Leveraging Advanced Intelligence in Marketing Automation Reporting

Email marketing is one of the most widely operated digital marketing channels. Email is a straightforward method of reaching customers and increasing lead conversions. Based on its usage, it's safe to say
that email marketing is still the wisest option for a successful marketing
campaign.

But how can you distinguish which contacts are eager to connect more from those already overwhelmed with too many emails? With Oracle Eloqua, this
challenge is handled by leveraging AI and advanced intelligence capabilities, using data science to analyze specific behaviors.

This article describes three innovative takes on marketing automation performance assessment, ones that need
to be considered to avoid email burnout and attrition. Read on to achieve the utmost
value with minimal invested resources.

When undergoing&nbsp;Fatigue Analysis on
your marketing automation audiences, you can determine how fatigued (tired,
oversaturated) each of your contacts is because of the email
communication they receive.

In a nutshell, the feature allows you to change your
message frequency to reduce disengagement and minimize opt-outs,
contributing to a better customer relationship by lowering the chance that you <a href="https://logarithmicsolutions.com/delighting-audiences-with-personalized-email-marketing">trigger
a “spammy” emotional response</a>.

Performed autonomously by MarTech platforms, Fatigue Analysis intelligently decides contacts'
level of fatigue based on each individual’s prior engagement with campaigns and
their predicted chance of disengagement.

When this functionality is enabled in Eloqua,
a corresponding Fatigue Level value is generated by the marketing automation
software using AI. It is then added to the&nbsp;Fatigue Level
contact field&nbsp;for each contact.

More in-depth, the Fatigue Level is calculated
using both email open engagement and the number of email messages
sent to a given contact in the last 180 days (6 months). So, Fatigue
Analysis considers the recency, and the frequency of email sends
and email opens.

You may wonder exactly how and why this is
important.

Your Eloqua database could comprise inactive
contacts. This means&nbsp;that you have an opportunity to send more email
communications to more audiences, who would otherwise remain inactive.

Your inactive contacts are those who haven’t received an email from you in the last 45 days (about one
and a half months). Of course, some of these contacts are also unreachable
(unsubscribed and hard bounce contacts), but many - you could still email.

Ultimately, Fatigue Analysis allows marketers
to group their audiences into different segments by saturation level. In Eloqua, these clusters are Inactive, Undersaturated, Just
Right, Saturated, and Oversaturated contacts.

But Fatigue Analysis also contributes somewhere else. It helps
you to better understand the relationship between email sends and open rates; critical
KPIs, which, when in correlation with one another as well as Fatigue, provide <a href="https://expertise.logarithmicsolutions.com/eloqua-reporting-success-story" target="_blank">unique
insights into marketing automation performance</a>.

Using a sends and open rate correlation chart, you can
figure out the&nbsp;relationship between your email sends and the total open
rate. To allow you to further evaluate engagement rates for multiple
segments, this can be performed for each particular Fatigue Level.

In this sense, the correlation chart will comprise a line
graph (standing for the Fatigue Level's relative total open rate for the last
six months, excluding bounces) and a bar graph (representing the Fatigue
Level's total email sends during the last six months).

In the figure below, you can get an idea of how this chart
looks for a period of two
months.

In terms of functionality and applied use, marketers benefit
from such charts to compare each Fatigue Level's relative open rate to its
total number of sends, making a clear distinction in both metrics across
multiple Fatigue Levels.

For instance, we can see the rate at which Saturated members
open emails and compare it to the number of emails they receive. It is expected
that Oversaturated and Saturated contacts have a much&nbsp;lower open rate than
Just Right or Undersaturated contacts.

This type of graph can confirm your assumption and
provide additional insights that you can transform into plans of action. Besides,
as you try to reduce the number of emails sent to Oversaturated contacts, you
can check the progress of your efforts here.

The correlation between Email Sends and the
Email Open Rate is undoubtedly useful when integrated with Fatigue Analysis,
but its potential goes way beyond.

Taking a closer look at the Eloqua database, you
can split email metrics by region. This allows you to see how contacts from
different areas are receiving and engaging with your emails.

In the example chart below, which comprises a
one-month email communication overview, we notice that Eloqua sent the most
emails from Monday until Thursday, followed by a decrease in the number of
emails sent over the weekend. We can see how many emails were sent across
multiple regions and take a glance at the email open rate in comparison.

Keeping an eye on the email open rate in
correlation to the total number of emails sent, at all times, is something we
as marketers know we must always do. We have clear goals and know we can only
get our valuable content out there for our prospects’ delight if we first compel
subscribers to open our emails.

Charts similar to the one depicted above can
be a gold mine for email marketers, allowing us to benchmark our open rate
against industry averages, per sector, per geographic area, per fatigue
level, or any other segment we see fit.

And, of course, no matter how good we feel about the open
rate, we know we can always increase it even more and get our subscribers to
open even more emails.

Luckily, if we know how to listen, prospects constantly
give us clues on what is valuable for them, and when they expect to receive
it.

Below, we’ve listed just a couple of examples of strategies
aimed at&nbsp;increasing open rates:&nbsp;

In addition, the email open rate KPI is also influenced by
the hour when the email is sent, and not only by the day of the week.

Research shows that subscribers are <a href="https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-time-to-send-email">most
likely to open and read&nbsp;emails</a>&nbsp;at the beginning of the day,
roughly around&nbsp;10&nbsp;AM, or at&nbsp;1&nbsp;PM, when they
are catching up on their emails after lunch.

Another important factor to note is that 23% of all email
opens occur during the first hour after delivery.&nbsp;After 24 hours,
an email's chance of being opened may drop below 1%!

Ultimately, when&nbsp;choosing the right hour/day to send
emails, past campaigns&nbsp;that had&nbsp;a great outcome provide the
clearest indications. <a href="https://www.logarithmicsolutions.com/landing-page-ab-testing-in-eloqua">A/B
testing</a> to&nbsp;investigate&nbsp;best-performing
subject lines and content&nbsp;is invaluable at this stage as well.&nbsp;But these
techniques&nbsp;involve extra work and time. Besides, imagine the overload of
wishing to personalize your emails’ timing for multiple contacts with very
different email interaction patterns.

For this reason, it’s wise to adopt a smarter, AI-based tool
that makes personalized email send time decisions based
on&nbsp;prospect&nbsp;engagement.

In Oracle Eloqua, this is the <a href="https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/marketing/eloqua-user/Help/AdvancedIntelligence/SendTimeOptimization/STO_SendTimeOptimizationOverview.htm">Send
Time Optimization</a> feature.

3. Email Send
Time &amp; Email Engagement

Send Time Optimization&nbsp;is&nbsp;an Eloqua advanced
intelligence cloud service that allows marketing automation professionals to
send email communication at the&nbsp;optimal&nbsp;time for each contact.
It offers the possibility to engage with
potential&nbsp;customers&nbsp;more&nbsp;effectively, gaining their attention
through personalization.

This&nbsp;tool autonomously determines the&nbsp;right
time (hour) to email each contact, individually, based on when they were
historically most attentive to their emails.

However, typical AI send time optimization services can only
determine the&nbsp;best time of the day to email. This means that
contacts will receive email communication at the optimal time of the day,
regardless of the day on which they receive the message.

The exciting part comes when the AI cloud service can
establish both the&nbsp;best time of the day and the day of the week.
With this option enabled in the marketing automation platform, Eloqua determines
which combination of the hour and day is most optimal for each contact.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Ultimately, both Send Time Optimization options can be used
when sending Eloqua emails through a complex or straightforward campaign alike.
It all depends on what you see fit.

Having said that, we shift our attention slightly towards
the bigger picture. A crucial part of an effective marketing automation program
is measuring and evaluating current operations.

While many metrics deliver valuable insights, certain
indicators are <a href="https://logarithmicsolutions.com/email-marketing-reporting-5-kpis-to-track" target="_blank">key to assessing effectiveness and performance</a>, deserving
special attention.

Ultimately, no matter how satisfied we generally are with our campaign performance, we can always benefit from more Eloqua
features to even further drive success. AI-based analytics and intelligent, automatized features have opened extraordinary new doors for marketers - it would be a pity to not leverage them.

If you are interested in learning more about the benefits of these capabilities, don't hesitate to <a href="https://logarithmicsolutions.com/contact" target="_blank">contact us</a>.

How can you be immediately aware of which contacts are eager to connect more and which are already overwhelmed by too many emails? 