Follow Drake to San Francisco for Eloqua Experience

Hi Eloqua friends - Drake here, your Eloqua Customer Success Tour Ambassador. Today I’m beginning my cross-country trip to Eloqua Experience 2010 where I will be working at the Eloqua University booth. I’m starting from the east coast of the US and making my way by plane and car to San Francisco, arriving on October 17. Why am I telling you this? Because you can follow me along the way, guess my route, and potentially win a $100 iTunes or Amazon gift card. Here’s how:

• Every weekday I will be posting a clue about where I am on my Facebook wall (www.facebook.com/EloquaDrake) and via Twitter (@EloquaDrake).


• You can post your guess about my location (name of the city) in the comments on my Facebook wall, then after two more moves I’ll reveal where I was.


• I’ll be keeping a tally of who has the most correct guesses and that person will win the gift card.


• Tip: You don’t have to be going to Eloqua Experience to participate, but if you are going to be there, I’ll also throw in an extra gift onsite at the event as well.

Here are a few more pieces of information about the locations I’ll be visiting:

• They’re all US cities with populations over 100,000


• When I fly, I’ll be flying on Continental non-stop


• When I drive, it will be somewhere that I can get to within 8 hours in a car (which will really only take me 6 hours, heh heh) – in other words about 500 miles.


• I won't ever backtrack - my movement will always be in the direction of San Francisco

Visit me on Facebook today for my first clue about my starting point city.

Win a Free Ticket to Eloqua Experience!

(guest post from Adrian Chang)

Are you Eloqua's biggest fan? Share why on our Facebook Fan page and you can win a free ticket to this year's Eloqua Experience in San Francisco from October 18-20.

We are looking for you to share 10 Reasons why you are Eloqua's biggest fan. Be creative

- write a poem, create a YouTube video, or use photos to craft your submission. You will post your entry on our Eloqua's Facebook Page - www.facebook.com/eloqua.

Rules
· One entry per Eloqua Fan - make it count!
· You must be a fan of Eloqua on Facebook (Go to www.facebook.com/eloqua and "Like" our page)
· This contest is for Eloqua customers only
· You may use Twitter to promote your entry and link to our fan page - please use #1EloquaFan for the contest.

Also, if you want to make mention of this year's Eloqua Experience, please use #EE10SF.

Judging

The winner will be selected by a committee of Eloqua employees. The committee will review entries based on creativity and response from the Eloqua community (Likes, Comments).

Duration

Starts September 1st through the 15th (ending at 11:59pm PT). Winner will be announced on September 17th.

Prize
One (1) free ticket to Eloqua Experience. Current registrants may still apply - you will be reimbursed in the event that you are selected as the winner. Also, the winning entry will be featured during the conference.

Eloqua Employees, Customers and Partners – How can you participate?

1. If you are a Facebook User, please ensure that you are a Fan of Eloqua. Go to www.facebook.com/eloqua and
"Like" our page

2. Highlight the entries that you like by commenting or click on the "Like" button for any entries

3. For general guidelines as to how you can participate in Social Media - http://blog.eloqua.com/eloqua-socialplaybook

Any questions? Please contact me Adrian Chang at 416.642.7586 or at adrian.chang@eloqua.com

Adding and Tracking Facebook ‘Like’ buttons in Eloqua emails

(Guest post from Vince Lockyer, Demand Gen Specialist, Avid)
vince (d0t) lockyer (at) avid (dot) com

There have been a lot of blog posts recently about Facebook ‘Like’ buttons and how to use them in marketing emails.

While it’s easy to add a link to a Facebook group or page from an email, it’s not been so easy to integrate a fully working ‘Like’ button into an email in a similar way it works with a webpage – and also accurately track who’s clicking it and what they are ‘liking’.
So far only one or two vendors have come up with an embedded solution to this – which of course only works with their platform. Now using the method described here you can get the same functionality for your Eloqua emails. This solution requires a bit of HTML tweaking in the final step.

How it works
From your Eloqua email, a blind form-submit sends the email address of the recipient, the URL, and the name of the webpage being ‘liked’ to an Eloqua form. After logging and tracking these details the form confirmation page then displays the webpage overlaid with the Facebook Like Button Social Plug-in.

Try it out!
Try out this example form with your own data to see how it looks.

How to build it

Create two new contact fields:
• Facebook – Last Like URL
This will contain the URL of the last thing that the contact liked. It’s required also because the form confirmation page will need the URL to display the webpage in the final step.

• Facebook – Last Like Name
(Optional but highly recommended.) Contains the name of the last thing that the contact liked. Required to make the reports more readable and also to be displayed in the form confirmation page.

Create a new form with the following fields. Keep the form name and the HTML names of the fields short as they will be used in the blind form submit URL. Try something like ‘fb’ or ‘like’ for the form name.

• ‘e’ – Email Address
• ‘l’ – URL
• ‘n’ – Name

Add a ‘Update Contact Data’ processing step to update the two Facebook fields from the form submissions.

Add a confirmation page processing step. Here you will need to build the HTML for displaying the webpage overlaid with the Facebook Social Plug-in.

Confirmation Page HTML
The confirmation page displays the webpage being ‘liked’ in an iframe embedded in the Eloqua confirmation page. A semi-transparent layer is overlaid on top with the Facebook Social Plug-in contained in another layer (see image).

A close button is included in the top-left that hides the overlaid layers and reveals the webpage beneath.

Download the HTML for the confirmation page, you can use it as-is or customise it to your requirements. Note: you will need to edit it to update the field merges and locations of the graphics files in your Eloqua instance.

To add-in your own field merges for the ‘Facebook – Last Like URL’ and ‘Facebook – Last Like Name’ use the Insert Contact Field option in the Eloqua Confirmation Page editor. To upload the images use the Upload Images tool under Hypersites or Email Marketing > Tools & Content Components. You’ll need to copy the URL of the hosted image once uploaded and paste that into the HTML.

Adding the Like button to an email

Once the form fields, form and confirmation page is setup you can add the ‘Like’ button to your email. The button will trigger a blind-form submission in this format:



Make sure “?elqFormName=” equals the HTML name of the form you created and “&elqSiteID” equals your unique Eloqua site ID. “&l=” is the URL of the webpage being liked and “&n=” is the name.

Reporting

To get a report of who is liking what, view the Form Data report:


Liking or Recommending

The code described here will allow you to add a ‘Like’ button. You can also add-in a ‘Recommend’ button using the same code – you’ll just need to change the ‘action’ parameter in the Facebook Social Plug-in to ‘recommend’:
“&action=recommend”

Drake Has a New Contest For You

(Guest post from Eloqua's Drake)

This is Drake, Eloqua's Success Tour Ambassador and I'm kicking off another round of Customer Success Tours beginning today in Austin, TX. Our theme for the events this quarter is "sales enablement", but actually the goal is to make you, the marketer, a hero to your sales team. Envision them giving you accolades at the next company-wide meeting...

In honor of this theme I've cajoled the folks at Eloqua into letting me host another contest on Facebook. Here's the scoop: post a picture on my Facebook wall (facebook.com/eloquadrake) that depicts marketing and sales being aligned. Think "lock-step" and "BFFs" (or whatever kids these days are saying). And most importantly, think creatively, because that's what will win the prize. You can post up to three times, so make 'em count. The deadline is September 6 (Labor Day) so you have a little time to strategize.

What's the prize? Your personal reward is a $100 iTunes or Amazon gift card (your choice) and your company reward is 10 licenses of the Eloqua Sales Toolkit which contains Eloqua for Microsoft Outlook, Eloqua Prospect Profiler and Eloqua Discover. What's Eloqua Discover? Come to a Success Tour to see a live demo of this great new tool. So it's a win-win for both you and your company.

Get started by friending me on Facebook so you can see all the postings and scope out the competition. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

(Oh – my Eloqua friends asked me to remind you that this Friday, August 13th is the early bird deadline for Eloqua Experience. You can attend for $999 if you sign up by this Friday, so what are you waiting for? After that the price goes up to $1350 – is there really anything to think about?)

Drake Brings you an iPad

If you’ve attended an Eloqua Customer Success Tour recently you may have met Drake. He’s our official “mascot” of Success Tours, and he’s done an exemplary job so far. He recently created a Facebook profile so that you can get to know him a bit better and last week he asked if he could run some Eloqua-related contests on his Facebook page. Of course we agreed. We love a good contest – especially when someone else does all of the work.

Over the next few months you can learn a bit more about Drake and his irreverent take on the art and science of marketing by viewing his Facebook wall posts (they’re not protected, so anyone and everyone can get to know him). He’ll be sharing some reading recommendations and I’m sure he’d love to hear your suggestions as well. Sometimes he might point you in the direction of a good blog post or marketing event. And sometimes he may simply share a good restaurant that he’s been to before or after a Success Tour.

But let’s get down to business and talk about Drake’s first contest. At the San Francisco Success Tour he saw Jill Rowley’s iPad and he’s decided he really needs one for his briefcase. Who can blame him? Since he’s going to buy one for himself he decided to be generous and buy one for a member of the Eloqua family too. But who to give it to? That’s where the contest comes in.

Download this PDF featuring a fantastic likeness of Drake. Print it and cut it out then take a picture of Drake somewhere interesting. Your photo can feature you and Drake together or just Drake alone in interesting surroundings. Post your picture to Facebook, friend Drake (“Drake at Eloqua”) and tag him in the photo. Voila!

On July 5 he’ll choose his favorite picture and send the winner a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad. Yep, it’s that easy. You can even enter more than once, which is highly recommended if you’re traveling. (Hint: Drake would really like to see the Eiffel Tower or some really awesome July 4th shenanigans.) Oh, and in case Drake can’t choose his favorite, he’ll see which photo has the most “likes” to help him make his decision.

Embedding Facebook into blogs

I wrote a while ago about our B2B Marketing strategy on Facebook, which was to connect on a more relaxed, social level with our customer community, many of whom are also friends. This has worked very well, and we do our best to share the latest event pictures and videos on that site.

The interesting challenge, however, is how to make sure everyone is aware of it as a venue. This is a challenge that a number of marketers I've chatted with have also shared.



There's a simple trick, which I've recently enabled on Eloqua Artisan (if you're reading this in a reader, you'll have to come to the blog itself to see it in action), which is to embed a Facebook gadget into your blog sidebar so that anyone who reads your posts will become aware of your Facebook presence, and can join you there.

It was a simple technique, so I thought it worth sharing here, as it can be of value to any marketer focused on incorporating social media within an overall marketing messaging approach. I personally use Blogger as a platform, so the instructions will be specific to that, but I suspect they are easily transferable to other platforms.

First, add an HTML widget to the sidebar of your main blog layout. Give it an appropriate title, and then add the Facebook embed code to that widget. (content for the embed code is available at this link, but as it's javascript, you won't see anything in a browser).

There are 3 things you may want to change. First, one that you must change, is the Facebook profile ID (highlighted in the image). Change this to your own Facebook fan page profile, which you can find in the URL for your fan page when you view it on Facebook.

You can also change the "width" parameter to set the size of the embedded widget, and the "connections" parameter to change the number of fans that are shown. With that completed, save it, and you are live with an embedded Facebook fan page in your blog, which will help you greatly with awareness of the page.

Finding Eloqua Online

I've just completed a fantastic series of Eloqua user groups. I had so many great conversations with marketers building fascinating campaigns, working with their sales team in new and interesting ways, and performing deep analysis on their marketing efforts that my head is still spinning with great ideas.

One theme in the question that came up in each of the group discussions though was "Where can I learn more? Where can I network with other Eloqua users to share ideas?"

Luckily, with over 20,000 users, many of whom are passionate about marketing and demand generation, you can find us in many places. Each forum where Eloqua users congregate is used in a different way, of course, so browse through a few of them, join a group or two, and start meeting other Eloqua users in your area or around the world

Here are some that I know are active:




Eloqua User Group on Linked In:
This is a forum where Eloqua users get together, discuss ideas and best practices, and ask each other questions on techniques, ideas, and things they have tried. Also a great spot to see which Eloqua users are active in your local area:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1146807

Eloqua North-East User Group on Linked In:
A forum for Eloqua users local to the North-East of the US. Continuation of discussions from local user groups and local peers to meet up with an exchange ideas:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=1839258&trk=anet_ug_hm

Eloqua Minneapolis User Group on Linked In:
A forum for Eloqua users local to the Minneapolis area. Continuation of discussions from local user groups and local peers to meet up with an exchange ideas:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=1858034





Eloqua Twitter Group
The Eloqua team, and many Eloqua users are active on Twitter, and it can be a great forum to share ideas on how Eloqua and social media are being tied together in interesting and innovative ways.

Follow @eloqua for Eloqua news and information.






Eloqua on Facebook
It's a work-hard, play-hard world, and nothing caps off a great marketing discussion, user group, or show better than a meal, some drinks, and relaxation. Eloqua on Facebook is a great place to get to know the social side of your Eloqua team, other Eloqua users, or those people you know by name after many phone calls, but have not yet met face to face. Come get to know us a bit better on Facebook - we promise not to talk shop:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Toronto-ON/Eloqua/8406557735?sid=beb2c85843f14ed218b2b51e1a95775a&ref=s




Eloqua Blogs

There's nothing we enjoy more than sharing ideas and engaging with marketers in good discussions on a variety of topics. We enjoy it so much that you'll see a number of us actively blogging. Join the discussion, comment, or share your ideas.


Digital Body Language
A discussion of the transformation that is happening in marketing, as we better try to engage with today's new buyer. Approaches and discussions ranging from lead scoring, sales alignment, and analytics, to social media and marketing economics are discussed:
http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/


Marketing Insights
A blog on marketing best practices from Eloqua best practices consultants and customer success managers. Discussions on what is working in today's best marketing organizations in terms of lead scoring, nurturing or analytics.
http://marketinginsights.eloqua.com/


Eloqua Artisan
This blog, of course. Tips, tricks, and ideas on what can be done with the product, and how to approach it. Designed for users of Eloqua.
http://eloqua.blogspot.com/


Cloud Talk
Andre Yee, our SVP Product Development, discusses SaaS computing, Rich Internet Applications, and how today's marketing environment is evolving as new technologies enter the picture.
http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/cloudtalk/


Deliverability.com
Dennis Dayman, our Chief Privacy Officer, and a few other industry luminaries discuss technical, regulatory, and social aspects of privacy and email deliverability in this great blog that is a wealth of knowledge for anyone involved in email marketing
http://blog.deliverability.com/


Anything Goes Marketing
Chad Horenfeldt gives the marketing practitioner's view of the world in discussing how to approach various campaigns, what has worked, and what has not worked.
http://anythinggoesmarketing.blogspot.com/


Crowds 2 Crowds
Astadia's Eloqua consulting team (where the Astadia Tip of the Week comes from) has a great blog with excellent Eloqua and marketing related content:
http://crowds2crowds.blogspot.com/


We look forward to you getting involved. Contribute and share ideas, ask questions, look for advice, or just listen. Marketing is evolving, and we are all in this together.

If I have missed any online spots where you and other Eloqua users congregate (I'm sure I have), please add them in the comments and I'll be sure to update.