a result, the operations team had to carefully schedule the synchronization process to strike a balance between ensuring data freshness and preventing excessive resource consumption.

Real-time data needs significantly compounded the company’s already complex marketing operations.

Dedicated Oversight Team: The company had to allocate resources to monitor and maintain the fragile sync data pipe which would always fail to sync a few records due to conflicts between source and target. This team had to staff a dedicated data monitoring team to ensure data accuracy between Salesforce and Eloqua.  

Protracted Implementation of New Dimensions: Introducing any new dimensions to the existing data pipe was always a large IT project. This involved constant dependency on IT/external teams resulting in a prolonged process before data was available for campaigns. This resulted in lower marketing efficiency.

Escalating Operational Costs: The expenses associated with maintaining and updating the integration soared. This escalating cost structure posed a challenge for the marketing owner in securing additional budget allocation.

Rapid Data Structure Changes: Changes in data structures were occurring frequently, causing marketing assets like emails, landing pages, and campaigns to become outdated at an accelerated pace. This dynamic led to an increase in the Tech Debt of the company, as stagnant assets in Eloqua proliferated.  

These challenges not only heightened the complexity of the company’s marketing operations but also underscored the pressing need for a more efficient and streamlined solution.

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Solution

The company turned to PortQii to address its data, integration, and marketing challenges.

PortQii’s External Data Intelligence (EDI) solution is an innovative platform with data virtualization to access any data without any extract and load process, setting it apart from the conventional data integration approach.

Through EDI, the company’s marketing team gained direct access to Salesforce data, eliminating the necessity for data imports. This single advancement provided them with real-time data without any data duplication. They now have access to all the attributes in Salesforce and are not limited to attributes in the extracts. Any new attribute becomes automatically available to them in Eloqua for use in campaigns.

This development significantly lightened the load on the operations teams, eliminating the associated tasks and costs linked with maintaining synchronization.

Furthermore, EDI’s decision service module empowered the marketing team with seamless access to Salesforce data directly within Eloqua campaigns. This real-time integration allowed the company to deliver hyper-personalized experiences at scale to its prospects.

This empowered the creation of more intelligent and adaptable campaigns that are capable of handling a diverse range of use cases. Thus it obviated the need for multiple campaigns that were previously essential for managing such scenarios.

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Result

EDi’s integration has been transformative for the company’s marketing team. By automating internal processes and providing seamless data access, the team has been able to redirect their efforts towards core marketing functions, driving a substantial increase in productivity.

This shift has also yielded significant financial benefits. The company has experienced a notable reduction in marketing spend while achieving greater operational efficiency. This strategic reallocation of resources has enabled the team to amplify the impact of their marketing efforts, resulting in a remarkable enhancement of their email marketing campaigns.

The outcomes have been nothing short of impressive. The team has consistently outperformed industry benchmarks, delivering email marketing statistics that not only meet but exceed, established standards. This level of success stands as a testament to the effectiveness and strategic advantage gained through the implementation of EDI.

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