SMS Cloud Connector

Since Eloqua is primarily focused on email marketing and campaign management, SMS messaages are not included as a core, native feature. To address this, my client and I developed a custom Eloqua application that integrates with three major SMS service providers:

• Inmobile
• SMSDK
• Sinch

In the Eloqua campaign canvas, marketers can easily select an SMS Cloud Connector component and drag it onto the campaign workflow. With just a few clicks, they can choose the contact field to merge and design a dynamic message template.

A key feature of this project was the integration of the Mustache templating engine. This was particularly valuable for Eloqua clients who had stringified JSON fields that needed to be dynamically merged into the SMS body. Mustache’s templating capabilities made personalization and dynamic content integration seamless and efficient.

The reporting of the message status was implemented via callback method. Contacts were flagged as successful or failed based on the message delivery outcome and then imported back into Eloqua for tracking and reporting.

This integration streamlined the process of adding SMS to Eloqua campaigns, providing marketers with a simple, effective way to incorporate SMS messaging as part of their multi-channel strategies.

Airship

This integration project enabled Eloqua to send push notifications through the multi-channel messaging platform Airship. The integration supported several key use cases:

• Send push message from campaign canvas (scheduled or in-app)
• Send push message from a segment (batch send)
• Send push message on form post
• Import devices to Eloqua
• Collecting and managing response activity

In the Eloqua campaign canvas, marketers could easily drag and drop the Airship Cloud Action component into their campaign workflow. With a few simple steps, users could authenticate, select a mobile app, choose a pre-configured message template from Airship, and target either Android or iOS platforms. Push messages could be scheduled for later or sent immediately to all contacts that flowed through the action step, providing flexibility and ease of use.

Appart from the campaign canvas, marketers can also send push notifications to an entire segment. In the segment view, after defining the segmentation criteria, the integrated Airship interface can be accessed to complete the configuration. Although the setup process is similar, there is a key difference: segment-based pushes are one-time sends to all members of a segment, while in ongoing campaigns, notifications are sent individually as contacts pass through the action step. Technically, this means that in the campaign canvas, the integration backend receives the contact payload directly, whereas for segment pushes, contact data must be fetched from Eloqua.

In addition to sending push messages, the Airship integration supports device import into Eloqua and response activity tracking. Imported devices are stored in Custom Data Objects, while response data is recorded as External Activities. Both data types are used in segmentation and help create more complex workflows based on user interactions.