Integrating LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms With Oracle Eloqua

In the new digital age of connected capabilities, consolidated marketing strategies, tactics, and omnichannel experiences, integrating various powerful software to reap the benefits that both offer, in combination, occupies a central role.

Smooth and efficient digital platform integrations unlock new levels of potential for most online marketing efforts, from data collection, storage, and processing to content production, or CX management, from powerful reporting to sales enablement, and so on.

Considering marketing automation platforms a strong foundation on which various digital strategies can successfully take place, this type of transformative software comes with multiple integrations. Oracle Eloqua, for example, has around 400 applications, granting this platform the most extensive array of possibilities for cross-platform digital marketing.

Among these opportunities, one important integration that we will dive into throughout this article is between LinkedIn and Eloqua – two indisputably indispensable digital marketing platforms.

LinkedIn and Oracle Eloqua: Connected capabilities

Eloqua’s integration with LinkedIn covers two areas, allowing you to leverage your LinkedIn presence with your Eloqua instance by means of:

• LinkedIn AutoFill
• LinkedIn Campaign Manager

On the one hand, the form autofill function allows you to place a button on your landing page that visitors can use to populate fields on the basis of public information found in their LinkedIn profiles. This naturally shortens the time spent filling forms, helping you drive conversion rates more efficiently.

As for the second app, connecting LinkedIn Campaign Manager to Oracle Eloqua enables marketers to raise awareness with native ads, to drive better, quicker, quality lead generation, and build more solid relationships through the one and only world professional network. What’s more, specific sets of Oracle Eloqua contacts can be easily retargeted via LinkedIn by leveraging this connection.

Ultimately, Eloqua’s integration with LinkedIn Campaign Manager comprises the LinkedIn Matched Audience action service (send contacts from the Eloqua campaign canvas to LinkedIn) and the LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms audience service (capture leads from LinkedIn by pushing contacts directly into a selected Oracle Eloqua campaign).

Both aspects are vital to consider, and we’ll make sure to cover the latter in full detail further down below.

What you need to do in Oracle Eloqua

To kick off the integration process, you simply need to go to the Settings tab in Eloqua, select the AppCloud Catalog and search for LinkedIn.

Select the integration by clicking the “Get App” button on the right, read the Oracle Cloud Marketplace Terms and accept them, then simply hit “Accept and Install”.

To add your LinkedIn account, open the LinkedIn Campaign Manager app, click on the gear icon, and hit “+Add Credential”. You will then be asked to enter your name and log in with your LinkedIn account.

Voila! Your integration is ready for configuration.

LinkedIn Lead Gen Form App Configuration

To kickstart the cloud feeder configuration process, firstly open an existing campaign or create a new one. Click on the Audience section to expand it and select the LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms Audience to drag to the campaign canvas. Double click the element to open the configuration screen.

Select your credentials and choose the form in question. Once the form is selected, the field mapping option will be displayed. To ensure that all corresponding fields are added, you should use the “+Add form mapping” option and map the LinkedIn form fields to the respective ones in Eloqua.

Make sure that the sync until option is set up until the point that the campaign ends and hit Save.

Once the Eloqua program/canvas is active, the feeder will bring contact data from the LinkedIn form straight into the Eloqua contact table.

Best practice!

Use the Form Submit Action app to stamp any additional information about your contacts (i.e., you could be interested in also adding the Business Unit, product interest, campaign information, etc.).

You can also do so by incorporating (up to 20) Hidden fields in your LinkedIn Lead Gen form.

Taking into account that the integration will send contact information directly into the Eloqua contact table, it’s wise to consider using the Form Submit Action app to align the data about to be received to standardized norms you have in place. For example, consider privacy values within a complex Eloqua Privacy Workflow, or think about the importance of having normalized, clean data within the contact table.

Making use of the Form Submit Action app ensures that you are able to have full control over the data that is about to enter your Eloqua contact table.

What you need to do on LinkedIn

To be able to successfully send leads captured in LinkedIn to the Eloqua instance, several setups need to be in place in LinkedIn, and users need specific access levels within LinkedIn Campaign Manager.

But before diving right into the specifications for the integration, let’s cover the opportunities marketers benefit from when it comes to LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms.

These assets are templates that can be attached to various types of ads within Campaign groups with a Lead Generation objective, to collect information from the member, should they click your CTA.

The form automatically fills with members’ contact and Profile information (First name, Last name, Email address), and may contain up to 12 demographic fields. You may use up to three optional Custom questions and up to five optional Custom checkboxes.

Varying permissions are required on an ad account as well as the corresponding LinkedIn Page to create or even view the Lead Gen form, to create campaigns, and to download leads received.

To complete the integration between Eloqua and LinkedIn, you would need Campaign Manager access or higher on the ad account and you would need page admin or Lead Gen Forms manager access on the associated LinkedIn page.

You can check out these access levels in the figure below.

It’s also important to note that LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms support lead data for the last 90 days, meaning that any lead data from earlier than 90 days will not be captured in Oracle Eloqua.

Testing the LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms integration with Eloqua

Before launching your integration setup, you should naturally begin by testing the configuration. This allows you to view the outcome of the configuration without updating any contact data.

You should click “Run Test” as per the figure above, while also testing the integration within LinkedIn. To achieve the latter, you should access the preview of the ad creative that has the respective Lead Gen Form attached and submitting your information through the preview.

LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms and Oracle Eloqua Integration: Troubleshooting

Besides configuration and testing, another important factor to consider is troubleshooting.

Should you decide to make any changes to the LinkedIn Lead Gen form while in draft status, you must also apply changes to the account, form, and field settings in your marketing automation platform.

Each platform requires different actions to re-sync the forms, and as for Oracle Eloqua, doing so implies refreshing the ad account and form selection. You should re-select the original ad account and the original form name from the dropdown list, re-mapping the fields all over again. In this sense, you should click the “+Add Form Mapping” link until it disappears, meaning that all available fields from the LinkedIn Lead Gen Form are mapped.

Afterward, simply resubmit a test lead to confirm the most recently updated questions or fields are displayed correctly.

Final thoughts…

That’s pretty much the gist of it! Successfully integrating Oracle Eloqua with LinkedIn Campaign Manager may seem like a time-consuming, difficult process at first, but it is actually rather simple.

We hope the insights we provide are able to guide you along the integration process. Besides, you should always feel free to reach out to our team of specialists for any custom integration processes for Oracle Eloqua or other marketing automation platforms.