Optimize Your Messaging with Oracle Eloqua’s Advanced Intelligence

We all know the power of email marketing. We’ve been doing it for years at this point. But sometimes, it feels like we’re throwing spaghetti at the wall. You craft a fantastic email, hit send, and then…crickets. Or worse, your email unleashes a flood of unsubscribes. What went wrong?

Often, it’s not what you’re sending, but when and how you’re presenting it. That’s where Oracle Eloqua’s Advanced Intelligence features of Send Time Optimization (STO) and Subject Line Optimization (SLO) can help. They’re designed to help you get your message seen and, more importantly, engaged with, it by leveraging the power of artificial intelligence.

Let’s break down these features and see how they can make your email marketing efforts a whole lot smarter.

Send Time Optimization (STO): Hitting the Inbox at the Perfect Moment

Imagine knowing exactly when each of your subscribers is most likely to open and engage with your emails. Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?  Utilizing STO can help turn that dream into a reality. This AI-powered feature within Oracle Eloqua analyzes the historical engagement data to determine the most favorable send time for each contact in your database.

Instead of scheduling emails to be sent at a fixed time for everyone in your audience segment, STO personalizes each individual’s send time based on their past open and click behavior.

How Does it Work?

The magic behind STO lies in its algorithms. Here’s a simplified look at the process:

• Data Collection: Oracle Eloqua starts by gathering tracked behavior data on the time of day and day of the week your contacts have engaged with your emails.
• Pattern Recognition: Oracle Eloqua then analyzes this data to identify patterns and trends in individual engagement behavior. It looks for correlations between send time and open rates to help inform the model on the most optimal time that each contact opens emails from your Eloqua instance.
• Predictive Modeling: Based on the identified patterns, STO creates a predictive model for each contact, forecasting the best time to send future emails. Additionally, it’s not a one-time decision. As behavior patterns validate the model or begin to change, STO is continually adjusting as it learns each contact’s preferred day and time sweet spot.
• Automated Sending: When you schedule an email campaign with STO enabled, Oracle Eloqua automatically sends the email to each contact at the predicted optimal day and time. The email will be sent within the week of the campaign step initiation.

Benefits of Using Send Time Optimization

There are many benefits to using Send Time Optimization in your marketing campaigns and nurture journeys. A few advantages are listed below:

• Increased Open Rates: By sending emails when contacts are most likely to be engaged on their computers and monitoring their inbox, you significantly increase the chances of your email being seen as it comes into the inbox and opened.
• Improved Click-Through Rates: Higher open rates tend to lead to higher click-through rates. If people are opening your emails, they’re more likely to click on the links you have included.
• Heightened Engagement: When recipients receive emails at a convenient time, they’re more likely to engage with the content, whether it’s reading a blog post, downloading a resource, starting a trial, or making a purchase.
• Better Deliverability: As a secondary benefit, more engagement can positively influence your sender reputation and lead to better deliverability rates over time.
• Reduced Unsubscribes: Sending relevant, personalized content at the right time can reduce instances where recipients feel overwhelmed or annoyed by your message. This can lead to your company experiencing fewer unsubscribes.
• Personalized Customer Experience: STO contributes to a more personalized customer experience by showing that you’re considerate of their time and preferences.
• Automation and Efficiency: Once set up, STO automates the process of optimizing send times, freeing up your marketing team to focus on other strategic initiatives.

Even with all these advantages, there are times when STO should not be used. If you are sending a time-sensitive communication, STO is not the ideal experience. Depending on the timing of your launch, recipients could receive the message too close to the signup deadline or even after the event or promotional period is over.

Like any tool, STO works wonders for its prime use cases such as your evergreen campaigns, nurture and onboarding journeys, or any campaign where your audience does not necessarily need to receive the message at the same time.

Subject Line Optimization (SLO): Crafting the Enticing Headline

Speaking of tools, let’s turn our focus to another of Oracle Eloqua’s Advanced Intelligence optimization features, Subject Line Optimization (SLO). Now that you’ve honed in on the optimal send time, we need to consider the first thing your recipients see – the subject line. A compelling subject line can be the difference between an opened email and one that’s instantly deleted. That’s where Subject Line Optimization comes in.

What is Subject Line Optimization?

SLO is another AI-powered feature in Eloqua that helps you create subject lines that are more likely to grab attention and drive opens. It uses machine learning to analyze the performance of different subject lines in your Eloqua instance and identify the elements that resonate most with your audience.

It then shows if the subject line you write is Good or Poor and indicates a predicted open rate based on the email performance of all previous sends. Using this information, you can optimize your subject line and re-test its performance to ensure that your email has a better-than-average chance of being opened.

Benefits of Using Subject Line Optimization

There are many benefits to using SLO, such as:

• Increased Open Rates: By using data-driven insights to craft more compelling subject lines, you can significantly increase your email open rates.
• Improved Engagement: Higher open rates lead to more opportunities for engagement with your email content.
• Better Understanding of Your Audience: SLO provides valuable insights into what types of subject lines resonate with your audience, which helps you refine your overall messaging strategy.
• Reduced Guesswork: SLO takes the guesswork out of subject line creation. Based on all previous sends, you can quickly see if your email hits or misses the mark. This means you’re using AI-powered insights and data to drive your decisions instead of chance.
• Time Savings:  You can reduce your subject line A/B testing campaigns and take the manual work out of reviewing and aligning the bulk of your campaign to the winning variant. By automating the process of subject line testing and optimization, SLO saves you time and effort.

Best Practices for Using STO and SLO

When it comes to using STO and SLO, we must remember that tools work best in certain situations and conditions. Yes, you can use a butter knife as a screwdriver in a pinch, but the screwdriver is always going to work better. For both of these tools to work best, data quality is key. The accuracy and completeness of your data are crucial for the effectiveness of both STO and SLO.

It is also important that you test regularly. By continuously testing different subject lines, send times and other email elements, you can fine-tune your campaigns to provide maximum ROI and meet your company KPIs. Once you’ve refined your campaigns, it is imperative to monitor their performance. Even the best campaign can often have areas of improvement.

With all of this optimization available to us, we must curb our impulse to over-optimize. Focus on providing valuable content and building relationships with your audience and the optimization will begin to show results.

It takes time for STO and SLO to learn and optimize your campaigns, so be patient if the first few uses don’t result in double-digit gains in opens and clicks. Continue methodically using these tools in conjunction with other personalization techniques such as dynamic content and personalized offers. The more you tailor your message to your audience, the greater their response will be.

In Conclusion

Oracle Eloqua’s Advanced Intelligence features of Send Time Optimization and Subject Line Optimization offer a powerful way to enhance your email marketing efforts. By leveraging the power of AI, you can deliver emails at the optimal time with subject lines that grab attention.

These enhancements lead to increased open rates, improved engagement, and better results. So, if you’re looking to take your email marketing to the next level, it’s time to explore the potential of STO and SLO.

Want to know more? Relationship One is here to help.

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