Eloqua’s June 2012 release rolled into production this past weekend. This is possibly Eloqua’s final release before its IPO, mooted for this year. With a large proportion of the release focusing on back-end systems, there are, nonetheless, some interesting improvements for marketers on the platform.

The new lead scoring module, currently open to beta users, has added new flexibility through the addition of multiple scoring models. Once the beta is Generally Available, these new features will drive a step-change in how smaller, perhaps less sophisticated marketing teams, leverage the real power of Eloqua. The legacy scoring capability can feel overwhelming at first and may seem cumbersome thereafter. At Bluewolf, we’re delighted to see this WYSIWIG beta take shape.

What Marketing has not asked is, ‘how are we doing against our competitors and peers?’ As Eloqua’s customer base has grown it has been able to segment benchmark performance data further into vertical-specific data-sets. Thirteen benchmark industries are now available, representing those sectors where Eloqua has the most traction, including financial services, insurance, software, media & publishing, and business services, among others. We’re looking forward to the customer base growing wide enough for us to layer regional variances into those industry measurements, a welcome step forward.

Other changes users may see include the following:

• Sales enablement improvements including allowing sales teams to launch Eloqua Engage from within the contact record in Salesforce.com.
• Social improvements may have been few this release, but Pinterest ‘Pin It’ and ‘Follow’ buttons can now be added to landing pages. Be wary of over-use; only add this on truly ‘Pin-able’ content.
• Content updates make it easier for marketers, rather than designers, to work with images, files, and social components.
• On a more technical note: the rise of Google Apps has had more marketers turn to Chrome, and with this new release, the previously closed Google Chrome beta on E10 is now fully open. Also available is the Google Frame option in Internet Explorer; for those organisations tied to IE by other internal systems or processes.

If you are using Eloqua; do take the time to evaluate these improvements and maximize your investment in the platform. And if you are considering implementing marketing automation technology, now is a good time to talk to us.

Bluewolf helps marketing organizations select, implement and manage the best fit marketing automation technology, CRMs, and other cloud solutions.