How Citeline and Sojourn rewrote the Playbook for modern Marketing Operations

The story behind the success

Citeline, part of the Norstella group, didn’t just want better Marketing Ops. They wanted faster, smarter, leaner systems that didn’t just tick boxes - but that actually worked.

Like most enterprise marketing teams, they were facing legacy systems, disjointed data, manual processes, and that ever-growing inbox of “we’ll fix it next quarter” tasks.

Together, we’ve helped Citeline and Evaluate (also part of Norstella) not only migrate and modernize their systems - but do it in record time and with tangible, bottom-line results.

Eloqua migration in record time (and under budget)

When Citeline and Evaluate needed to consolidate their Eloqua instances, most vendors would’ve quoted 4-6 months.

Sojourn did it in under 8 weeks. Not just the migration - but discovery, solution design, build, testing, go-live, and hypercare. And yes, with full compliance, lead scoring, IP warming, and multi-brand logic included too.

The impact:

• Saved approx. 640 business hours

• Delivered under budget

• Minimal disruption to campaign flow

• Created a solid foundation for the broader Salesforce consolidation

• Improved campaign governance and marketing effectiveness

  
  

From bounced to brilliant: A masterclass in email deliverability

Before the Eloqua migration, Citeline's emails were quietly suffering. Soft bounce rates hovered around 20%, inbox placement was meh, and actionable deliverability insights were hard to come by.

Post-migration? Things clicked. With help from Sojourn and Validity’s Everest platform, email metrics jumped:

2024 Gains:

• 40% increase in audience reach

• 2x improvement in engagement

• Deliverability hit 83.84% (up from 79%)

• Hard bounces dropped by 35%

2025 Update:

• Soft bounces down to just 5–6%

• Another 2x improvement in engagement

• A growing track record of ROI to the business

Smarter send strategies: Beating email fatigue without buying more tech

Let’s face it: no one wants 6 emails in 3 days about webinars they didn’t register for.

Citeline’s customers were feeling the fatigue. Engagement was falling, unsubscribes creeping up, and marketing performance getting blurry.

Sojourn worked closely with the Citeline team to implement a smart fatigue prevention program - using Eloqua’s built-in capabilities instead of expensive third-party platforms.

What changed?

• Dynamic send logic based on “Last Email Date”

• Tiered filters to manage cadence

• QA process to prevent email collisions

• Reporting to track and adjust in real-time

The results?

• More than doubled engagement

• Saved $65K by avoiding unnecessary MarTech spend

  
  

From manual chaos to automated brilliance: 75% build time saved

Citeline’s Customer Service team was drowning in manual emails - writing and sending 120 a day, one by one, via Salesforce.

That’s not Marketing Ops. That’s email triage.

Sojourn worked with Citeline to design and implement an automated welcome and nurture campaign that:

• Supports 100+ product variations

• Uses Instant Marketing (IM) to outperform Eloqua’s native dynamic content

• Tailors content for net-new vs. returning customers

• Sets the foundation for onboarding, renewals, and dual-brand journeys

The impact?

• 75% reduction in campaign build time

• 60 hours saved per month, minimum

• Instant scalability and better customer experiences

The bigger picture: Connected, scalable, measurable

These aren’t just isolated wins. Together, they paint a picture of what smart, agile Marketing Operations can look like when strategy meets execution.

Sojourn didn’t just bring tools. We brought structure, clarity, and momentum to complex enterprise challenges. And Citeline’s team? They delivered every step of the way.

Reimagine Marketing Operations. Redefine Success.

We've been saying this for a while now, but we do more than you think. 

Our clients see bigger impact when they tap into more of what we offer.

Behind the scenes, we’re helping other companies streamline, scale, and seriously outperform - and this customer success story seriously highlights the impact we can have across your entire Marketing Operations.