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You need marketing automation.
It’s not an opinion.
It’s a fact that marketing automation drives 14.5% more sales and reduces marketing overhead by 12.2%.
In laymen terms: it generates increased revenue while saving expenses. Who doesn’t want that?
Before you go on a quest to integrate marketing automation though, you’ll need a tool.
Two of the best on the market are Eloqua and HubSpot.
However, which is better? What are their pros and cons?
Keep reading to learn that and more in my Eloqua vs HubSpot comparison.
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Eloqua vs HubSpot overview
| Eloqua | HubSpot | |
| Entry-level price | $2,000/month | Free |
| Setup fee | $2,000 | $600 |
| Number of users | 10 | 2 |
| Free trial | No | Yes |
| Email marketing | Yes | Yes |
| Landing pages and forms | Yes | Yes |
| A/B split test | Yes | Yes |
| Built-in lead database | Yes | No |
| Segmentation/Lead scoring | Yes | Yes |
| Data quality control | Yes | Yes |
| Google Adwords integration | No | Yes |
| Membership websites | No | No |
| Create quotes | Yes | No |
| Integrations | 132 | 1,000+ |
Eloqua
Okay. So, what is Eloqua?
Also known as Oracle Eloqua, it’s Oracle’s marketing automation platform that helps companies create optimized and personalized campaigns across display, web, video, and other channels.
It has all of the bells and whistles to save time while strengthening marketing operations.
They received a 7.8/10 score on TrustRadius across 469 reviews which is excellent.
Here’s what one customer had to say about the software:
In particular, they enjoyed:
- The neat and simple UI.
- Campaign canvases to streamline workflow.
- Great reporting systems.
- Third-party app integrations.
However, they complained about the initial learning curve, issues scaling horizontally, and the expense price tag. Keep this in mind for later.
Features and integrations
Time to get into the meat and potatoes. These are some of the main features you’ll gain access to when choosing Oracle Eloqua.
Cross-channel campaigns
You need to be omnichannel in 2020.
That means not being on a single channel, but being everywhere at once.
You will get seen by additional customers, building trust and increasing brand awareness.
Eloqua makes this easy as cake.
Campaigns and automation are made through visual and graphic flows like this:
Simply add nodes as triggers, sequence them, add delays, or any other customizations.
Not only does this simplifying omnichannel campaigns, but it also makes it easier for an entire organization to understand marketing direction and strategies.
Lead management and scoring
Leads are the heart and lungs of your company. Without them, you have no sales.
That’s why managing and scoring leads are extremely important, too.
Nonetheless, it’s tough.
You might have tens of thousands or more contacts. How do you handle all of those?
Eloqua’s lead management feature.
One way Eloqua stands out over HubSpot is that it includes a lead database thanks to its 500 partners.
No more paying for expensive lead lists when it’s built right into your CRM!
Eloqua allows you to create several lead scoring models to find the best possible candidates to hand over to sales, as well. Then, automate follow-ups and analyze every touchpoint to maximize conversions.
Targeting and segmenting
Personalization has never been more important.
Consumers are more resourceful and smarter than ever.
Showing the same campaign to everyone is a guaranteed way to waste budget.
Copy, creatives, and offers have to be tailored to every customer segment.
Eloqua has a segmenting feature that helps companies dissect users by behavior, demographic, traffic sources, and more.
All of this data feeds back into marketing campaigns to improve return and ROI.
HubSpot has a similar feature in which leads are segmented via lists you create based on different traits.
I would say that Eloqua has a stronger segmenting feature, however.
Eloqua pricing
Alright, let’s talk about money.
You can’t find Eloqua’s pricing directly on the Oracle website, but rather you have to directly contact their sales team.
However, I did some snooping around and this is what’s publically available:
- Basic plan: ($2,000/month)
- Standard plan: ($4,000/month)
- Enterprise: (Contact sales)
This is drastically more expensive than HubSpot. (You’ll see in a moment.)
Additionally, the details of each one aren’t available until you talk to Oracle.
However, we can expect a few things based on other reviews I’ve done (like Google Analytics 360 vs Optimizely) and the general nature of SaaS products:
- The higher you go up in plans, the more reports, features, support, and data you will receive.
- More users and seats will be available as you go up the plans, too.
- Enterprise will be a custom quote based on the number of users and capabilities required.
Now let’s get into HubSpot!
HubSpot
HubSpot is the world’s most popular marketing, sales, and automation platform.
They offer everything required to automate campaigns, outbound sales, lead generation, and more.
They’re also very well reviewed, scoring a 4.5/5 rating across 2,498 reviews on Capterra, for illustration.
Those who leverage several tools at once will enjoy HubSpot’s mountains of integrations. They include Hotjar, Zendesk, Slack, Zapier, and more.
Let’s talk about their main features next.
Features and integrations
The following are some of the strongest features and reasons to choose HubSpot.
Inbound marketing tools
I’d say inbound marketing is the future, but that’d mean we’re living in the future right now.
Inbound marketing is necessary to grow brand awareness, trust, authority, and a consistent pipeline of organic customers.
As a matter of fact, properly executed inbound strategies generate 10x the conversions of outbound. No joke.
Moreover, companies like Leveleleven have boosted organic traffic by 450% by using HubSpot’s inbound tools.
HubSpot gives you everything to scale inbound campaigns. This includes:
- Landing pages
- Forms
- Email campaigns
- Social media campaigns
- User behavior tracking
- Personalized calls to action
- Blog posts
- Search engine optimization
- Automated chatbots
- Social monitoring
You get everything A–Z to ensure that you’re attracting more users, closing them, and keeping them nurtured over the long term.
While Eloqua has some similar features, HubSpot definitely wears the crown when it comes to inbound marketing capabilities.
Robust CRM
How many contacts do you have?
Hundreds? Thousands? More?
Then you need a CRM. Otherwise, you’ll get migraines from trying to email and follow-up by hand every day.
HubSpot has a completely free CRM you can start using today. You have nothing to lose.
The dashboard gives you a clean and clear overview of leads, sales pipeline, and activity.
Drill down into sales activity, KPIs, productivity, or individual performance. This will allow you to ensure you’re on track to hit quota and continue growing.
Oh, you also get up to 1,000,000 contacts with no time limit or expiration. Mr. Evil would be proud.
Outbound sales sequences
Sure, inbound marketing may fill up your pipeline organically.
But if you want to scale to the moon, you need to take charge.
That’s done with outbound sales.
While you can do it old school, take out the phonebook, and start dialing, there’s a smarter way.
HubSpot’s email marketing sequences and automation does just the trick.
These empower sales teams to import large lists of customized spreadsheets and send out personalized campaigns in the click of a button.
Follow-ups can be completely automated, too.
If you’ve ever done outbound sales, you know how mind-numbingly boring and repetitive it can get. Not anymore.
In particular, you can take advantage of this via the bulk email tool or sequences.
The first allows you to send out a bulk email to contacts, lists, or other groups.
Sequences, on the other hand, are automated workflows that are triggered by specific events and are heavily customed with tokens.
Tokens include first name, last name, company name, custom messages, and so forth.
If you’re enjoying this comparison and interested in other software, make sure to read my Google Analytics vs Mixpanel review, as well.
Pricing
As I’ve mentioned earlier, HubSpot offers a completely free plan and CRM. (Eloqua doesn’t.)
I recommend that you give it a shot and see if it suits your organization.
If so, they offer the following upgraded plans:
Keep in mind that there are:
- Free tools and CRM
- Marketing Hub
- Sales Hub
- Service Hub
- HubSpot CMS
They all have slightly different features based on your individual needs.
Nonetheless, I’ll use Marketing Hub as an illustration.
- Starter: $50/month
- Professional: $800/month
- Enterprise: $3,200/month
The starter package is significantly more affordable than Eloqua’s which starts at $2,000.
Similarly, $800/month is cheaper than Eloqua’s Standard plan.
HubSpot also clearly states their Enterprise pricing which is a nice touch.
Each plan comes with increasing amounts of features, limits, reports, and support.
Wrapping up Eloqua vs HubSpot
With all of that out of the way, let me give you my final verdict.
Oracle’s Eloqua excels at handling very complex automated marketing workflows, managing assets, and lead generation.
It’s competitor, HubSpot, has strong points in support, accessibility (their mobile app for example), free accounts, pricing, integrations, and inbound marketing.
I recommend that larger companies with hefty budgets opt for Eloqua while freelancers, startups, and budget-sensitive businesses try HubSpot.
No matter what option you choose, you can enhance all of their capabilities by trying Morphio today for free. Our marketing security software will allow you to focus on important tasks while optimizations, finding customer profiles, and more are sent to your inbox.
