Case Study · Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Rebuilding HMH’s lead management, campaign structure & SFDC reporting engine
HMH is one of the world’s most established educational publishers, reaching over 50 million learners in 150+ countries.
They approached Automate2Revenue — where I was engaged as a senior Eloqua architect — to rebuild their lead and campaign management foundation and engineer SFDC dashboards capable of real CMO-level decision making.
Client background
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) is a global leader in K–12 learning solutions, serving more than 50 million students and educators. Their portfolio spans curriculum platforms, digital learning tools, assessment engines, and an internationally recognised publishing division.
Yet despite their scale and reputation, their internal lead and campaign management processes weren’t aligned with modern demand generation expectations — especially the requirements for CMO-level Salesforce dashboards that allow leadership to see real ROI.
The issues were widespread: incomplete data, inconsistent lead sources, unstructured campaign creation, disconnected digital channels, and reporting that didn’t tie together. My engagement was to rebuild this from the ground up.
At a glance
- Sector: Education / EdTech
- Platforms: Oracle Eloqua, Salesforce, Sprinklr, GA
- Goals: Lead management, campaign governance, CMO dashboards
- Role: Senior Eloqua Architect
The challenge
HMH needed a complete lead and campaign management rebuild. They were scaling fast, but their underpinning data foundation was not. Two systems were especially broken:
Lead management issues
- Missing key data on leads & contacts
- 43,924 leads rejected in a single year
- No alignment between lead status & account status
- 41,258 records missing Original Lead Source
- Website forms delivering inconsistent UX and weak data capture
Campaign management issues
- Channels inconsistent and frequently incorrect
- Campaigns built in Workfront but not aligned to Eloqua
- Sprinklr and Google Ads not connected to Eloqua or SFDC
- Webinars not tracked properly
- Campaign responses inconsistent and unreliable
Without fixing these issues, CMO-level reporting was impossible. My approach: work backwards from the reporting framework, rebuild the entire data + automation engine, then wire it into Salesforce cleanly.
My approach
To deliver CMO-grade Salesforce dashboards, I rebuilt HMH’s entire marketing automation foundation across nine technical pillars.
Each one was required — without all nine, accurate multi-touch attribution and ROI modelling in SFDC would have been impossible.
Solution 1
Minimum mandatory fields
I defined a complete set of required lead and contact fields and rebuilt the picklists for Lead Status, UTM Medium, Source, Campaign and Term.
This enforced data consistency across all inbound channels and ensured attribution was clean before it ever reached Salesforce.
Solution 2
Eloqua ↔ SFDC integration rebuild
When Oracle retired Integration Studio, I used that moment to completely remap the Eloqua-to-SFDC data flows.
This included lead, contact, campaign member, opportunity and closed-loop structures — giving leadership true revenue visibility.
Solution 3
Standardised campaign templates
I designed ready-to-use Eloqua canvas templates for one-shots, nurture tracks, webinars, tradeshows and sampling.
This removed variability from campaign execution and ensured every campaign produced reliable attribution signals.
Solution 4
Sprinklr / GA / Eloqua integration
By connecting Sprinklr to both Eloqua and Google Analytics, we unified social + paid + digital tracking.
This fixed a major blind spot and opened the door to true channel-level attribution modelling.
Solution 5
Progressive profiling form suite
I built a standardised set of form templates and enabled progressive profiling for all key conversion points.
This dramatically improved data quality and reduced the friction for returning users.
Solution 6
Lead status lifecycle alignment
Lead Status was completely rebuilt and aligned with SFDC Account + Opportunity behaviours.
This ensured accurate lifecycle transitions and eliminated conflicting definitions of “lead quality.”
Solution 7
Workfront integration audit
I assessed the feasibility of direct Eloqua ↔ Workfront integration. It was not fit for purpose.
The recommended path was Oracle Content Manager for governance and structured campaign operations.
Solution 8
Rejected & recycled lead program
I designed REJ and REC programs to analyse failure points and refine the profile + engagement models.
Recycled leads entered new nurtures instead of being permanently lost — increasing pipeline efficiency.
Solution 9
Lead Source Washing Machine
I built a program to permanently preserve Original Lead Source using CDOs — preventing attribution decay.
This became a critical input for the campaign ROI dashboards requested by the CMO.
Impact
I’ll keep this simple: the dashboards told the story better than I can. Once everything was rebuilt — data, lead lifecycle, campaign governance, attribution wiring — the SFDC CMO dashboards lit up. Properly.
- Every channel was finally attributed correctly
- Lead source consistency improved dramatically
- Campaign ROI became fully drillable
- Dashboard accuracy increased to leadership standards
- CMO could distinguish paid vs earned vs owned impact
- Revenue attribution became reliable
This project taught me a tremendous amount about building world-class campaign dashboards in Salesforce. And I still tell marketers the same thing today:
You must do your campaign reporting in Salesforce, not Eloqua.
If your reporting doesn’t match what sales sees — and it won’t — you will lose the argument every time. Your Eloqua closed loop numbers will never stand up against SFDC in a quarterly review.
Get campaign reporting set up in Salesforce ASAP. It is the only real source of truth.
— Greg Staunton
Salesforce Reporting Snapshots
Need enterprise-level Eloqua + SFDC reporting?
Whether you need attribution rebuilding, integration redesign, campaign governance or a full lead lifecycle overhaul — I can engineer it.