How Citeline Rapidly Migrated to Eloqua from Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Citeline, the world’s leading provider of business intelligence in the pharmaceutical and medtech industry, had to set up a completely new Martech infrastructure/Tech stack which involved a new Eloqua marketing automation platform (MAP). What catalyzed the change was Citeline’s being sold by its parent company Informa in 2022. Citeline, formerly Pharma Intelligence, was ultimately acquired by business intelligence giant Norstella, forming a $5 billion global firm. Citeline had to rebrand, becoming one of five brands under the Norstella umbrella.

Citeline needed to rapidly de-couple its infrastructure away from Informa. During the transition phase, the Citeline team quickly understood that if it moved forward with both Eloqua and Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC), its legacy platforms, it would incur substantial implementation and maintenance costs, hindering the firm’s progress moving forward.

The Big Question

The big question Citeline confronted, and which Sojourn helped them answer in the affirmative, was: “Could Citeline manage its operations and continue to effectively run its business without the license costs and complexity associated with SFMC, by leveraging Eloqua alone?”

Citeline decided to sunset its SFMC license and migrate to a single instance of Eloqua, migrating all its data, assets, configurations, processes, etc. to the new instance. With new tech being implemented across the Citeline corporate structure and across Citeline’s customer/CX journey, the pressure for Marketing to rapidly launch a new Eloqua instance and seamlessly migrate from its existing/legacy systems was high.

Timing was also important because Citeline faced contractual penalties that would get triggered if it continued to depend upon its legacy infrastructure from Informa.

Challenges to Project Success

This Eloqua migration initiative marked a significant shift in Citeline's tech architecture, encompassing a new Sales CRM, MAP instance (Eloqua), and Website. 

Some challenges Citeline faced in migrating to the new Eloqua instance included:

• No flexibility on program milestones due to the entire Citeline technology stack being switched at the same time. Failure to switch on time would have resulted in massive costs.

• Implementing new technology, including a single instance of Eloqua, involved extensive data migration and integration of third-party apps/platforms. All legacy processes and workflows needed to be brought into alignment with the capabilities of the new Eloqua instance.

• Complex (highly scripted) email campaigns needed to run without disruption to either customers/subscribers or business revenues. Removing SFMC meant replacing workflows and processes, and connecting a new App (Instant Marketing) to Eloqua.

• Ensuring that all agencies/partners worked well together in order to minimize internal disruption for the Citeline team, which needed to: (1) continue performing their day jobs and (2) prove to their new Norstella investors that they could still generate revenue as this massive transformation was happening.

• The Citeline team needed to be rapidly trained and enabled to work in the new Eloqua framework, ensuring seamless operational continuity.

First Steps: Designing a Customized Eloqua/MAP Solution

Citeline brought in Sojourn Solutions as a project partner. In collaboration with the Citeline team, Sojourn swiftly organized and facilitated discovery sessions to create a streamlined blueprint/project framework for an Eloqua roll-out, crafting related timelines and project priorities.

Implementing the Solution

The Citeline-Sojourn partnership successfully implemented the new Eloqua instance. In order to minimize disruption to Citeline’s revenue-generating Insights email product, the project team worked successfully to eliminate email deliverability challenges. This ensured email reach and customer engagement, not to mention business/revenue continuity for the critically-important Insights email product. 

Citeline’s Insight email was driven by customized content preferences pre-defined by email subscribers. So, the project team collaborated with a development agency to ensure Salesforce Marketing Cloud emails could be created and run within the new Eloqua instance using RSS-type functionality. This would now be delivered through the Instant Marketing app/add-on.

Sojourn also provided additional development support to standardize data and support field value updates.

Project Deliverables

Project deliverables were focused on data migration, asset migration, app/platform integration, new processes and templates launched, as well as user enablement. Here’s a brief summary:

1. All relevant data was migrated from Citeline’s legacy systems into the new Eloqua instance in a timely and accurate fashion. 

2. The following Citeline assets were migrated into a new Eloqua framework:

• 8 ‘always on’ forms including Landing Pages

• 14 ‘always on’ Campaign Canvases and approximately 35 inflight Campaign Canvases

• 100 ‘always on’ Emails and approximately 95 inflight Emails

  
  

3. The following processes were built:

• Forms and Lead Score to Salesforce

• Bi-directional syncs

• Cleansing processes

  
  

4. The following templates were created:

• 4 key Form templates

• 12 Campaign Canvas templates

• 50 Email templates

  
  

5. Other deliverables:

• Users were trained and enabled (see details below)

• IP warming was completed to ensure quality and business continuity + Preference Center for email subscribers to personalize content

• Documentation was provided

  
  

Enabling People and Processes

In order to ensure project success and maintain the new platform after its go-live date, Sojourn trained the internal Citeline team on new processes and workflows. It also supported Citeline’s Product Marketing and Campaign teams after go-live by providing hypercare. This included daily platform monitoring to proactively manage any potential problems/issues that might arise and potentially disrupt business continuity. Hypercare also involved daily calls with the project team, including Citeline’s internal people as well as relevant external agencies.

Even after the go-live date and in order to support Citeline’s full operational continuity, Sojourn helped support ongoing Eloqua technical and integration requirements. It also delivered hands-on campaign reporting and analysis to Citeline as a way to ease the pressure on Marketing during go-live.

KPIs of Project Success: Outcomes

The success of the Eloqua migration project was indicated by the following:

1. A single instance of Eloqua was successfully put in place by early July 2023, less than 6 months after the March project kick-off and well within Citeline’s desired timeline.

2. Existing SFMC data, journeys and campaigns were successfully migrated and running 'as is’ in Eloqua by June 28, 2023, including 1.6 million emails per month with up to 20 pieces of content each (dynamic content where each recipient can receive different news articles direct from the website).

3.The project developed a Citeline-owned Eloqua instance and migrated it from Informa business systems so Citeline could transition its corporate structure from Informa to Norstella.

4. The project team coordinated the migration with Salesforce workstreams to successfully minimize disruption for Citeline’s commercial team and customers.

5. Because of the low code and no code nature of the solution, software complexity was reduced and Citeline no longer needed a dedicated developer. Marketers saved about half of their time and were able to manage the work with user-friendly functions such as “drag-and-drop.”

A Word from Citeline

Chris Fowles, Citeline’s Sr Director Technology, Sales & Marketing Business Partner, explained the benefits of the Eloqua migration project this way: 

The project goals were achieved, which included getting Citeline away from Informa as well as having us be in control of our own infrastructure and destiny. The initiative was about keeping our business up and running at a time of rapid change. We wanted to avoid having any operational downtime, keeping leads and revenue flowing. We were also hoping not to take a hit to our revenues as we moved our infrastructure away from Informa. Delays would have cost us. Commercially, we actually grew our revenues last year as the project happened, and our number of leads generated have only continued to grow.

Regarding the process of working with Sojourn, Fowles said: 

Where Sojourn stands above the rest of our partners is in their flexibility. When the project requirements and timelines shifted, Sojourn never made managing these new requirements seem inconvenient to them, although we knew it was indeed inconvenient. At the end of the day, I still don’t know how we managed to do it all in time and within budget, but Sojourn was a big part of that success. 

Learn more about how Sojourn Solutions can help improve your Marketing Automation - as well as your Marketing Operations - or feel free to reach out to us today.