In such a message-saturated world, how can we as marketers stand out? How can we get our unique message and value through to our most important prospects and customers? The answer is to stop the batch and blast strategies of yesterday and embrace a more nuanced, targeted approach when marketing. Enter Fatigue Analysis—the power to measure engagement and maximize every touchpoint along a customer's unique journey.   

This post will discuss what fatigue is, the value of fatigue analysis, and the many ways you can use fatigue analysis in Oracle Eloqua Marketing Automation.

So, what is fatigue? Fatigue describes the state of a contact's engagement with your brand. It provides an intimate view into the quality of a contact's engagement, and by extension, how receptive they are to future interactions. 

The more fatigued someone is, the higher risk of overexposure to messages and the higher likelihood of burnout. People have limited time and mental bandwidth, focusing on what is most relevant and useful to them.

B2B marketing sets an even higher bar, given professionals expect communication that helps them do their jobs better and solves real business problems. People rightfully expect content that informs, guides, and in other ways provides discernable value to their personal and professional lives. Knowing what content to send is important, yes, but is it the right time to send more or fewer marketing messages? 

Too many messages and you risk a bad experience that turns people off towards your brand, too few messages and it's a missed opportunity to guide and accelerate someone's journey. Getting an accurate sense of a contact's fatigue enables you to send the right messages, in the right quantity, at the right time—core pieces of exceptional marketing. 

Fatigue analysis in Eloqua: Your secret weapon

This might sound obvious, but every person and every contact is different, so why do we often treat them the same? It's probably time-consuming and difficult to do marketing targeted to each contact's engagement level but not anymore. 

Fatigue analysis in Eloqua is an intelligent algorithm that 

• Looks at each contact

• Analyzes the number of emails sent to them and their open engagement over time

• Assigns a corresponding fatigue level –undersaturated, just right, saturated, or oversaturated

Undersaturated contacts have room to receive more messages. Just Right contacts are highly engaged, and Saturated and Oversaturated are at risk of burnout and disengagement. This fatigue analysis and scoring don't have to be managed by you, the marketer—it trains and manages itself, ready to be used in various marketing workflows.  

 "Fatigue Analysis is a real game-changer for B2B marketers. It gives them the ability to treat every contact as an individual with their own behavior and unique relationship with your brand. Marketers who understand fatigue and optimal engagement will deliver the best experiences, which at the end of the day is the true differentiator." -Stephen Streich, VP of Product, Oracle CX Marketing, Eloqua 

Here are some common ways that you can use Fatigue Analysis in Eloqua: 

1) Segments 

Building an effective segment is paramount to your marketing success, so say goodbye to generic segmentation. You can exclude Oversaturated contacts that are less likely to engage, removing them from receiving marketing emails they probably won't respond to. This alone can give up to a 10% lift in unique open rates. 

Suppressing oversaturated contacts can also help sustain your sender reputation and improve email deliverability. Removing unengaged contacts is just the beginning when using fatigue levels in segments. 

You can create segments specifically targeting contacts that show exceptional engagement and segments targeting Inactive and Undersaturated contacts, which represent untapped opportunities. Since fatigue is intelligent and draws on broad context, you can use it as a way to up-level your segmentation and targeting. Mix and match fatigue level with other targeting criteria that you already use today. 

2) Analytics and reporting 

Knowledge is power, and understanding the engagement of your Eloqua instance using AI is even more so. How many contacts are inactive? How many emails are you sending to oversaturated individuals? Is the number of optimally engaged contacts increasing over time? 

Eloqua comes with an out-of-the-box fatigue dashboard that puts many of these insights at your fingertips without any work. The dashboard populates using your fatigue data and gives a quick view of the state of things today. 

Want to do more digging? No problem, fatigue level is a dimension in Eloqua's Insight reporting that can power a variety of custom reports and views to meet your business needs. Given the intelligence and context behind the fatigue level, this is a great way to enhance your understanding of your marketing effectiveness and customer engagement.

3) Campaigns and orchestration 

The challenge with campaigns is that they treat all included contacts the same: similar wait steps, content steps, action steps. But bring intelligence into the mix, and exciting things happen. 

Using decision steps in Eloqua campaigns, you can evaluate each contact's fatigue level and route them to a unique branch that delivers an experience tailored to them. 

• Send Undersaturated and Just Right contacts additional content and experiences via dedicated campaign steps

• Send Oversaturated individuals less, or add them to an extra wait step between messages

You can also retarget individuals using alternate channels like SMS to increase the likelihood of engagement on a more relevant channel to them. This opens up many exciting possibilities for a more robust cross-channel marketing strategy. 

4) Dynamic content and personalization 

Like campaigns, content is traditionally more static, whether in an email or on a landing page. Using Eloqua dynamic content, you can present different versions of an email or landing page based on a contact's fatigue level. 

Undersaturated and Just Right contacts can receive additional supplementary content to accelerate their journey. Oversaturated individuals can receive a special offer or an opportunity to choose another channel of communication or to opt out. You can use different calls to action and imagery tailored to the contact's level of engagement. Content that adjusts to each contact's unique fatigue level is another powerful way to optimize every aspect of the customer journey.  

5) Lead scoring 

In B2B marketing, sales reps must reach out to leads when the moment is right for an evaluation and purchase decision. It's also vital for marketing to pass only the best leads to sales as MQLs. 

Lead scoring can feel complicated and arbitrary when scoring contacts to find who is most ready. Fatigue level is a powerful option when paired with Eloqua's native lead scoring. Use fatigue level in lead score rules and increment a higher score for Undersaturated or Just Right contacts. Oversaturated contacts are probably less ready to speak with sales, so they shouldn't receive a high lead score. 

Since fatigue is available on the contact record, it must factor into any custom or external lead scoring you maintain. Due to the context and intelligence imbued in the fatigue level, it's a no-brainer for helping better score leads. 

6) Programs and data management 

Some of Eloqua's key differentiators as a platform include its data and lead management capabilities. Introduce fatigue level into the mix, and you have automated processes that can intelligently route and update contacts based on their engagement in real-time. 

Using Eloqua program canvas, you can create a listener step that listens for changes to a contact's fatigue level. If a contact becomes Oversaturated, you can move them to another campaign or program, add them to a list, let them subscribe or unsubscribe, and more. 

A change in fatigue can also push data updates to the contact's record or an external CRM system, allowing sales to better manage that prospect or customer's interactions based on their marketing engagement. If a contact becomes Just Right or Undersaturated, you can add them to accelerator campaigns and additional touchpoints. 

Seize the day with AI 

Customer expectations are quickly evolving, and the consumerization of B2B is driving a new era of marketing experiences. People expect you and your brand to know their level of interest, where they are in the buying journey, and their pain points. Before, marketers found it challenging to measure and manage contacts based on their level of engagement. However, with Fatigue Analysis and the power of AI built into Eloqua, marketers can now create compelling and dynamic experiences that adapt to each prospect's and customer's needs. 

Want access to fatigue and other AI features today? Reach out to your Oracle Account Representative to learn more or request a demo. Also, check out the other AI features available in the Advanced Intelligence add-on: send time optimization, subject line optimization, and account intelligence. 

Here are other resources:

• Oracle Advertising and CX Innovations 

• Oracle Eloqua Marketing Automation 

• Learn How to Manage Inactive Subscribers

• Fatigue Analysis Help Center Video

• Oracle Eloqua's AI For Marketers

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