Eloqua is the marketing automation system we are now deploying at Cincom Systems. We looked and evaluated for over a year at contending solutions. But Eloqua had the best fit for how we believed demand generation should be done. It fits perfectly with my concept of Learn / Teach / Amplify.

Below are 8 ways that Eloqua suggests for tracking prospect behavior leads to more effective listening so we can learn what prospective and current customers want, need and expect. This enables us to create products, services and campaigns that meet their needs. It is all part of our strategy to deliver a perfect customer ... Read More

By Dale Wolf

Your customers are moving targets. But one way to put them in ‘still frame’ is to look at their behaviors and define a message framework that goes up squarely against each cluster of behavior-types. As long as you are conversing against the customer’s behavior model, your content will achieve pin-point relevance.

Here’s the process I follow when developing a message framework:

Step 1 –
Action is to align on target audience needs and marketing objectives; the outcome is team consensus on measurable objectives. If you get Step 1 wrong, your goose is cooked. But achieving internal consensus is often like shadow boxing. Key managers for one reason or another have their own hidden agendas and agree in ... Read More

By Dale Wolf

Lead Nurturing and Customer Experience go hand-in-hand. Nurturing implies that you stay in contact with prospects across a longitudinal time frame. Done properly, this should increase the customer experience. I say "properly" because nurturing programs should initiate outbound communications that deliver value to the prospect at each stage of the buying cycle. During most of this cycle, the prospect is most likely not even in an active buying situation … the time is not right. We need to recognize where the prospect is and what they need at any given time and then provide an offer that is meaningful, relevant, useful. Such nurturing improves the experience.

A situation came up at our company just this week. A prospect we talked with almost a ... Read More