Your Ultimate Eloqua Campaign Pre-Flight Checklist

My first Eloqua campaign. I launched it in 2008 but I remember it like it was yesterday. My email was all set up, tested and had been approved by the product manager. My distribution list (I was using E9 at the time) was created and ready for use. I clicked to ‘Send as Batch’ (again, E9) and nervously completed each step in the wizard. Then, the dreadful last step came upon my screen: Step 5, Review. As my cursor moved towards the “Finish” button, my hand shook like I was in an 8.0 earthquake. Eek! Finish. I held my breath for what felt like days. There’s no “Undo” button. It’s out there. Did I do everything I could have to ensure it was perfect? I think so, but I’m only human!

Through the years of batch sends, enabling many a program (E9) and activating countless campaigns (E10), my confidence has increased. But, there is still that slight feeling of fear that creeps up every time I hit the final step to send an email out the door.

At Relationship One, we’ve created our own campaign checklist, which has, no joke, 75+ things to review before a campaign is activated, even for the simplest of campaigns. In the spirit of true Eloqua marketers, we want to share the love and support others through this nail-biting process. So, we came up with a basic checklist to go through before you activate your campaign. Every marketing team is going to have QA items that are specific to their efforts, so we’ve also included a section to add a personalized list. We hope you find this helpful! Let us know if you think there are items missing. We’d be glad to update it and post future versions based on feedback.

Fun fact: The highest open rate that I’ve ever seen was for an email that was mistakenly sent out with a placeholder subject line of ‘TBD.’ Is it on your list to review your subject line? It’s on ours!