AI (Advanced Intelligence vs Einstein)
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 4:42 am
This leads us nicely into AI! Salesforce refers to this as ‘Einstein’.
Eloqua has its own version of Einstein called Advanced Intelligence, which does have some nice features like Contact Fatigue analysis. This is a pretty important feature for any business emailing millions of data and it’s cool that you can use ‘Fatigue level’ in dynamic content within Eloqua for better engagement.
Besides email fatigue, Eloqua has Account number phone in cambodia Intelligence (scoring Accounts) and email optimisation (subject line improvement and send time optimisation).
Salesforce has been doing all of these things for a while and takes it a little further with Einstein being fully baked into the system. See below.
Eloqua artifical intelligence screengrab
Source: Oracle
Dropdown menu showing multiple Einstein reports
EinsteinSplit Type in Journey Builder
Screenshot of Einstein Engagement Scoring
Source: Trailhead
Data modelling and data
Eloqua data modelling feature screenshot
Source: Oracle
Marketing Cloud Contact Builder feature
Source: Trailhead
Eloqua’s data system lies somewhere between the elegance and simplicity of Pardot and the fully-fledged, industry-leading, relational database offered by Marketing Cloud Engage.
Like Pardot, Eloqua uses custom objects to store bespoke data that can be structurally linked to a Contact or Account. It is, on balance, more powerful than Pardot’s custom data, but is still restricted as you need to link each object to either the Account or the Contact.
Marketing Cloud allows a full relational data model to be built, so the need for clunky workarounds to facilitate complex use cases is dramatically reduced. Add to this power, the ability to create data tables on the fly and directly interact with Sales Cloud data in real time via Marketing Cloud Connect, and there is only one winner in terms of data management.
Reporting
Arguably one of the biggest components of any mass marketing tool is its ability to report on campaign performance.
Again, UX plays a huge role in this but the mechanics behind the platform are far more important when it comes to data. Some of the more primitive systems aren’t built in a way that allows the tool to reach or load data in a way that’s easily segmented or manipulated by marketers.
Eloqua and Marketing Cloud are very powerful tools and both handle reporting very well.
However, I’d argue that with Datorama (a Salesforce acquisition in 2018) powering the reporting within Marketing Cloud, it’s very hard to compete with. I mean, Datorama at the time had customers like IBM and Ticketmaster then Salesforce came and bought them to supercharge analytics within these platforms.
Oracle did try to bundle their BI tool in with Eloqua but our experience is that this is difficult to use even for advanced users and only allows access to certain fields, relying on SQL knowledge to do anything significant.
Screengrab of Eloqua reporting dashboard
Source: Oracle Help Center
Marketing Cloud reporting dashboard screenshot
Source: Salesforce Marketing Cloud YouTube Channel
Learning and support
If there’s something you don’t understand, you want to know you have resources to lean on to work out the knowledge gap. Now, both companies provide resources but here’s the difference:
Oracle University: Paid
Salesforce Trailhead: Free
Trailhead is actually gamified and if you don’t know already, there’s a massive community of professionals who help each other out. We’ve got the Salesforce community where you can post problems and get answers, there are Slack channels and partners like us who can help.
Home page of the Eloqua paid support subscription
Source: Oracle University
Home page of the Salesforce Trailhead support centre
Source: Trailhead
If you’re weighing up Marketing Cloud versus Eloqua or reacting to the news that teams are being laid off by searching out Eloqua alternatives. I hope this blog was at least slightly useful and apologise for any biased statements. As I said at the beginning, we’re a Salesforce Partner and are 100% focused on Salesforce software. We don’t work on any other platform even though we have experience in the team in Eloqua, Marketo, HubSpot and most of the smaller tools too.
Want to know more? Connect with me on LinkedIn as I post a lot about Marketing Cloud or contact us if you are looking to make the switch and would like help with implementation.
Eloqua has its own version of Einstein called Advanced Intelligence, which does have some nice features like Contact Fatigue analysis. This is a pretty important feature for any business emailing millions of data and it’s cool that you can use ‘Fatigue level’ in dynamic content within Eloqua for better engagement.
Besides email fatigue, Eloqua has Account number phone in cambodia Intelligence (scoring Accounts) and email optimisation (subject line improvement and send time optimisation).
Salesforce has been doing all of these things for a while and takes it a little further with Einstein being fully baked into the system. See below.
Eloqua artifical intelligence screengrab
Source: Oracle
Dropdown menu showing multiple Einstein reports
EinsteinSplit Type in Journey Builder
Screenshot of Einstein Engagement Scoring
Source: Trailhead
Data modelling and data
Eloqua data modelling feature screenshot
Source: Oracle
Marketing Cloud Contact Builder feature
Source: Trailhead
Eloqua’s data system lies somewhere between the elegance and simplicity of Pardot and the fully-fledged, industry-leading, relational database offered by Marketing Cloud Engage.
Like Pardot, Eloqua uses custom objects to store bespoke data that can be structurally linked to a Contact or Account. It is, on balance, more powerful than Pardot’s custom data, but is still restricted as you need to link each object to either the Account or the Contact.
Marketing Cloud allows a full relational data model to be built, so the need for clunky workarounds to facilitate complex use cases is dramatically reduced. Add to this power, the ability to create data tables on the fly and directly interact with Sales Cloud data in real time via Marketing Cloud Connect, and there is only one winner in terms of data management.
Reporting
Arguably one of the biggest components of any mass marketing tool is its ability to report on campaign performance.
Again, UX plays a huge role in this but the mechanics behind the platform are far more important when it comes to data. Some of the more primitive systems aren’t built in a way that allows the tool to reach or load data in a way that’s easily segmented or manipulated by marketers.
Eloqua and Marketing Cloud are very powerful tools and both handle reporting very well.
However, I’d argue that with Datorama (a Salesforce acquisition in 2018) powering the reporting within Marketing Cloud, it’s very hard to compete with. I mean, Datorama at the time had customers like IBM and Ticketmaster then Salesforce came and bought them to supercharge analytics within these platforms.
Oracle did try to bundle their BI tool in with Eloqua but our experience is that this is difficult to use even for advanced users and only allows access to certain fields, relying on SQL knowledge to do anything significant.
Screengrab of Eloqua reporting dashboard
Source: Oracle Help Center
Marketing Cloud reporting dashboard screenshot
Source: Salesforce Marketing Cloud YouTube Channel
Learning and support
If there’s something you don’t understand, you want to know you have resources to lean on to work out the knowledge gap. Now, both companies provide resources but here’s the difference:
Oracle University: Paid
Salesforce Trailhead: Free
Trailhead is actually gamified and if you don’t know already, there’s a massive community of professionals who help each other out. We’ve got the Salesforce community where you can post problems and get answers, there are Slack channels and partners like us who can help.
Home page of the Eloqua paid support subscription
Source: Oracle University
Home page of the Salesforce Trailhead support centre
Source: Trailhead
If you’re weighing up Marketing Cloud versus Eloqua or reacting to the news that teams are being laid off by searching out Eloqua alternatives. I hope this blog was at least slightly useful and apologise for any biased statements. As I said at the beginning, we’re a Salesforce Partner and are 100% focused on Salesforce software. We don’t work on any other platform even though we have experience in the team in Eloqua, Marketo, HubSpot and most of the smaller tools too.
Want to know more? Connect with me on LinkedIn as I post a lot about Marketing Cloud or contact us if you are looking to make the switch and would like help with implementation.