Channel marketing automation success with Mark McKinzie

1. Oracle’s Channel
Marketing Tech
Success Story
­-- an interview with Mark McKinzie
In this ongoing series of SiriusDecisions Marketplace blog posts, we speak with
highprofile decision makers and end users at major b-to-b organizations to
understand how they select, deploy and optimize technology.
Author | Jessica Lillian
Senior Editor at SiriusDecisions
linkedin.com/in/jessicalillian
@jessica_lillian

2. How did you select Eloqua for marketing automation?
Mark McKinzie: Oracle acquired Eloqua in 2012, but until 2014 there
wasn’t a significant internal use of the platform due to other systems
in place. Over the last year or so, we realized that success in modern
marketing would come about through the use of our own product. Our
specific priorities included building a highperformance integrated mar-
keting automation engine, service-level agreements, creation of engaging
content, automation tools, and measurement and ROI reporting.
At its core, my job is to get qualified leads to our partners so that they can
generate pipeline opportunities and drive Oracle revenue. Toward the end
of 2014, I started to evaluate marketing automation service providers best
suited for the channel. My allegiance is to Oracle, but also to our partners,
and making sure we use the most qualified vendors and systems avail-
able to drive opportunities to Oracle’s Specialized Partners. We looked at
a lot of automation tools and platforms, talked with SiriusDecisions, and
read a SiriusView comparing Eloqua to competitors. Eloqua was favorably
reviewed in the SiriusView, but more importantly, it ranked the highest
within our team based on our long-term needs.
When the decision was made to move forward with Eloqua, we needed to
determine the exact capabilities we needed the platform to perform, how
to deploy it and which automation provider had the experience we were
looking for to run it. We began conducting regular work with SiriusDeci-
sions to build out our personas and the content preferences aligned with
those personas.
Your current stack also includes Bulldog Solutions – how
was that provider brought in? What was the timeline for
building out the combination?
Mark McKinzie: Terry Flaherty and I went through a number of planning
sessions to determine our long-term strategy. He helped us evaluate a
number of vendors based on our goals and recommended we give Bull-
dog Solutions a serious look for automation services and creative.
Our objective was to evaluate multiple vendors, so during last year’s
SiriusDecisions Summit, I spoke with vendors to determine exactly what
we needed (and didn’t need) when it came to the vast array of market-
ing automation tools that could be integrated into Eloqua. In addition
to determining the specific tools we needed, we still needed to make a
final decision on who would create, implement and execute our engine
and product campaigns. We had already narrowed our search for an
automation provider prior to Summit. But it was not until I sat in on the
Zebra Technologies case study that I was fully convinced of our direction.
I learned from that case study that Zebra was using Oracle Eloqua for the
automation engine, Bulldog Solutions as their automation provider and
KPI Analytics on the back-end for telemarketing on the lead flow from Elo-
qua. The success from the partnership they had formed – along with the
seamless integration between the engine and the three companies – was
the exact model I needed to implement. That sealed it for me.
Bulldog and Eloqua, combined with KPI for appointment-setting, provide
the complete package for us. On July 15, 2015, we all gathered in one
room to work out exactly what we needed to do to get the automation
engine up and running. We launched less than 30 days later on August
10. As with any new initiative or product, it was a trialand- error process
in the beginning – and it was right around the middle of October when
everything was kicking into high gear, launching new creative and running
multiple campaigns per week.
With your current marketing automation setup, how does
the process for sending out leads to partners work?
Mark McKinzie: What we set out to do after those first couple months with
our Eloqua/Bulldog/KPI combination was to understand our audiences
better. We know that in the channel, when we call on individual end users of
our solutions, not all of them are the decisionmakers, but many of them are
influencers – the traditional storage engineer, database administrator or IT
director who recommends storage solutions or servers. Cloud is brand-new
to a lot of them, and they’re contacted every day by numerous vendors
telling them which cloud products they must have. If you listen closely, you
begin to recognize and understand that these key influencers won’t readily
admit that they don’t fully understand the cloud products presented by
vendors, so they back off from vendor interaction.
We looked to understand their mindset, their problems and the questions
they’re asking, and we present those questions in our campaigns so they
can get real answers to their real-world questions. When we took this real-
istic, peer-to-peer approach, it increased the trust factor – it reflected the
questions on their minds.
Our marketing campaigns are sent directly to end users, and our team gets
realtime notifications and alerts when prospective customers access and
download our information. Eloqua packages the end-user information and
transfers it directly to KPI for lead prioritizing and appointment-setting. We
have a large community of participating partners that have completed the
required specializations and agreed to the service-level agreements to be
included in this program. Fully qualified leads can be rapidly assigned to the
appropriate partner based on clearly defined business rules.
What’s becoming increasingly noticeable is that our influencers and
decisionmakers that we’re booking appointments with are not always the
type of person who clicks a link or downloads an asset through email; often,
it’s individuals who have been in our campaigns for months, opening and
reading the emails and receiving the consistent weekly Oracle impression
in their inbox. We live in a world of fraud, viruses and identity theft that’s
pervasive throughout our email today, so our end-user prospects – espe-
cially those in IT – are typically wary of emails and the damage they can do.
We’re putting the Oracle name in front of them week after week, impression
after impression with little to no opt-outs, so when we call on them, they
know that we’re “the ones who have been sending emails about Oracle
cloud, storage and servers” – even though they may not have downloaded
our assets.
What’s next on the horizon for your technology purchases?
Mark McKinzie: Our next set of major priorities with our marketing
automation engine includes inbound marketing through content hubs,
outbound marketing through digital media, social media targeted ads, email
retargeting and predictive analytics. At SiriusDecisions Summit last year, we
heard the clear message that predictive is huge, and we’ve recently started
working with Mintigo.
For retargeting, we’ve been looking at both email retargeting and content re-
targeting. We’re looking at a couple of different providers in this space with
specific interest in partners within our Oracle Cloud Marketplace. These are
approved, registered, expert Oracle partners, with API integration already
built out for Eloqua.
To further complement our strategy, the fact that Eloqua integrates with the
Zift Solutions platform (which we also license) means that our campaign
assets can be made available to partners to deliver their own nurture cam-
paigns, seamlessly. Enabling our partners to drive opportunities through the
use of our marketing creative and platforms not only adds to our objectives
but also adds an impactful dynamic to the total customer experience.
Along with Maria Chien, service director for Channel Marketing Strategies at SiriusDecisions, I recently
interviewed Mark McKinzie – Marketing Director, North America Alliances and Channels, at Oracle – on
how he uses Oracle Eloqua, Bulldog Solutions and KPI Analytics to reach his marketing goals and help
Oracle’s channel partners succeed.
Mark McKinzie | Director of Oracle Partner Marketing and Channel Strategy