This summer, I had the chance to speak with Jérôme Adam who is Principal Solution Consultant for Oracle Marketing Cloud in France. It was an opportunity for us to look back at the acquisitions made by Oracle in recent years, to discuss the integration of the various products, the needs expressed by the market, and especially to ask ourselves what tomorrow will be made of.
Unfortunately, the meeting took place before the Maximyzer takeover was announced, but we'll probably be talking about it again on Badsender.
Jonathan Loriaux - To begin with, could you go back over Oracle's history, and in particular the Responsys and Eloqua buyouts?
Jérôme Adam: Oracle is an American company, a software publisher founded in 1977, historically from the world of databases. Oracle has gradually enriched its portfolio and, if we focus more specifically on the subject that interests us today, i.e. the Marketing Cloud vision, we started by acquiring three solutions. It all started with social networks. At the time, we were not talking about Marketing Cloud.
The solution came to light when Collective Intellect, Vitrue and Involver were acquired and merged into a single unified platform for social media management, i.e. listening, engagement and communication. We later acquired the Eloqua solution in December 2012 for about 900 million euros, which is when we started talking about Marketing Cloud. By the time Eloqua was integrated into the Oracle ecosystem, the marketing of this solution effectively began in June 2013.
I myself joined Oracle France in September 2013. I joined Oracle at that time to market Eloqua in the French market. Eloqua had a presence in France, but only through partners who sold the solution and deployed it. At the time, we had about ten customers for this solution, and now there are about thirty.
JL: Are we still talking about "Eloqua" today or has Marketing Cloud taken over the brand?
JA: Today, indeed, we consider ourselves to be a marketing cloud. We have competitors who also have marketing clouds, such as Adobe, Salesforce or IBM. The name Eloqua still exists, it has been maintained. The only difference is that Eloqua is referred to as B2B cross-channel marketing and Responsys as B2C cross-channel marketing. Responsys was acquired a year after Eloqua and was added to the Oracle Marketing Cloud catalog. Responsys has only one historical competitor, ExactTarget.
In between, there was the acquisition of Compendium, a content strategy management solution based on the marketing persona. The last two acquisitions in Oracle's Marketing cloud are the DMP (Data Management Platform), acquired in June 2014, and Datalogix, an off-line to online data embroiderer. When you buy a product in a supermarket, for example a food processor, the next day you receive an ad on Facebook offering you the new recipes available. This is what Datalogix does. This last acquisition has turned Oracle from a software publisher into a data provider. The objective, with these acquisitions, was to found a new business unit: Oracle Datacloud, which consists of providing third-party data to advertisers. Oracle Datacloud is complementary to Oracle Marketing Cloud.
JL: Are these different solutions that you have acquired (Eloqua, Responsys, Datalogix...) integrated, or do they remain separate?
JA: The social networks have been completely integrated into one platform. Today, 30% of our R&D is dedicated to integrating the different products together, but not yet in a unified interface, even if that's what we're considering for the future. We already have integrations, for example between Eloqua and the DMP, between social networks and Eloqua, between Eloqua content and Responsys content...
JL: Despite this integration, these products continue to be sold separately...
JA: They can be sold separately, even if from a commercial point of view we position the Marketing Cloud platform as such, and we qualify with our prospects and customers their needs by highlighting the interest of having pre-integrated and unified products for the different business needs.
JL: In recent years, the marketing landscape is changing significantly. There has been a lot of talk about big data and now the concept of DMPs seems to be taking over. Mobile, for its part, has shaken up many habits. Finally, what is the impact of these evolutions on the organization of marketing teams at advertisers? What are the new challenges these teams are facing and what are the new profiles that need to emerge to manage these new developments?
JA: The first problem and the first challenge we face with our prospects and customers is the fragmentation of data. Customers have data. That's not the problem. The problem is that they have it everywhere and from different sources. It's not unified. They wonder, for example, how to match offline data with online data? How to link anonymous traffic (online by definition) with "known" marketing (an email address, etc...)? The question is: once this data is collected and aggregated, how do I execute? Have all the scenarios been planned for? Can the model adapt? Can I force the consumer to follow a particular path of a scenario, a customer journey, or should I let them adapt, manage their own customer experience?
Coming back to organizational issues, the most important fact is the emergence of new functions and roles, such as the Chief Data Officer, a title that has been formalized and that we are starting to encounter in France.
JL: Is the Chief Data Officer usually attached to the IT department or the marketing department, or is he or she a new player in the organization?
JA: They are a new player. They embody cross-functional roles that can be attached to the IT department or to the business, depending on the power of each of these (sub)organizations. But indeed, it can be a new division. Many of our clients find it necessary to set up a Data division, with a Chief Data Officer and teams of people from different business areas to identify needs. Collecting data for the sake of collecting data is all well and good, but it must also be structured in such a way that it makes sense from the point of view of needs. Data must also be "agnostic" and evolving, because the ecosystem evolves every day. We often use the example of "chiefmarkets.com" which presents the marketing technology landscape. We often use this example in our presentations to show this permanent evolution.
JL: What are the triggers for clients coming to you? When do clients say, "I need to think about my tools and radically change the way I manage my data"?
JA: The trigger is when the client realizes that there are redundant expenses. For example, when there is a distinction between a media/com team that manages media budgets (usually completely outsourced to an agency) and an eCRM or ePRM team that does conquest on its own. We realize that we are addressing the same consumer several times in different ways, that we don't have a cockpit, that we don't have a synchronized vision of marketing activities.
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JL: So it's also a question of rationalizing costs and energies internally that is one of the main triggers for this need.
JA: Exactly. And a potential willingness to re-internalize or modify its work organization in order to have the best possible reactivity and to work in the most real time possible.
JL: Today, you are probably very familiar with email, web personalization, sms, a whole series of relatively classic channels. What other mediums do you plan to integrate into the Oracle Marketing Cloud in the future?
JA: In a generic way, we are going to integrate connected TV in the different mediums we want to use. We are going to have a very particular focus on mobile, insofar as mobile traffic has become, since last year, more important than desktop traffic. Traffic has also become cross-device. We all have a phone, a laptop, potentially a tablet, tomorrow a connected TV, etc. How can we manage to have a single profile? Moreover, on some sites or applications I will be connected, on others I will not (I will therefore be anonymous). How do you orchestrate a customer experience based on behavior? How can we understand the consumer's behavior, so that we can adapt our marketing activities to it?
JL: On these new channels, do you focus on data capture, or is there also a marketing exploitation component, message personalization, etc.?
JA: Yes, there are two levels. First, there is the data that we bring into the Marketing Cloud. This is the data in. Then there is the data out, the activation. Activation must be cross-channel, whether it's for web personalization or for personalization of advertising media. Integration with the media ecosystem is very fluid. Will tools that are essential today, such as a "trendy" DSP, remain so tomorrow? In any case, we remain agnostic: we inject into our own channels and into the channels that the client would have if they were using our solution, I'm thinking in particular of Eloqua or Responsys. Our solutions are cross-channel: they manage mobile applications, with the associated frameworks, sms, mms, email of course, but also, in B2B, integration with webinars and all social media in general, whether it's information sharing, publication, search, which is essential, and all the paying part of social networks.
For media integration in channels that are not owned, we activate the collected data (data-out) in the various potential channels of the client. These are tools that exist today: AppNexus, MediaMatch, Google of course, and others.
JL: What is the order of deployment of the different channels in general for the customer coming to Oracle Marketing cloud?
JA: It all depends on the need, the team we are working with and the product that needs to be positioned. Indeed, we position the platform, but at some point we reach a qualification status where we will decide on a tool. In the case of email campaign management, we will decide according to the industry and the needs of the client for example. Depending on the case, the best solution could be Eloqua, or Responsys, etc. Emailing in general is the channel where you feel like arriving in your apartment and putting your bags down.
In certain industries such as travel or retail, sms and mobile applications (push notifications) are channels that are generally implemented very quickly. On the other hand, in B2B (software or services for example), webinars and event management will be the modules and digital channels to activate first: emails, landing pages, sms (to manage calls or confirmations), etc. The integration with a go-to-meeting or a webex (or any other) will be one of the important points for the prospect or the client to implement these different channels.
In general, the other channel that is often implemented is integration with the CRM, whether it is to be able to bring marketing information down to the business or for telemarketing.
JL: How far do you go in providing strategic support to your clients? Do you limit yourself to technical deployment needs or do you go further by providing strategic advice during deployment?
JA: There are two phases in consulting (by the way, consulting can be done by Oracle as well as by one of its partners. We obviously work together with a whole ecosystem of partners). The first is the deployment itself, i.e. the implementation of the tool. It is a software service, so there is no installation or hardware investment. It is a software rental and a duration of commitment.
What we are looking for with the customer is success. For a simple reason: if there is no success, the customer will not renew his licenses once the commitment period has expired. Because we are looking for this success, we have set up success teams composed of dedicated account managers whose objective is daily support. This applies to all solutions in the Marketing Cloud portfolio. On more strategic points, we have also set up a coaching service throughout the duration of the use of the platform. We have market single advisors, who are usually former customers, who provide facilitated discussions. For example, we take a topic, a theme, we work together on this theme and the customer can activate this service during the entire duration of the commitment. These services are included with the licenses and are accessible during the entire duration of the customer's commitment.
JL: Compared to the competition (the main marketing clouds have been mentioned), what makes the different tools deployed by Oracle unique?
JA: Oracle's Cloud Marketing identity today is our vision for the long term. That can be seen as a differentiator. I won't get into the completeness territory ("Do I have all the tools I need? Do those on the other side have all the tools they need in their portfolio to form a marketing cloud?", etc.). Because we can always say: yes, but this competitor is working with a partner for this tool that he doesn't have, etc. This discourse would be endless.
On the other hand, we try to bring a vision around the offline and online collection. 100% business is not done online, nor is it done offline. We have to interact well in the middle of these two worlds. Reconcile what is known and unknown and avoid data silos. In particular, avoid silos in terms of execution: media and communication often have a different organization than relationship marketing. Organize a cross-channel customer experience in the simplest way possible and adapt to customer behavior.
JL: Is there a specific point you would like to focus on to conclude?
JA: The last point I would like to add is the idea, at the risk of repeating myself, of keeping the "agnostic" side of the platform. Again, you can't stack all the products in the world on one platform. At some point, we will have to integrate with the ecosystem. The agnostic side of our platform is illustrated by the extension in app, for example connecting to a webinar, connecting with an adwords, connecting with an appnexus and being able to ingest third party data in a market place are also points of differentiation of our platform.
