To Delete or Not to Delete? That is the question.

Here’s a random question for you: How many contacts are in your Oracle Eloqua database? Do you know? If you don’t, please stop reading this article and go check right away. If you’re getting close to your contracted limit, or over the threshold, you’re in danger of having an unsuspected bill show up. Getting hit with an expense you weren’t planning on is no way to start your day.

Welcome back. Now that you have an idea of how many contacts are in your database, here’s the next set of questions to ask yourself: How many of those contacts are hard-bounced? Of those with current email addresses, how many are active vs. inactive? You can run a couple of reports in Insight or create segments to figure out how many fall into each bucket.

If you’re still butting up against your contact limit and want to reduce the size of your database, you can consider deleting some people. Think through the business ramifications of removing people from your database. If you’ve concluded that you’re okay with some purging, start with the hard bounces. You aren’t communicating with these people at all so removing them from the system has the least impact.

If you want to further reduce your database size, move onto the inactives. These folks are trickier to decide what to do. Do I…

Leave em’?
Ignore em’?
Delete???

Leaving and/or ignoring them can be a short-term solution if you’re under your contact limit. Deleting these folks could be a scary endeavor! We never want to delete someone in our Marketing Database who could come back or become re-engaged. But what do we do?

There are ways…
Don’t ignore or leave them, set up a process to clean up the database.

First Step: Global Unsubscribes and Hard Bouncebacks
Even though these contacts are in your database, they are not marketable. These are the easy ones to remove because, when removed, even if the contact were to return, they still won’t be marketable. In Oracle Eloqua, when an email address is marked as Global Unsubscribed or Hard Bounced, that email address is added to a ‘behind-the-scenes’ database listing that retains the status if (or when) the contact comes back. This is the quickest and easiest way to lower the number of contacts in your database.

Second Step: What does “inactive” mean?
Start by defining what your organization means by an “inactive” contact. Does it mean they haven’t been to your website in 12 months? Clicked on an email in six months? Been sent an email in two years? Submitted a form in a year? This is a great opportunity for your sales and marketing teams to come to an agreement on this definition.

Once you have your definition set, move onto determining what rules will be put into place for the inactive contacts in your database.

Are there contacts in CRM that are marked as inactive that have been pushed over to Oracle Eloqua? If so, why? Why were they marked inactive in CRM in the first place? Could this logic be used to stop inactive contacts from being pushed into Oracle Eloqua, and is there a way to get them out of Oracle Eloqua once they’re in there and prevent them from being re-added on the next sync?

YES!!!

I routinely see situations where clients have inactive or non-marketable contacts in their Oracle Eloqua database. One of the ways to help lower this number is to setup a field in CRM that will house the Eloqua ID and, if needed, an Inactive/Active field.

The Eloqua ID field in CRM will allow for Oracle Eloqua to match the IDs when pulling data over to update a field in Eloqua that the contact can be removed. It also assists in making sure that Eloqua will only pull over the contacts/leads that have this field populated (so it is part of the filter on the Sync).

In Oracle Eloqua, you create a field that houses a value for contacts that have been flagged as inactive in CRM, so that any new contact would be updated with the flag to have it removed. Don’t forget to add this new field to the filter for the Get Contacts/Lead Syncs. Adding this to the filter will ensure that flagged records are not being pulled over by Oracle Eloqua.

When passing the data between Oracle Eloqua and CRM, the Eloqua ID field needs to be properly mapped to ensure that the Eloqua ID is being written, especially on a new record.

So what does this process look like?

1. Create the Eloqua ID field in CRM

2. Create the Active/Inactive Field in Oracle Eloqua

3. Pass all contacts with a CRM Contact or Lead ID (depending on usage, it may be both) over to CRM, updating the field for Eloqua ID

4. Create a Sync that looks for Eloqua ID and Inactive and update the record in Oracle Eloqua

5. Create a Segment in Oracle Eloqua that would look for the Inactive flag

6. Export Segment

          7. Upload Segment and mark the list for deletion

There you have it. When it comes to figuring out who should be deleted from your database, start with the easy ones. If you need to go a step further, set up a process for CRM and Oracle Eloqua to keep your data neat and tidy. If you’d like help doing so, please contact us.