I started using Marketo back in 2010, before the age of programs. I used to describe those days as ones where everything had to be built backwards. You couldn’t build the campaign until you built the landing page. You couldn’t build the landing page until you built the form. You couldn’t build the form until you had all your fields set up.
You had to start from the end of the process and work your way backwards. And every element was located in a separate area of the system. It was a pain to manage, and hard for anyone besides yourself to figure out how all the elements came together.
Eloqua feels a bit like those old Marketo days. You can still get the same stuff done in Eloqua, but it certainly won’t be as quick or straightforward as Marketo. You can see efforts the Eloqua team has taken to make the tool more approachable. The simple email send campaigns. The program canvas builder. But I fear much of it is still a bit obtuse to the average marketing ops user, not to mention a non-technical marketer. Maybe I’m just biased from nearly a decade using Marketo.