Transitioning from Oracle Eloqua to Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) is a significant move that can unlock new capabilities, improve personalization, and better align your marketing stack with your broader Salesforce ecosystem. However, it’s not just a matter of copying and pasting your assets over — a successful migration requires thoughtful planning, collaboration, and execution. 

Here’s how to ensure a smooth and effective migration from Eloqua to SFMC. 

Start with a Comprehensive Assessment and Plan 

Before you begin moving anything, it’s essential to take stock of your current Eloqua environment. Conduct a full audit to understand exactly what’s being used — including email assets, forms, landing pages, segmentation data, and any automations in place. 

This is also the time to: 

• Confirm key stakeholders across marketing, IT, and any other teams currently using Eloqua or planning to use SFMC. 

• Map out the migration timeline, accounting for potential downtime or overlapping platform usage. 

• Prepare your SFMC environment, ensuring that your Business Unit is properly configured and that administrative settings (including the Sender Authentication Package) are in place. 

Additionally, make sure that: 

• The correct data extensions for segmentation are available (these will be equivalent to Eloqua’s contact and profile databases). 

• All SFMC users have appropriate access and permissions. 

• Each team member has gone through SFMC training and is comfortable with their responsibilities in the new platform. 

Data Migration: Getting Your Contacts Across 

Data migration is often the most sensitive and technically complex part of the process. You’ll want to follow a structured approach to minimize risk and ensure accuracy. 

• Export data from Eloqua, including contacts, segments, and campaign history, using Eloqua’s built-in export tools. 

• Map the data appropriately. The structure in SFMC may differ from Eloqua, so ensure everything is aligned correctly. 

• Import the data into SFMC, placing it into the appropriate data extensions. 

• Verify the migration, confirming that all contact and segmentation data is imported successfully and accessible. 

Rebuilding Campaigns, Content, and Journeys 

Now comes the creative part — migrating and rebuilding your campaigns. Not everything will transfer one-to-one, so this is also a great opportunity to refresh outdated assets and optimize workflows. 

• Email templates and content should be rebuilt in SFMC’s Email Studio. Complex designs may require manual recreation. 

• Campaign workflows from Eloqua need to be recreated in Journey Builder to replicate decision splits, entry criteria, and follow-up actions. 

• Forms and landing pages that were part of Eloqua campaigns will need to be reimagined using SFMC’s Web Studio and CloudPages. 

• Any automation processes in Eloqua should be rebuilt in SFMC’s Automation Studio. 

Testing and Validation 

Thorough testing is crucial to ensure nothing breaks during or after migration. 

• Test all data imports to ensure accurate syncing and storage. 

• Run campaign QA, confirming that email rendering and AMPScript personalization work across all platforms and browsers. 

• Validate all Journeys, ensuring proper triggers, filters, and flows are in place. 

• If using a new dedicated IP, follow proper IP warming protocols based on volume. Whether using a shared or dedicated IP, continuously monitor deliverability and escalate any issues to SFMC Support as needed. 

Training and Knowledge Transfer 

Even with the best tools, your team’s confidence and understanding of SFMC will drive success post-migration. Make sure everyone has completed their Salesforce Trailhead training and feels empowered in their role.  

Pro tip: Maintain comprehensive documentation of your new SFMC configuration and knowledge transfer processes. This can be invaluable for onboarding new team members 

Post-Migration Support and Optimization 

Your migration project shouldn’t end once the data is transferred, and the first campaigns are live. Keep an eye on how the system is performing, and ensure your team remains supported. 

• Hold regular check-ins (weekly or monthly) to monitor team confidence and identify areas for process improvement. 

• Actively monitor SFMC performance, looking for system or user issues that may emerge. 

• Have a support structure in place to address any questions, issues, or needed updates. 

Don’t Forget the Extras 

While you focus on the main assets, make sure to also address the following: 

• Third-party tools that may support or accelerate migration efforts. 

• System integrations, such as CRMs or analytics tools, need to be reconnected and validated in SFMC. 

• An audit of ongoing campaigns — this is the perfect time to retire outdated programs and streamline what’s being migrated. 

Migrating from Eloqua to Salesforce Marketing Cloud can feel daunting, but with the right preparation and a strategic approach, it can also be a major opportunity to evolve and enhance your marketing operations. Clear communication, proper planning, and a knowledgeable team will be key to a smooth and successful transition. 

Need help with your Eloqua to SFMC migration? Our team is here to guide you through every step — from strategy and setup to post-launch support. 

Databricks Unity Catalog is a unified and open governance solution for data and AI, built into the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform.

Unity Catalog offers a comprehensive solution for enhancing data governance, operational efficiency, and technological performance. By centralizing metadata management, access controls, and data lineage tracking, it simplifies compliance, reduces complexity, and improves query performance across diverse data environments. The seamless integration with Delta Lake unlocks advanced technical features like predictive optimization, leading to faster data access and cost savings. Unity Catalog plays a crucial role in machine learning and AI by providing centralized data governance and secure access to consistent, high-quality datasets, enabling data scientists to efficiently manage and access the data they need while ensuring compliance and data integrity throughout the model development lifecycle.

Unity Catalog brings governance to data across your enterprise. Lakehouse Federation capabilities in Unity Catalog allow you to discover, query, and govern data across data platforms including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, Azure SQL Database, Azure Synapse, Google’s BigQuery, and more from within Databricks without moving or copying the data, all within a simplified and unified experience. Unity Catalog supports advanced data-sharing capabilities with Delta Sharing, enabling secure, real-time data sharing across organizations and platforms without the need for data duplication. Additionally, Unity Catalog facilitates the creation of secure data Clean Rooms, where multiple parties can collaborate on shared datasets without compromising data privacy. Its support for multi-cloud and multi-region deployments ensures operational flexibility and reduced latency, while robust security features, including fine-grained access controls, automated compliance auditing, and encryption, help future-proof your data infrastructure.

These capabilities position your organization for scalable, secure, and efficient data management, driving innovation and maintaining a competitive edge. However, this fundamental transition will need to be implemented with minimal disruption to ongoing operations. This is where the Unity Catalog Migration Tool comes into play.

Unity Catalog Migration Tool

UCX, or the Unity Catalog Migration Tool, is an open source project from Databricks Labs  designed to streamline and automate the Unity Catalog migration process. UCX automates much of the work involved in transitioning to Unity Catalog, including migrating metadata, access controls, and governance policies. Migrating metadata ensures the enterprise will have access to data and AI assets after the transition. In additional to data, the migration tool ensures that security policies and access controls are accurately transferred and enforced in the Unity Catalog. This capability is critical for maintaining data security and compliance during and after migration

Databricks is continually developing UCX to better ensure that all your data assets, governance policies, and security controls are seamlessly transferred to Unity Catalog with minimal disruption to ongoing operations. Tooling and automation helps avoid costly downtime or interruptions in data access that could impact business performance, thereby maintaining continuity and productivity. While it is true that automating these processes significantly reduces the time, effort, and cost required for migration, the process is not automatic. There needs to be evaluation, planning, quality control, change management and additional coding and development tasks performed along with, and outside of, the tool. This knowledge and expertise is where Unity Catalog Migration Partners come into play.

Unity Catalog Migration Partner

An experienced Unity Catalog migration partner leads the process of transitioning your data assets, governance policies, and security controls by planning, executing, and managing the migration process, ensuring that it is smooth, efficient, and aligned with your organization’s data governance and security requirements. Their duties typically include assessing the current data environment, designing a custom migration strategy, executing the migration while minimizing downtime and disruptions, and providing post-migration support to optimize Unity Catalog’s features. Additionally, they offer expertise in data governance best practices and technical guidance to enhance your organization’s data management capabilities.

Databricks provides its system integrators with tools, guidance and best practices to ensure a smooth transition to Unity Catalog. Perficient has built upon those valuable resources to enable a more effective pipeline with our Unity Catalog Migration Accelerator.

Unity Catalog Migration Accelerator

Our approach to Unity Catalog migration is differentiated by our proprietary Accelerator, which includes a suite of project management artifacts and comprehensive code and data quality checks. This Accelerator streamlines the migration process by providing a structured framework that ensures all aspects of the migration are meticulously planned, tracked, and executed, reducing the risk of errors and delays. The built-in code and data quality checks automatically identify and resolve potential issues before they become problems, ensuring a seamless transition with minimal impact on business operations. By leveraging our Accelerator, clients benefit from a more efficient migration process, higher data integrity, and enhanced overall data governance, setting us apart from other Unity Catalog migration partners who may not offer such tailored and robust solutions.

In summary, Unity Catalog provides a powerful solution for modernizing data governance, enhancing performance, and supporting advanced data operations like machine learning and AI. With our specialized Unity Catalog migration services and unique Accelerator, we offer a seamless transition that optimizes data management and security while ensuring data quality and operational efficiency. If you’re ready to unlock the full potential of Unity Catalog and take your data infrastructure to the next level, contact us today to learn how we can help you achieve a smooth and successful migration. Contact us for a complimentary Migration Analysis and let’s work together on your data and AI journey!