Eloqua Glossary
This page contains information specific to UT Austin.
Assets are individual files created within Eloqua. Emails, forms, landing pages, and segments are all considered assets.
Campaigns are the aggregation of the assets you've created. In order to deliver an email to your contacts, you must put all the pieces into a campaign. To clarify this role of a campaign, we can use the following analogy:
If you're sending a care package to someone, you can't simply put the individual items in your mailbox and expect them to be delivered. You must first put the items (or assets, like your email and your segment) into a box (the campaign), and then the box itself is shipped.
Simple campaigns use a short series of steps to facilitate the naming of the campaign, email/segment selection, and delivery options. Multistep campaigns are much more robust, allowing the user to set up an automated workflow, basing next steps on actions of the recipient.
CSU is an abbreviation for College, School, or Unit.
Custom Objects (sometimes called Custom Data Objects, or CDOs) are customized sets of data used to save information that is not part of an individual's main contact record. Custom objects can be used to save event information, or CSU-specific information you'd like to use for creating segments and more efficiently targeting your audience. For example, both degree information and activity codes (Involvements) exist in custom data objects.
Department Codes are four-to-seven-character UT system codes, used in a variety of ways for separating a CSU/department's work from other CSUs and departments across campus. Your workspaces are set up using these codes, as well as the email categories in the system, and it's highly recommended that they're used in the naming convention for any asset created in Eloqua. If you don't know your department's code, you can find the entire list here:
NOTE: Not all departments at UT have been set up in Eloqua. If you attend training and find that your department doesn't yet exist in the system, please contact eloqua-support@utlists.utexas.edu.
Email Groups (Categories) are chosen when creating an email, to allow your recipients the option of unsubscribing from one type of correspondence while still receiving other types. These email categories align with your department's folder structure (Newsletter, Event, Informational, etc.).
An example of email categories in action...
Your department sends out both a newsletter and an email about an upcoming event; the department's Newsletter and Event categories (respectively) have been chosen. A recipient who has received both of these emails can choose to opt out of your newsletter - by unsubscribing from the Newsletter category - while continuing to receive emails about your events.
NOTE: Although Eloqua labels these as 'Email Groups', we've found that this terminology tends to be confusing, as the word 'group' implies a collection of people; as a result, sometimes new users mistakenly believe that email groups are synonymous with segments. Email Groups are not related to your audience in any way, other than subscription preferences. Therefore, we prefer to use the term 'Email Categories'.
NOTE: You must choose an email category for each email that you create. If you find that your test options are greyed out, the most likely cause is that an email category has not yet been chosen.
Forms offer a way for your audience to provide more information about themselves, register for events, or respond to surveys; they can also be used for subscription management. They can use information from either the contact record or a custom object. Forms are made visible to your audience by inserting them into landing pages created in Eloqua.
Landing Pages are individual webpages that you can create within Eloqua (this glossary is an Eloqua landing page, for example). They can be used to host Eloqua-created forms, or act as a miniature website, with content, images, or videos.
Opt_in Headers are column headers that must be included on contact upload files, so that Eloqua knows which security labels to apply to each contact. The full list of headers, with an example file, can be found here.
NOTE: Each cell in the opt_in column must have a 1 (which translates as 'yes') beside each cell containing an email address. This is what tells Eloqua, "this contact should have this CSU's security label applied".
Security Labels are tags that are used in order to designate which CSUs can reach a contact. If a contact is integrated from VIP, the security label is applied based on their CSU affiliation (alumni, donor, faculty/staff). If a contact is uploaded, the security label is applied through use of the opt_in column added to your file.
Segments are the audience you're attempting to target. Segments can be created using dynamic filters, uploaded lists, and/or individual contact selections (or a combination of any of the three).