Eloqua Custom Objects: All You Need to Know

Every large business has complex data requirements.

And if Eloqua is your preferred marketing automation platform, you can handle a staggering amount of information. You can store data on both individuals and accounts, and Eloqua’s easy-to-use interface.

However, as your data constantly needs to change, you cannot store all the information in the contact or account tables.

So, what do you do?

Enter – Eloqua Custom Objects.

Custom objects are essentially containers that allow you to extend the Oracle Eloqua Platform. You can add, remove, or modify columns (as you need to hold all your data) to help you easily organize more information you need to do your job.

It is particularly useful for those businesses that are looking to manage their data.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss everything about Eloqua Custom Objects and why you need them. We’ll also discuss how you can create them to structure your data exactly how you need to, for better segmenting and lead scoring to grow your business substantially.

Understanding Eloqua Custom Objects

By default, Eloqua stores contact information like the first name, last name, email address, and job title. All of these fields are essential for segmentation, but you may require some additional data to segment your data and deliver better experiences to customers.

For instance, segmenting customer data by purchase history goes a long way towards delivering better customer experiences and driving marketing ROI. That’s where the Custom Object plays a role.

A custom data object is a set of custom records that stores information that is not in your primary contact or account. It allows you to store additional data in a scalable manner and link that data to a contact or account record, and made it available for your marketing initiatives. A Custom Object has one of the following types of relationships:

• One-to-One Relationship: It is a relationship where each custom object has a single custom object record.
• One-to-Many Relationship: It is a relationship where each custom object contains multiple custom object records.

Why Use Custom Objects in Eloqua?

Custom Objects enable you to compile and use unique data that is related to an account or contact, but is not necessarily static information about the account or contact themselves. While contact fields pertain to a person’s contact information (email address, zip code, and so on), business information (job title, industry, and so on), or system-driven information (a CRM-based ID, Eloqua ID, or hashed fields), custom object fields are completely customizable.

You can use Custom Objects to:

• Extend your contact field limit
• Improve segmentation, targeting, and personalization options by enriching your contact record data
• Manage temporary or fast-changing data (such as promotion code details, purchase history, and even preferences and subscriptions)
• Separate data collected by multiple campaigns or business units

What Can You Do With Eloqua’s Custom Objects?

Custom Objects provide flexibility to store any type of data in Eloqua, all while enabling your teams to manage complex data with ease. Custom Objects enable you to:

• Name the object, define what properties it has, and decide what other objects it can be associated with.
• Structure your data according to your requirements so that it works for you
• Extend your contact field limit and manage temporary data
• Store a wide variety of data (purchase history data, licensing data, subscription data, preference data, point-of-sale data)

How to Create and Manage Eloqua Custom Objects?

With all potential data types (date, text, time, number) and values in your custom objects, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to use the data, whether to personalize emails or to pass actionable data to Eloqua in hidden form fields. So, let’s take a look at how to create and manage custom objects in Eloqua.

To create a Custom Object, you must:

• Define the Custom Objects
• Create the Custom Object record fields that will be used to store the custom object record data

To create a Custom Object, you must:

1. Navigate to ‘Audience’, then click on ‘Custom Objects’.

2. Click on Custom Object > New Custom Object.

3. The Custom Object page appears.

4. Define custom object a name and description and specify the folder to save the custom object to.

5. Select if you want to automatically delete Custom Object records when a contact is deleted in the ‘Custom Object Record Deletion’ section.

6. Define how to link the Custom Object to a contact or account using the ‘Default Entity Mapping’ section. Then, click ‘Next’.

7. Add fields to your Custom Object by clicking the ‘Custom Object Record Fields’ menu and choosing the type of field you want to add to the Custom Object.

You can select from the following field options:

• Add New Field: This allows you to add custom fields. These are fields that are not standard contact or account fields.
• Add Contact or Account Fields: This allows you to add standard contact or account fields to the custom object. Adding these fields to a custom object enables you to draw a more complete profile of your liked contacts or accounts, and keep relevant data visible and consistent.
• Add Form Fields: This allows you to add fields from a specified form.

8. After you add all of your fields, then click ‘Next’.

9. Add any header fields and select whether to group Custom Object records. Header fields are generally used in relation to events. Click ‘Next’.

10. Finally, complete the remaining settings on the page.

• Display Name Field: It is the field that you can use to display in the first column of the custom object record.
• Unique Code Field: This code field can be used as a unique code. Only select a field if you do not want to use the unique ID generated by Oracle Eloqua.
• Email Address Field: This is the field in the custom object that contains the email address, If applicable.

When you have finished, click ‘Save’.

And voilà! You’re done setting them up. As easy as 1, 2, 3, wasn’t it?

Once you’ve set up Custom Objects, you can create and manage Custom Object records in different ways. These are:

• Upload multiple records in bulk from an upload file or through a scheduled CRM auto-synch
• Update records through form submissions
• Update records using an update rule and run the update rule from a campaign, program, or from program builder
• Automate the deletion process of Custom Object records using program canvas
• Manually create or manage records to a Custom Object

Pretty cool, right?

The Bottom Line

As any smart marketer knows, your data needs constantly change. And with Custom Objects in your corner, you can stay a step ahead of this challenge, categorize and associate data, segment data effectively, and maximize the capabilities of your Eloqua platform.

Wish to Take Your Eloqua Operations Up a Notch With Custom Objects? Let’s Talk!