Named Account Matching for Lead Scoring or Lead Routing

A frequently used process in lead scoring, lead routing, or even nurture marketing involves understanding whether an account is one of your named or strategic accounts. This usually involves a different sales team, a different level of urgency, and perhaps different rules. The challenge, however, is identifying, in real-time which accounts are your strategic accounts.

At first, this appears to be a very challenging problem as the way in which the names can be written varies widely. Being able to identify that an account is a strategic account involves accurately matching whichever way the individual chose to write the company name to a set of potential ways it could be written.

Luckily, to do this within Eloqua is relatively easy. It involves setting up a match rule to enable multiple ways of writing a strategic account name to be matched against the way chosen by each individual. This match rule is then used within Program Builder to identify each contact as they flow through the program and identify them as a named account. From there, they can be treated according to the appropriate rules or processes for named accounts.

For this example, we’ll look at a general technique for identifying a named account automatically in Program Builder. From this technique, you can build whatever business process you require, for example a lead scoring program that applies an additional score if the contact is in a named account, or a lead routing program that routes named account leads directly to the field sales team.

The first step is to build a match rule to identify the named account. To do this, we start with a list of the possible ways of writing the account name. You can often draw this from existing data in your database that shows the ways in which each strategic account name has been written historically.

With that starting list of names, upload them to a Company Group, which we’ll call “Named Account Master List”. These company records will usually only include, for each record, the alternative way of writing the account name, and the preferred way of writing the account name. We will use this as a reference list to match from and correct.

The next step is to build a match rule that takes the company name field from the contact record and matches it against the alternative name field of the company record. This rule, when applied against companies in the Named Account Master List, will allow us to identify if the contact in question is a named account.

With this match rule, we will also build Dedupe Handlers to define what we want to do when a match is found. First, we’ll want to mark the contacts with a flag that they are from a named account. To do this, we’ll use dedupe handler rules and update a field on the contact with a specific value. A specific contact field called “Is_Named_Account” can be updated to “Yes” for example. We may also want to update the company name to the preferred way of writing it if that is appropriate.

The third step is to use this match rule in a program to identify that the contact is from a named account. Add a step that runs our dedupe or match rule, and select our recently created match rule for Alternative Company Names. With the contact in the program as the source, and the Named Account Master List as the destination, we’ll be able to see whether our contact matches any of the spellings in the named account master list.

The dedupe handler set that we built can be run automatically by the program to immediately mark the "Is Named Account" contact field as "Yes" and update the company name with the correct spelling.

From here, the final step is to use the newly acquired information to route the contact down a path that is specific to named accounts. This can be done using a simple decision rule that looks at the value we have just updated in the "Is Named Account" field to check whether it is set to “Yes” or not.

This technique can be used for any time you need to identify named accounts for any purpose. Lead scoring is a very common situation in which to use it, but by no means the only situation.

Lead notifications by Territory

Quickly getting information about your inbound inquiries out to your sales team is critical to success. Each hour that goes by decreases the likelihood that you will be able to connect with the prospect.


In many cases, as we have talked about, there is a need to carefully and accurately score leads prior to handing them off to a field sales team. However, there are also situations where you will want all leads to go to a sales team (likely an inside sales team), and speed is the most critical factor.


In this case, with Eloqua, you can very easily do a quick, but effective lookup against a field in the incoming form. Perhaps you segment your inside sales team by geographic region, or perhaps by industry or even product line of interest. In each case, you can perform a simple one-step lookup to determine who to send the email notification to.

From the top menu in the forms area, choose "Manage Select Lists" to build (either manually or through an upload), a reference list that can reference incoming data values and provide an email address to notify.

In our example, we'll be routing leads by geography, so we'll create a Select List that has the Country value in the Option Name field, and the email address we would like to notify in the Option Value field.

With this built, all we need to do is to create an email notification step for the form. When we are asked to configure the recipient's email address, whereas we would normally use a constant value, in this case, we'll select "Form Field" as a source type.

We'll select the value that we want to reference, and then check the "Lookup" option (*). The Lookup option will then provide a set of select lists, and we'll select our "Reps By Country" list that we just created. Now, as the form is submitted, the Country that the visitor chose is referenced against our select list, and from there, an email address to notify is selected.

The lookup technique is a very useful technique in general, as you are able to greatly expand the options available to you when a form is submitted through its creative use.



Note that in this case, if you wanted to send notifications by Country for certain areas of the world, but by State for other areas, you could easily build two similar processing steps, one for each scenario, and have them run conditionally.

(*) Note: The "Lookup" option is not enabled by default, if you require it, please contact your Customer Success Manager to have it enabled.

CRM and LinkedIn Seamlessly Connected

Thanks to Greg Forrest over at Concur for this tip.


A quick and easy tip today to link your CRM system and LinkedIn results to allow your sales team easy access to learn more about an individual or their background prior to a sales call. In addition to the background on their interest you can see through looking at their digital body language with Prospect Profiler, looking at each lead's career history is a great way to find talking points and common ground prior to an introductory call.

In your CRM system, in this case Salesforce.com, within the lead or contact record, structure a link that ties into LinkedIn's search results page. Format it as follows: http://www.linkedin.com/search?search=&company={!Lead.Company}&fname={!Lead.FirstName}&lname={!Lead.LastName}

The {} codes automatically pull in the data from the lead (or contact) record, as is appropriate, and structure a query against LinkedIn looking for that person based on their company, first name, and last name.

It's a quick win that can drive more value for your sales team when you pass them over a qualified lead, and worth doing today.

Thanks again for mentioning it Greg, and if anyone has any other tips on the demand generation tools we all use, and how best to tie them together to optimize our sales funnels, please share them in the comments or directly.

Program Builder Optimization - Batch Mode

Programs are used in different ways; some for lead nurturing, some for lead scoring, some for webinar invites, some for data manipulation. Each way of using Programs has with it a different goal of what matters and what is important in terms of program execution.

In normal run mode, Program Builder executes every 15 minutes, and Contacts will move through one step or Decision Rule per cycle. This is great for nurturing, free trial, and event campaigns as it has a very quick start (less than 15 minutes) and the delay between steps is governed by the marketing campaign itself (ie, emails at 30, 60, and 90 days).

For data-oriented programs, however, you have a very different dynamic. Programs that run lead scoring, data management, and lead routing algorithms need end-to-end processing. In these cases, especially for more complex Programs where there are numerous steps, running each step sequentially is not a great approach.

Instead, you can easily configure Program Builder to run in Batch Mode, in which it runs every two hours, and runs the entire Program end to end. All Contacts in the Program are evaluated through all Steps and Decision Rules.

Choose "Program Run Mode" from the Program menu, and click the "Batch Mode" button at the bottom. If you have Feeders in your Program you will be given a list of Feeders to enable at the same time.

Select the Feeders you wish to enable and click "Enable Program and Selected Feeders" at the bottom of the screen. The Program is now running in Batch Mode, and can be identified by a slightly different icon in the tree view. All Contacts will be processed through all steps every two hours.

Note that Batch Mode Programs do not appear in the Contact Activity Overview.

The Other 5% - Manual Steps in Automated Programs

Automation is a wonderful thing for taking care of many tasks that can be defined by simple rules. However, it doesn't work flawlessly in all cases. There are lots of situations where simple rules just won't do the trick, and you need to get a person involved. A good example of this (there are many examples, but I'll use just one) is in lead routing.

You may have a lead routing program that covers most cases very well, but sometimes there are situations where you want someone in sales operations to make the final call, either because it's a territory in transition, or because your data is not good enough to make the decision clearly. Add in a step that is to be manually executed, and you can have this happen.

Create your program step as you normally would within Eloqua, but tick the box that says "Agent will execute step actions" to make it a manually executed step. You can see at a glance which steps in your program are manually executed because their border will show up with a dotted line.


Build the step the way you normally would, in this case we will use an action of "Manually Assign Ownership", but you can have steps that run data rules, send emails, or update your CRM system run manually if your program logic requires it.


When a step is set to be run manually, the Step Owner will see the list of Step Members in his or her Eloqua Today page (the first page you see when you log in to the application. By clicking on that line, you will see all the members of that step who you are assigned ownership of.

From the screen you are presented with, you can work with the step members as you need to. Multiple members can be selected by checking the boxes next to their names, and member details can be viewed by clicking on the Contact icon next to their name.

The Program Actions menu has a list of options you can use to manage the members of the step, including removing them from the Program, moving them to another step, or executing the action that has been selected.

When you choose to execute the action selected, you will be presented with an options screen that lets you configure in more detail what will take place. In this case, as we are determining ownership, I can either run an Ownership Rule, or set ownership to a specific sales person.

With manual steps in Program Builder, you can allow many marketing campaigns to be automated that you might not otherwise be able to automate. If 95% of the rules can be defined, and you have the data, then automate for those, and use manual steps to handle the 5% of rules that require human intervention.

I look forward to your comments and examples of how you have used manual steps in your Programs.