HubSpot vs. Eloqua

Overview

Whether your business needs to automate its email marketing, or wants to report on landing page conversion metrics, both these platforms can help you track your marketing objectives. However, the biggest differentiators between both solutions is the breadth of product features and ease-of-use. We'll take a deep dive into the differences between the enterprise versions of HubSpot and Eloqua to help you make a more informed decision about which software to select for your growing business.

HubSpot ranked #1 in Marketing Automation from G2 Crowd

"While most marketing automation tools have reached a certain level of parity when it comes to standard features (lead records, social, email marketing, landing pages, etc.) not every company excels in training, best practices, and support. Of all of the tools I've used (Eloqua, Marketo, HubSpot), HubSpot clearly focuses on usability and customer retention. It's tailor-made for orgs that want fast ramp-up and ROI and does a fantastic job of making sure that multiple resources exist for whatever question you might have." - Eric C.

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HubSpot ranked #1 in Marketing Automation from Gartner

"There are many vendors and products out there, some are very robust, complicated and expensive, typically aimed at large enterprises such as Marketo. These require numerous resources to implement and utilize. However, if you are a ~$500M company with a small marketing department, HubSpot could be the perfect fit for your needs. They have excellent onboarding and customer support. And their sales agents are very thorough and look out for you immediate needs and future growth needs." - Gartner Review

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One of the biggest roadblocks for marketers or sales professionals is getting started in new enterprise tools. The tools are usually cumbersome and clunky, which means that it takes too long to create campaigns and close deals. Customization and power of tools shouldn’t come at the expense of usability. With HubSpot, we bring you powerful tools that don’t need technical experience to get started. Creating assets, running campaigns, and reporting on your results has never been easier -- all in one place. For any growing business, you'll want to keep ease-of-use and onboarding in mind for new employees who you'll hire down the road. 

Eloqua offers a lot of deep features in automation and email, but these tools take a long time to get started in the old framework architecture. A lot of the tools are cumbersome and take a while to understand how to use. For example, a G2 reviewer mentioned that Eloqua “presents an old system, which makes it a bit cumbersome to get basic concepts, but it is something that [was] a constant struggle and with training can be improved” (source, March 16th 2019). You will notice that for yourself or new users on your team, the ability to quickly create assets such as emails will take a long time to understand. Some users report that it can take about a year to implement things, like sending your first email, because of the training, IT setup, and knowledge required to do so. In order to make sure your marketing team is supported, you will probably need to hire a dedicated Eloqua IT person so that teams are supported in using the software, adding to your company’s Total Cost of Ownership. The average annual salary of an Eloqua Administrator in the U.S. is $64,000 according to Indeed.com. With HubSpot, we’ve built in usability so your marketing team can create, manage, and measure any campaigns -- no administrator required. 

HubSpot is great for you and your team to get started quickly, with plenty of free Academy trainings courses to make you even more equipped in using our tools. One reviewer on G2 Crowd said, “The interface and user experience are impeccable with HubSpot. It's an intuitive system with more functionality and reporting than any other marketing automation software...” (Source, January 10, 2018). The HubSpot platform is built with ease of use in mind, without features or tools that are overly complicated. Your time to ramp with HubSpot will be much faster than using Eloqua. In fact, HubSpot’s implementation time is 40% faster than the average implementation time of marketing automation leaders (source). The best part is that you can create assets, pages, emails, and workflows quickly, without needing to rely on engineering or IT help.

“HubSpot was MUCH more easy to manage, teach, and execute. It saved time, added lots of resources to the team, and helped bring oil to the digital marketing strategies. Eloqua was more complex in an unnecessary way for my teams throughout the time I have needed a marketing platform. There is a strong learning community that comes with HubSpot as well- much more open to encouraging courage in the workplace.” -Tiffany Collins, Digital Marketing Manager, HERE Technologies (TrustRadius).

Learn more about how HubSpot Scales

Ease of use is embedded in all of HubSpot’s tools, even in email and marketing automation. At the same time, HubSpot offers you and your team powerful automation abilities to create workflows for complex tasks. You don’t have to sign contracts with multiple vendors, HubSpot handles all of your email marketing and automation tasks in one place. 

Eloqua has a robust marketing automation tool that you can use to set-up complex email campaigns. It’s ideal for companies requiring a high level of sophistication, but it does not deliver a solution for creating awareness and generating leads to nurture in the first place. With the workflow tool, you can manage your CRM, inform lead scores, and nurture your contacts with email campaigns. Eloqua users are able to set up workflows and drip campaigns that qualify leads based on whether or not they complete an action such as opening an email, or clicking a link in an email. This logic is successful if a lead interacts by exactly following the set email path. However, what if your lead does a google search instead of opening your email and consumes the same content. Shouldn’t you still consider them qualified? Though Oracle Eloqua’s email tools are feature-rich, they are limited by the sheer fact that they are focused on email alone. 

HubSpot’s automation platform offers powerful features in the CRM and across Marketing, Sales, and Service Hubs so that you can run email campaigns, automate deal changes, and service ticket statuses. HubSpot gives marketers multi-channel marketing automation tools to nurture new leads generated by top-of-the-funnel tools. HubSpot provides a strong ROI for a marketing automation investment by giving you personalized lead nurturing capabilities that extend across all channels and leverage the large volume of leads being fed into the middle-of-the-funnel. That means your leads will see messages most relevant to their challenges not only in email, but on your website, your blog, and on social media.

You can create highly integrated email nurturing campaigns, connect your API and trigger webhooks, and send internal notifications. Regarding email marketing, our  drag-and-drop email editor is easy to get started with and it offers a variety of templates that you can personalize to meet your brand’s specific needs. You’ll also enjoy features like smart send times, A/B testing, and more, that help you keep your emails optimized for all of your contacts. HubSpot’s email analytics and reporting offer in-house data that gives you deep insights into how your marketing emails are performing. Inside the analytics tool, besides email specific analytics such as open and click rates, you can compare how your email is performing against other emails and drill down into emails to see exactly which links are generating the most clicks.

For marketers without coding experience, it can be hard creating the assets necessary to generate leads. As an example, you’ll want to attract visitors to your site through SEO and blogging, capture leads with forms, and convert more leads on your landing pages. HubSpot makes it easy to build out your lead generation system with no coding experience required. 

Eloqua gives you the ability to build forms and landing pages to generate leads. The tools don’t require coding knowledge, but the clunkiness of the tools makes it harder to get started. You’ll need training and guidance to generate content for your website. If you want an inbound, multi-channel approach to lead generation and nurturing, you won't find everything you need in Eloqua. Eloqua lacks behavioral tracking data from your blog, social media networks, and other digital touch-points, which doesn't allow you to easily execute and analyze multi-channel marketing campaigns beyond email. The catch: you’ll need to purchase the Oracle Social Cloud in order to listen and perform analytics for your social channels.

HubSpot has all the tools you need to get found online, attract visitors to your site, and generate leads for your sales team. Writing and publishing blog content has never been easier. You'll be able to increase your SEO ranking by following optimization recommendations within your blog post. If you want to build different pages, feel free to use a template and the drag-and-drop editor to get your desired look. If you prefer a more customized style, you’ll be able to edit pages to get them looking exactly how you want them to. Then, you can create and include a form on the landing page to capture contact information. If you use the HubSpot CMS, you’ll see how easy it is to maintain an optimized website machine for your blogging and campaign needs. If you’re using a different CMS like WordPress, simply copy and paste the HubSpot tracking code to your website to get data that helps you track and optimize your website lead generation flow. Instead of having multiple point solutions, you can use HubSpot to create and measure every part of your customers' journeys. On average, our customers see a 32% lift in leads per month after 3 months of active use. Check out hubspot.com/roi.

We recognize that you probably engage your contacts in more channels than email. With HubSpot’s Social media and Ads tools, you’ll be able to connect your social accounts to manage your social media in one place. You’ll understand which of your contacts engaged with posts on Facebook, and see your leads come into the CRM after they filled out a lead ad. You can imagine the targeting abilities that this opens to marketers who don’t have the time to cross reference social accounts and their CRM. 

Data helps us make better informed decisions about our customers. For example, we can use data to deliver a better end-user experience. Imagine if you’re able to measure your entire funnel. From the content on the blog, to your emails opened and clicked, to your leads generated, your customers closed, and having reports showing you how each of those stages are performing. You’ll be able to create relevant content for your customers. Also, if you are using multiple software and online tools, you’ll want to connect those tools to your marketing platform with the least amount of pain. 

Oracle Eloqua offers extensive reporting and integration support. While the Oracle Marketing Cloud does offer many different tools, they were all acquired and are not all fully integrated. You’ll be able to segregate data and reports, but the process is not dynamic and simple to use. With Eloqua, marketers will need to purchase, manage, and integrate additional tools for their top of the funnel activities and will need to do manual work to build comprehensive analytics and reports.

HubSpot houses all of your analytics in one place, from top-of-the-funnel information to engagement and revenue. You’ll be able to use pre-built dashboards that pull in data to make better-informed decisions. If you want more specific analytics, you can easily build custom reports to suit your needs. HubSpot was built for both marketers and sales reps alike, providing both professionals with a unified view of every digital touch-point a prospect has with your business. It brings all of your analytics into one place to give clear insights into what's working and what's not, without the headache of cobbling data together from reports in 3rd party software tools. 

If you need to connect 3rd party tools, HubSpot is built to be open with you in mind. We integrate with more than 300 apps and counting. If you’re using Salesforce as your CRM, you can use our natively built bi-directional integration with Salesforce to keep both your Salesforce CRM and HubSpot working together. In 2018, the 5 most popular integrations were Zapier, Mailchimp, Slack, Wordpress, and SurveyMonkey. You can use integrated apps in HubSpot to do actions like Shopify abandoned cart follow-ups, Salesforce lead syncing, and much more. 

5 Reasons to Get Excited About the HubSpot Platform in 2019

As a marketer, you’ll know how frustrating it can be to update your sales teams with new information on a contact. For example, you’ll need to remind Sales that one of your contacts filled out a high-intent form. Imagine repeating this process multiple times. Every sales rep knows that the faster they can react to a contact’s actions, like a form submission or an email reply, the more likely they are to close the deal. That’s why having a CRM for your marketing and sales teams is crucial to building an efficient organization -- collaboration has never been easier.

Eloqua does not provide a CRM. Though you can connect your Eloqua instance with other CRM tools such as Oracle’s CRM, SalesForce, Microsoft Dynamics, and more. Having a CRM paired with your Eloqua marketing automation will help you turn your leads into paying customers. The Oracle CRM is not included with Eloqua though, so you’ll have to pay separately. The good thing is that the CRM is equipped to manage your business needs for a variety of product lines and deployment models. With Eloqua you’ll be able to track contact behaviors, identify prospects, and mobilize profiles all in an effort to increase handoffs to your sales team. You’ll also be able to implement lead scoring models to rank contacts based on their buying probability. Regarding team management, you’ll be able to restrict users to tools based on the license that they have. 

HubSpot lets you manage and share specific details about your contacts in the HubSpot CRM. If you need to run account-based marketing campaigns, you can use HubSpot’s default company based properties to track companies down your ABM funnel. You can also create your own company properties to suit your business’s needs. Then, you’ll be able to report on company information so that you can understand how companies grow over time, track company-level revenue, job titles, engagement levels, and more ---- all at the account level. If you need to grant or restrict access to users, like territory ownership for your sales team, HubSpot lets you set up teams so that information is only visible or editable to those who are responsible. If your sales reps are on the go, there’s no need for them to bring their laptops -- simply use the HubSpot app for IOS or Android to log, note, and track deals. There are so many possibilities when a CRM is powering both your marketing and sales efforts. 

HubSpot is so much more than just email and marketing automation. With live chat, a managed CMS, SEO tools, Social Media and Ads Tools, and more, HubSpot has everything you need to get your marketing strategy started, with advanced features that you can grow into. Add your sales and service teams to HubSpot and see how having all teams working out of one CRM reduces friction in your customers’ experiences with your company.

• Free Training & Education - HubSpot Academy resources are available to help you, and your entire team learn best practices and successfully execute campaigns that grow your business - and your career. Take a look at the dozens of courses available and get started today.
• Support is Available For Your Entire Team - Anytime a member of your user has a question, reach out and say hello. Our support team is happy to help whether it's a question about our software, or advice on how to best execute a campaign.
• Onboarding - When you start using HubSpot, you'll have a dedicated team help you get started with the software, any technical setup tasks, and execute your first campaign. Learn more about HubSpot onboarding here.
• Premier Services - If you are looking for consistent team support, we have options available from ongoing consulting to project-based consulting, and even technical help. Learn more about HubSpot services here.

More Reasons to Inform Your Decision

At the end of the day, you're buying software to make your employees' lives easier and your business running faster. For a truly satisfying software choice, the tools they use should be both user-friendly and powerful enough to yield a high ROI. HubSpot has delighted many customers thanks to its easy-to-use tools, live and on-demand training, and world class consulting and support.  But don’t just take our word for it.

HubSpot outranks Eloqua according to these separate 3rd-party sites: 

• HubSpot v. Eloqua (TrustRadius)
• HubSpot v. Eloqua (G2 Crowd)
• HubSpot v. Eloqua (GetApp)
• HubSpot v. Eloqua (SimilarTech)

"We have experience with each of the major marketing software solutions. Each system has certain elements that make it sexy and attractive. Our decision to choose HubSpot boiled down to their reporting capabilities -- at the end of the day, I needed to be able to easily see an overall picture of performance. HubSpot was the only system that offered this in an elegant way."  Brandon Steiger, President, Synergema 

Learn how Insights and SNP made the switch from Eloqua to HubSpot

Insights Transforms Its Marketing with HubSpot

SNP Increases Leads by 69X With HubSpot