• Quality: We live in the era of exceptional marketing experiences, and customers expect hyper relevance and value from every interaction.

•  Speed: The customer expects the right experience when they are ready—not tomorrow, not next week, and not when they eventually talk to a sales rep.

There is no doubt the marketing game is changing. We as marketers are building more experiences more quickly—all while maintaining great quality, brand and regulatory compliance, and relevance. As expectations rise and scale increases, this doesn't correspond with a proportional increase in budget or resources. If anything, the opposite is true. Marketers are doing more with less.  So how are you expected to scale the production of quality emails, while also increasing speed? You utilize a modular approach. Thus, Oracle Eloqua is excited to announce reusable content blocks in the Eloqua Design editor, coming with the 20B release in late May 2020.  

So, what are content blocks in Oracle Eloqua, and how can they help you hit the accelerator on email production?

Meet Eloqua content blocks

A content block is a module that makes up a portion of an email or landing page. You can think of it as a mini template that can be combined with other blocks to build new, unique emails. Blocks are pre-styled and pre-configured to include components like:

• Images and buttons
• Text, links, and dynamic content
• And more—basically anything you would want to use in an Oracle Eloqua email.

Blocks are designed to bring all the right elements together in a new email, then be updated with new images, text, CTAs, or whatever is needed for the new experience. Blocks are managed centrally in a library, but they’re designed to be changed once added to a new email or landing page.

The power of reusable blocks

So, what’s so powerful about this? Blocks power a modular strategy that breaks away from maintaining large template libraries, and template creation does not scale well. Template management does not scale well, either, especially when factoring in the many permutations of emails that exists across marketing teams. Reusable blocks create a consolidated library of all the essential building blocks of your emails, then makes them available for assembly based on any need. I’ll use the analogy of a closet. Today, marketers have the metaphorical equivalent of a closet overflowing with clothes they don’t use. I could have 100 outfits (templates), each made with completely unique clothing items. For me this is incredibly expensive and inefficient. Instead, I can take a modular approach: pick four pairs of shoes, four shirts, four blazers, and four pants as my foundation (block library). From these 16 items I have 256 unique combinations of outfits that are fresh, unique, and complementary to my personal style (brand). I did some quick back-of-the-napkin math, and 16 is much easier to manage and maintain than 100. That’s the power of blocks.

Accelerate and scale

With a core block library defined, it’s go time. Kiss goodbye crazy long master templates and midnight scavenger hunts for the “right” template. Decide which elements you want in a new email, drag and drop the corresponding blocks, update images, text, and anything else that needs to be updated, and then done.  Rinse, repeat. Not only can you more quickly build the right emails, you can build more of them.  Blocks and a modular approach can dramatically increase the output of individual marketers on the team. Because they are pre-styled and brand compliant, blocks are a cinch to use by field marketers, internal teams, and others outside of the demand generation group. A common trend is centralized quality management with decentralized email creation. This empowers each organization to meet their own unique email needs while still adhering to defined quality standards. Creation is pushed deeper into the organization, more teams get involved with creation than ever before, and it ultimately pays big dividends—both in time to market and scale.  

Building content blocks in Oracle Eloqua is easy

Any marketer, no matter their skillset, is empowered to create and update Oracle Eloqua content blocks without touching code. Blocks are saved from elements of existing templates, so it’s quick and easy to convert responsive Oracle Eloqua templates into the right block mix. Because blocks are created and managed from the design editor, they are automatically responsive and completely compatible with responsive emails and landing pages. Oracle Eloqua blocks are native to Eloqua, free with all Eloqua licenses, and can be used by all approved users. This makes introduction of blocks to the team low risk and extremely cost effective. With the 20B release there will be some great documentation to learn more about blocks, how to use them, and the benefits of using blocks in addition to the design editor.

Marketing today has turned into the Indy 500. To deliver great experiences quickly and at scale, you can’t bring a Shetland pony and expect to win. You need a race car, which means using the right tools and strategies. We introduced the Eloqua Design editor a couple years ago, and we didn’t stop there. Oracle Eloqua content blocks are a great tool to add to your marketing mix, and an excellent way to get more value out of your existing Eloqua investment.

To find out more, watch this video. 

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