An Eloqua AppCloud marketing automation wish list for 2013

By Brian Hansford, account director and marketing automation practice group lead for Heinz Marketing

Eloqua users everywhere are settling in for end of year revenue marketing while visions of 2013 dance in their heads.

Here are some holiday wishes I have for new Eloqua Apps and CloudConnectors.  All of these can extend and innovate how marketers use the power of Eloqua and get closer to their customers, partners and employees.  Here it goes!

Here’s a primer from Eloqua that explains the different components of their AppCloud, including Apps and CloudConnectors.

MindJet – I would love to see a MindJet app or connector for Eloqua.  Combining mind mapping and project management is a cool and easy way to design and implement marketing campaigns.  MindJet’s approach is simple and elegant and visual.  For marketers like me simple is a great thing! I like how the MindJet doesn’t require classical Gantt chart knowledge or technical PM certifications.

For fast-moving marketing teams, MindJet easily integrates with Microsoft Office apps, including SharePoint, making it easy to use for marketing teams and campaign contributors. The team collaboration approach is very powerful and can reach across agencies, teams and departments.   Combining this with Eloqua would give marketers a natural way to plan, build, and implement campaigns.  That’s a very interesting idea to me.

Infinigraph – A very interesting platform that helps organizations build, deliver, and measure content effectiveness and brand engagement through social channels.  Infinigraph also helps organizations plan their content calendars to optimize engagement and visibility. An Inifinigraph App or Connector for Eloqua could provide a powerful way to measure brand and score engagement, and social conversations.

Badgeville – This is a natural fit to build an Eloqua App or CloudConnector.  Gamification is a technology category with lots of B2B marketing potential.  Humans have played games throughout history for entertainment and building skills.  Gamification platforms like Badgeville provide new ways to engage customers with entertaining and educational simulations.  This is the perfect way to get out of a boring rut of white papers and webinars!

One of the most innovative implementations of B2B gamification is Plantville from Siemens.  With Plantville access is granted by invitation-only for specific segments and personas.  Plantville users go through scenarios to improve efficiency and productivity in their own plants.  Scores are based on KPI’s and users can compete against other plant managers at different levels.  Based on the areas of focus, Siemens can make recommendations for plant management solutions.

Scenarios like this are perfect for Eloqua and Badgeville to build innovative engagement scenarios.  This is a very cool technology that makes a marketing geek like me drool.  Sales reps could have much more interesting conversations than talking about a white paper or basic product demo.  This could give a new meaning to lead scores!

Offline Campaign Building Tool (To-Be-Invented) –  This is my Big Hairy Audacious Gift.  It’s a big effort and perfect for my wishlist. Here’s the concept. I would love to see an Eloqua App or CloudConnector where users easily create Eloqua marketing workflow models and import that into Eloqua.  On the flip side, existing Eloqua models could be exported into this tool for further development or sharing with other Eloqua users.

Take this a step further.  Companies could build and license their campaign workflow models for other organizations to use.  These Eloqua workflow and Program Builder models could incorporate everything from lead scoring, nurturing, employee onboarding, and more. It’s a great opportunity for Eloqua users to collaborate within the community.

I realize some organizations would worry about releasing proprietary workflow models.  But I don’t see that as a problem since the users could, and should, modify the model to their own campaign requirements.  Plus, let’s not forget that content fuels the marketing automation rocket.  The model itself is just the framework.  This is also a fantastic opportunity to create a new market where agencies could license models for their clients.  Exciting stuff.

I have tried to be a good marketer with only a few bouts of naughtiness.  Will I get any of my wishlist apps for the holidays?  What are some of your wishlist Eloqua Apps or CloudConnectors?