Eloqua Adds Chatter Social Collaboration To Its Marketing Automation Platform
- Published in Social & Mobile
Eloqua today announced that it will integrate Salesforce.com Chatter, an enterprise social networking and collaboration tool, with its own marketing automation software. The new offering, dubbed Chatter inside Eloqua, is designed primarily to encourage communication and collaboration between corporate sales and marketing teams.
According to Eloqua, the new integrated offering will be available to Eloqua users during Q4 of 2012.
The Chatter inside Eloqua offering is designed to assist companies working to align and integrate their sales and marketing functions. According to a January 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. report, B2B Sales and Marketing Alignment Starts With The Customer by Jeff Ernst, "A Forrester survey of marketing and sales leaders at 66 B2B companies shows that only 8% of respondents claim that they have tight alignment between sales and marketing."
According to Eloqua executives, geographically distributed sales and marketing organizations face growing challenges connecting the right people with the right information in a timely manner. Many technology solutions focus more on integrating data sources and systems, rather than focusing on the people issues that prevent alignment. Chatter inside Eloqua is designed to address these problems by taking advantage of real-time collaboration and networking capabilities
"CMOs are recognizing social as an essential strategy to succeed in the Facebook era," said Joe Payne, CEO, Eloqua. "Embedding Salesforce Chatter inside our leading marketing automation solution will allow people to collaborate like never before on marketing processes and close the gap between sales and marketing."
Chatter inside Eloqua can help users discover which team members have expertise on a particular topic or marketing asset, quickly get help and engage in collaborative discussions. The integrated tools also provide real-time updates on relevant information for users. For example, when a prospect responds to an email from a marketing campaign, Chatter inside Eloqua will alert anyone following the campaign record of the change.
"Businesses are looking to transform every part of their organization to thrive in the social era," said Kendall Collins, SVP and GM, Salesforce Chatter. "With Salesforce Chatter, partners like Eloqua can use our social technologies to break down the silos between departments and deliver a social experience within any business application."