"Live From Las Vegas"

Eloqua’s Inaugural Users Conference
Draws More Than 400 To Las Vegas

DemandGen Report was on-site for the Eloqua's first user conference this week in Las Vegas and will be blogging from the event with postings covering the seminars, and interviews with users as well as company executives.

In another sign that the marketing automation category has arrived, more than 430 attendees turned out in Las Vegas this week for Eloqua’s inaugural user conference. Eloqua Experience 08 drew over 300 customers to hear best practice presentations from power users as well as marketing experts and industry analysts.

CEO Joe Payne kicked off the event by spotlighting the company’s growth rate, recently exceeding 500 customers and 10,000 users and expanding globally into EMEA and Asia. Illustrating the company’s volume, Payne also pointed out that Eloqua is now handling almost 10,000 transactions per second, almost 6x the volume of the NASDAQ.

Moving forward, Payne stressed that Eloqua is listening closely to its customers and has already implemented improvements to its products and services based on that feedback. Some of the early byproducts of that customer feedback Payne highlighted include:

The new SmartStart program, which is an accelerated launch program speeding the adoption of Eloqua’s application, as well as integrating marketing and sales processes. Hosted at either Eloqua or a certified partner, the SmartStart program promises customer will be fully trained and live with campaigns in just 5 days.

One-Day Deployment –Eloqua’s rapid launch program provides access to the Eloqua environment within hours.

One-Click CRM Implementation – In order to make it easier for customers to integrate their marketing database with their CRM system, Eloqua is using best practices learned through hundreds CRM configurations to develop a CRM configuration wizard. The tool guides customers through the process of synchronizing marketing and sales data; putting actionable insight into the hands of sales organizations with just one click.

Following Payne, Author Dr. Robert Cialdini provided the opening keynote titled “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion,” which provided suggestions into how marketers should respond to current uncertainty in the market due to the economic downturn. Cialdini suggested marketers focus on the following key principles of influence which include:

--Reciprocation (Be the first to give)
--Scarcity (Emphasize exclusive information)
--Authority (Showing, knowing)
--Consistency (Start small with existing commitments)
--Liking (Making friends to influence people)
--Consensus (Testimonials of similar people)