4 Critical Factors to Keep in Mind when Migrating from Marketo to Eloqua

April 12, 2023 Stan

Word has come down from above. The company has decided to switch marketing automation platforms this year. You’ve been using Adobe Marketo Engage (Marketo) for years; you are an expert power user and by the end of the year, you and your team will be fully migrated to Oracle Eloqua (Eloqua). Panic sets in and your mind begins spinning with all of the what-ifs, the action items you know are going to land on your plate, the overwhelming amount of preparation, documentation, and critical decisions ahead of you. Where do you even start?

There are a number of ways to approach any migration and it is important to keep best practices in mind regardless of the systems involved. When it comes to migrating from Marketo to Eloqua, it is important to understand the fundamental differences between the platforms so you can make educated system design and migration decisions to meet the needs of the business. Some of the key differences lie in database and integration architecture, terminology and organization, lead scoring methodology, and campaign and program design.

Migrating from Marketo to Eloqua: Always Start With the Data Architecture

Eloqua and Marketo think about data organization differently. In Marketo, you truly have one database object – the People table. Every piece of data regarding your contacts is housed on the Lead object, organized into hierarchical folders of Company Info, Hidden Fields, Standard Contact Info, and Opportunity Info. Marketo also has an add-on product of up to 10 Custom Data Objects (CDOs) to allow for the creation of a one-to-many or many-to-many relationships between your Marketo leads and the custom object records. Typical use cases for the CDOs include webinar platform integrations, product purchase data and other rapidly changing data that you may need for marketing and personalization. Eloqua, on the other hand, organizes data into separate tables for Contacts/Leads, Accounts, and Custom Data Objects. CDOs play a more central role in Eloqua’s infrastructure, not only housing short-term information in a one-to-many relationship with contacts or accounts, but also available for use in customization, personalization, and dynamic content blocks within email and landing page assets.

Similarly, integrations with CRMs are handled quite differently between the two platforms. In Marketo, the out-of-the-box syncs with Salesforce.com or Microsoft Dynamics are, in essence, one-click integrations. All CRM fields that are exposed to the Marketo API will be ingested into the master Lead table. These syncs are bi-directional for CRM leads and contacts – meaning that changes you make in either Marketo or CRM will be reflected in both systems. All other syncs, such as Opportunities, Accounts, Custom Objects, Users, etc., are from CRM to Marketo only. Any fields you do not want to be synced with Marketo need to be hidden from the API user on the CRM side of the equation.

Eloqua takes a different approach to integrating data with a CRM. With the out-of-the-box syncs with Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, and Oracle Sales Cloud Eloqua allows decisions to be made on what data is being passed back and forth between systems. Even with all fields in CRM being exposed to the Eloqua API, the integration requires mapping of all objects and their fields so that you are syncing only the data you need to effectively market to your contacts. Additionally, you will need to decide which fields should be automatically synced to be kept up-to-date and which fields may only need to be pulled once. You will need to create actions, imports and external calls to synchronize your CRM data with Eloqua based on record types so that you always have the most up-to-date data to plan your marketing efforts.

For your upcoming migration, the data questions you should be asking yourself are:

What data do I need from CRM in order to effectively market?
- Begin documenting your field set, table by table, as it is arranged in your CRM (Lead, Contact, Account, Opportunity, Campaigns, Custom Objects, etc.)
Have I created any custom fields that will need to be recreated in Eloqua?
- Be sure to note any fields that have been custom-created in Marketo and synced with your CRM that will need recreation.
What data is being sent from Marketo to my CRM today?
- What tasks, activities and campaign member updates are being sent? Begin documenting fields and rules for creation of these activities/tasks within CRM.
How are Leads being created in CRM from Marketo?
- Begin documenting your lead creation process, rules and exceptions to recreate your lead management workflow in Eloqua
Are there things I wish were syncing/happening today in Marketo that aren’t?
- Document your wish list to share with your implementation experts!

Migrating from Marketo to Eloqua: Learn to Speak a Different Language

For those who have studied any foreign language, you know that understanding a core set of vocabulary is a must in order to begin communicating effectively. Similarly, taking the time to understand Marketo-speak vs. Eloqua-speak is crucial to building your Eloqua instance most effectively.

Below, please find a basic definition table for core components so that you can begin translating to the new usage of the same words.

Marketo Term	Eloqua Term	Definition
Programs	Campaigns	A specific set of assets and workflow decisions pertaining to a single marketing initiative used in communicating a go-to-market message with the objective of moving an individual from one stage to the next in the evaluation process. The campaign has a design canvas that provides the ability to automatically deploy assets, make decisions, and take actions (ie. Smart Campaigns) based on known information or behavioral activity of contacts.
Program Tags (Channels)	Campaign Type	One of the standard campaign fields used to provide additional metadata related to your campaigns, primarily for reporting purposes.
Lists	Shared lists	A static list of contacts that can be used across multiple segments
Smart lists	Shared filters	A contact filter that can be used across multiple segments
Smart lists	Segments	The primary way of grouping contacts in Eloqua. Segments are used to define the members of a campaign.
Leads/Person	Contacts	A data entity that contains the explicit data around an individual person in the database
Sales Insight	Engage and Profiler	Engage and Profiler are the components that make up Eloqua Sales Tools. Profiler is the tool for viewing a contact’s activity in one single graphical and tabular format in an easily accessible and data-rich application. Engage ensures sales professionals are using marketing-approved messaging, branding and content and allows for personalization and tracking of each email sent.

Now that you are beginning to speak Eloqua, it is time to start documenting your information in Marketo so that you can translate those into actionable components once you move to Eloqua.

The questions you should ask yourself are:

Have you documented your Program Tags to create your list of Eloqua Campaign Type attributes?
Do you have any Lists that will require recreation for use in Eloqua?
- Make sure you export these prior to Marketo being deprecated.
What Smart Lists do you routinely use?
- Document the requirements/filters that make up your Smart Lists so that they can be rebuilt in Eloqua.
How is sales using Sales Insight today?
- Document your requirements/use cases
- Export any email templates currently in use
- Remember to document any lead assignment, task creation or Interesting Moments rules that need to be replicated in the Eloqua-CRM syncs.

Migrating Marketo to Eloqua: Learn to “Think” Differently, Too

Remember, Marketo Programs are equivalent to Eloqua Campaigns, and more than just the name is different. In Marketo all elements of your program are housed within a Program folder as a single marketing initiative, including your audience list, all email, landing page, and form assets, and smart campaigns, including field value changes you want to take effect. Eloqua thinks more modularly, meaning that assets are housed separately from Campaign workflows and are referenced in asset steps and actions within those workflows. The key difference in “thinking” is that Marketo prefers that all Program elements reside in one container so that activities, metrics, and actions can be attributed and managed correctly. However, Eloqua’s subscribes to the “build once, use anywhere” mindset where assets are designed to be reusable across campaigns. Actions like email sends reside primarily at the Campaign Canvas level. The actions accomplished by form processing steps are handled within the form itself, replacing the Marketo Smart Campaign.

Additionally, it is worth noting that while Marketo captures everything that happens to a person – whether that’s marketing activity, or simply a data value change, adding them to a list, program member data change, etc. – to the Activity Log, Eloqua’s activity log is strictly for recording actions that relate to the contact’s marketing activity. All of the data change values and campaign or asset activity attribution happens behind the scenes and do not require manually setting your response stages for each Campaign or Program. Keeping with the build-once theme, Eloqua’s default campaign response rules, lead stages, external activities values, field merges and dynamic/shared content elements are set at the instance-level and are not required to be manually entered at the point of campaign creation.

Considerations for your upcoming migration:

Take the time to document your automation sequences for each of your always-on Programs that you will be migrating.
- You will not see a 1:1 equivalent in Eloqua, but if you have the chance to open both platforms side-by-side, you can more easily find comparable options.
Take note of all assets for the Programs you are migrating and begin collecting email, form, and landing page details and elements needed to sustain these programs in the new platform.
- Get an accounting of those assets that can be replicated using the Eloqua design editor and those that will need to be coded via HTML.
  - Begin extracting the HTML for the complex assets to prepare for migration and removing any Marketo snippets or token coding.
- Extract your images and make note of any tokens, segments, snippets, or dynamic content elements that should be replicated in Eloqua.
- Document your forms and the person fields in use as well as any automation activities happening for each form upon submission by a prospect.
For system processing programs like your CRM lead management program or any data appender/cleaning programs that are in use, document all rules so that these can be rebuilt as Eloqua Programs.

Migrating from Marketo to Eloqua: Adapt to a Different Lead Scoring Model

Much like Marketo, leads coming from Eloqua are scored dynamically—in real time automatically—based on customer profile and engagement data. However, in Eloqua, this assessment is assigned a co-dynamic lead score made up of a letter/number pair indicating varying demographic fit and engagement level combinations. The score is not an aggregated number that requires manually augmenting and decaying over time as you do via your Marketo Smart Campaigns today. But regardless of the platform and methodology, the goal is the same – to bubble up those highly-engaged, decision-maker leads to your sales team for actionable follow-up. Translating your Marketo scoring model into Eloqua’s methodology requires some careful consideration and analysis of your existing model(s).

Considerations for your lead scoring model migration:

How many lead scoring models do I have running?
- Document your lead scoring criteria and point assignment from Marketo.
Are any lead scoring models separated by workspaces and apply only to certain business units/regions? If yes, will I need multiple models post-migration?
- If there are multiple models, make sure to document all rules that apply separately to the workspaces.
Have I recently reviewed my lead scoring criteria and point assignments and validated with my sales team?
- Before migrating, make sure you have a current, validated version of your model running so that your sales team can be assured that a score-driven MQL coming from Marketo today equals the same MQL lead in Eloqua tomorrow.
What automation rules are triggered by my lead scoring model(s)?
- Document any automation rules that are tied to your lead scoring models.
- Don’t forget to look at your scoring page, completion actions, and page rules as well as your automation rules as lead scoring actions can live in all of these locations.
How does my lead score affect MQL/lead creation in my CRM?
- Document all lead creation triggers for consideration in the CRM lead creation program/process in Eloqua.
Take time to understand how Eloqua treats lead scoring.
- Download Eloqua’s Lead Scoring Matrix to begin comparing and translating your existing lead score model attributes into Eloqua’s scoring methodology.
- For more education, you may want to take a look at the Lead Scoring section in Eloqua’s Help Center.
And just a note: Marketing Activities/Events cannot be migrated from Marketo to Eloqua, so it might be helpful to consider temporarily creating a migration field or two in your new Eloqua instance to capture the last lead score, last lead stage, etc. so that you have something to use in your scoring matrix that accounts for contact activity and its recency just prior to the platform switch.

Of course, as you head into migration from Marketo to Eloqua, you’re going to spend a good amount of time analyzing your contact database and your assets to determine what you plan to migrate and what you will be leaving behind in your phased migration approach. Take the time to clean up and remove any unnecessary fields from your person and account records prior to import into Eloqua. Additionally, make sure you do your due diligence with your assets – rename or house all your assets to be migrated in a central place so that you can easily identify them at the time of migration. And lastly, having a strong migration and implementation partner who understands the ins-and-outs of both systems will help you organize and ease this transition as well as provide expertise with those critical decisions needed to future-proof Eloqua. Have questions or need assistance making the switch? Reach out. We have both Oracle Eloqua and Adobe Marketo Engage experts ready to help!

Thank you for subscribing!