Whether your organization is expanding their Eloqua usage by adding more business units (BUs) or if you’re integrating newly acquired brands, some careful planning will help to ensure a harmonious migration.

Considerations when migrating additional BUs:

  • Governance:
    • Folder Structures and Naming Conventions. Assess how to compartmentalize groups and standardize naming conventions to improve efficiencies. Relationship One offers a free Asset Naming Generator app to help with this process. 
    • Contact and Asset Level Security. Determine if different groups should only have access to contacts or assets that are specific to their group vs. having access to everything in the platform. For more details about security groups, check out this blog post.
  • Data Architecture: 
    • Data Structure. Evaluate how you want to store contact data, particularly if the business groups have different needs or structures. There are 250 custom contact fields available, however, these can quickly be consumed depending on varying data needs. Custom Data Objects (CDOs) are a way to extend contact data and compartmentalize BUs or brands.
    • Data Management. Explore isolating one or more fields to tag contacts with a BU or brand identifier as they are added to Eloqua (either via integration, a form post or a file import).
    • CRM Integrations. Eloqua can support integrations with multiple CRMs and there are many considerations to take into account. Carefully map out data flows, as there is risk of overwriting data amongst shared contacts. Explore if duplicate contact fields are required to identify them accordingly in Eloqua, and keep in mind custom field limits. 
    • Account Linkage. If linking contacts to the Account table, note that a single account linkage field must be identified across all entities, which is a factor when integrating with multiple CRMs. If you’re planning to use Eloqua’s Advanced Intelligence package, account linkage becomes even more important for account engagement measurement.
    • Data Priority. These settings control how existing data is updated according to the source. When incorporating a CRM integration, this data is generally considered to be a higher priority than a manual list upload. This can cause problems for teams that rely on a lower priority data source to maintain their data. Think through overall governance and data management processes, as it will impact the integrity of your contact data.
    • Preference Management. If you’re currently using a system action for contacts to unsubscribe, now is the time to consider moving to an Email Group by brand process. Note that this may require adding additional segment criteria to properly exclude unsubscribed contacts from your campaigns (vs. using the Master Exclude). Also evaluate how multiple CRM systems may impact preference status in Eloqua.
    • Lead Scoring. Review lead scoring programs as an element of the overall data architecture – examine fields for cleanliness and completeness, and determine if any processes should be added to your data management processes. If multiple models are running, understand that depending on the number of contacts in your system, there is a soft limit to 3-6 Lead Scoring Models that can be active at one time.
  • Branding
    • Subdomains / Branding. There can only be one primary domain for branded images/links, so there will need to be a decision about which one to use if multiple brands are included in the instance. Microsites can be supported across multiple brands, however, and each will require separate SSLs, or a SAN or MDC certificate, if using secured sites.
    • Preference Center Branding. If you’re currently using the out of the box subscription management option, only one BU can be supported. If moving to supporting multiple brands, Preference Centers may need to be migrated onto a custom landing page by brand solution.

Migrating additional BUs into a single Eloqua instance requires analysis and coordination between teams. You may determine, after conducting the assessment, that your business cases warrant maintaining separate instances. Whatever your path, Relationship One can help you navigate the migration process. Contact us anytime.