Eloqua
Company: Eloqua, Toronto, Canada
Entry Submitted By: Davies Murphy
Company Description: Eloqua provides the leading integrated demand generation application and expertise for executing, automating and measuring highly effective B2B marketing programs. Eloqua drives the entire marketing process from contact to close, while making prospect interest and intent visible at every step.
Nomination Category: Best Organization Achievements
Nomination Sub Category: Demand Generation Program of the Year
Nomination Title: Closed Loop Marketing Goes the Distance for Sales
Eloqua currently has 35 people in the company’s sales organization.
Confidential
Keith Nealon, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Eloqua
Keith Nealon joined Eloqua in 2005 and is responsible for growing company
revenue. Nealon brings a successful track record in sales, business
development and sales management. Prior to Eloqua, Nealon served as Vice
President of Major Accounts at Navisite, Inc., where he increased client
revenues by 70% within the first six months. Nealon was also the CEO and co-
founder of Nebula Technologies, an international e-business solutions and
service provider, where he led revenue growth of 50% each year.
Thor Johnson, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Eloqua
Thor Johnson joined Eloqua in 2004 to lead marketing. With over 20 years of
marketing and managerial experience, Johnson brings consistency and focus to
Eloqua's public face and marketing programs. Prior to joining Eloqua, Johnson
headed the Boston and New York business units of AGENCY.COM, and held
positions at Juno Online Services and Schlumberger. Johnson holds a degree
from Brown University and an M.B.A. from Harvard University.
High-growth Eloqua wanted to double 2007 revenue with a goal of 70% of growth
generated by marketing. Supporting that goal, Eloqua experimented with driving
quality, high volume leads to inside and field sales, while achieving greater
marketing and sales alignment.
Webinars: Through automation, each Eloqua webinar generated 1000+
registrations and hundreds of leads. Webinar attendance was high and leads
were nurtured into opportunities. In 2007, campaign nurture programs were
introduced. Eloqua introduced a lead scoring program to identify sales-ready
leads, while marketing continues to nurture the remaining leads. Over 70% of
new sales were already generated by marketing leads in Q3.
Three components contributed to our success:
• Automating the webinar process allowed marketers to evaluate campaign
effectiveness, measure results and spend time on the activities like content
development that drove large registration numbers.
• Recognizing that the tremendous interest in the webinars didn’t end at
with the event, but that additional leads could be cultivated.
• Identifying the need for marketing and sales to agree on what makes a
sales ready lead and developing a process to pass these leads to the sales
team and continue to nurture those leads not ready to transition to sales.
We learned:
• We could measure marketing program impact on revenue. Through
marketing automation, marketing can be a predictable and reliable channel for
sales leads.
• Leads that are not ready for sales can be effectively nurtured by
marketing until they meet a mutually defined criteria/qualification. No lead
was dropped and ultimately no resources wasted.
• Raising the quality of leads passed to sales may reduce the number of
leads sales receives, but will increase revenue and deal size, but also
reduces the cost of converting that lead.