If you don't already know, Eloqua is a Web-based marketing and campaign management platform for lead nurturing, lead management, and campaign effectiveness measurement, all focused primarily around email. If you are trying to optimize the time of your sales organization (and who isn't), it would be a good idea to learn the concepts of "lead scoring" and "lead nurturing" to maximize sales team effectiveness.
A very simple example of lead scoring might include more "points" given for someone who lands on your Website after searching for your company name, rather than just a generic search term (clearly they were interested in specifically your company). This could be one of several factors affecting a "lead score". Then, depending on a lead's score, different sets of business rules might be applied (such as a phone call versus a follow up email). A good primer for this kind of approach is the book by Eloqua Founder Steve Woods entitled Digital Body Language.
Members of the StrikeIron team attended the Eloqua Experience user conference last week in San Francisco where they showcased Eloqua's integration of our SMS Text Messaging capability. It is a key component of using Eloqua for multi-channel marketing purposes. SMS can be used in a multi-touch lead nurturing program using various communication channels to nurture leads through the initial stages of the buying process.
Here is a screen shot showing how mobile text messages can be sent via template within the Eloqua platform:
All you need to do is come to StrikeIron to get your UserID & Password credentials, and then plug them into the Eloqua product, and you can start sending text messages globally (we handle all of the backend SMS capabilities and billing, supporting hundreds of carriers in hundreds of countries with fast, reliable message delivery).
At the event, to help showcase the SMS capability within Eloqua, DemandGen (one of our partners) created an SMS bingo game. Numbers were drawn during various sessions breaks and lunch to put a high tech spin on the classic game of Bingo, all done via SMS.
David Meerman Scott gave a good presentation at the Eloqua event as well that I continue to hear great things about. I would highly recommend new world marketers follow his blog and also follow him on Twitter.
Glimpses of the latest cut of the Eloqua product and platform demonstrated a really nice user interface, powerful reporting capabilities, and the ability to easily leverage non-email channels (such as SMS) as an effective part of any lead maximization strategy. While there are other choices to consider in the space, Eloqua is one of the best.
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