Humanizing the Account BasedMarketing Experience

Account Based Marketing (ABM) is hardly a new concept. The idea that companies should implement more focused marketing efforts, create more personal conversations and make the shift to one-to-one engagements has long been at the core of effective sales to large and complex organizations.

What has evolved is the technology behind these interactions. Marketers are already allocating larger proportions of their budgets to ABM programs due to evidence of higher returns. In fact, 87% report increased ROI on ABM efforts. 1

We’re also seeing a surge of software, tools, platforms and solutions as companies rapidly rebrand their products and services as ‘ABM’ in an attempt to cash in on the hype. While these technologies may have merit, enabling marketers to rapidly identify decision-makers, scale account-focused programs with precision and accurately measure results at the account level, most also fail to understand that account based marketing is a concept steeped in human connections, not solely focused on clever combinations of programmatic software or algorithms. ABM ultimately has its roots in relationship cultivation, a concept that existed long before automation. Unfortunately, the buzz around the preponderance of technologies is so loud that many marketers are being led to believe that their ABM strategy is defined by which shiny new software provides what slick new capability.

This misconception creates not only confusion for companies as they work to develop their account-focused strategies; it also leads to lost cycles, wasted budgets and failed efforts. If marketers aim to capitalize on the benefits of ABM, they must realize this approach is so much more than what’s in their tech stack.

1: https://ww

w.m

artechoutlook.com/new

s/integrating-abm-in-m

arketing-strategy-for-increased-roi-nid-682.html

At least 100 spokes exist in the ABM wheel. Only some of them relate to technology. ABM is a mindset that involves the entire C-suite and organization strategy and culture.- Jim D’Arcangelo, Chief Marketing Officer, MomentFeed

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Humanizing the Account Based Marketing Experience

More Than Just Tools and Tactics

This isn’t to say that marketers can execute, measure or really even develop an ABM strategy without the influence of these technologies. Shifting to an account-first focus requires:

• Data and predictive modeling to identify target accounts • Qualitative and quantitative research to understand target segments - both decision-makers and influencers• Campaign engines to orchestrate messages and touchpoints • Execution systems to deliver personalized content• Analytical systems to evaluate results

The market is inundated with research on ABM best practices, fundamentals and techniques. Marketer’s inboxes are flooded with articles and posts talk about the steps to “doing ABM:”

Step 1. Identify your target account listStep 2. Research your target audienceStep 3. Create personalized campaigns…

… as if it’s nothing more than a series of tactics or automated steps. Once again, this leads marketers to search for service providers and software that will let them personalize display ads, execute email marketing to target accounts at scale and automatically customize website pages based on IP address.

But an effective ABM program can’t be a channel-based point solution. People consume content across channels. Advertising, email and website personalization are only a few of those channels. A powerful ABM strategy must deliver consistent, relevant messages across all platforms — digital and conventional—otherwise, it risks falling on deaf ears.

The ABM Consortium conducted research that revealed that the top-performing ABM practitioners do three important things: identify needs, match content to these needs, and deliver content through 2.5 times as many channels as lower performers. Frequency does not, however, equal SPAM. It involves a deliberate, strategic and sequenced series of touches using the right medium for the right person.

Start with the People

An effective ABM strategy must be humanistic — for both the company looking to roll-out account-based marketing, as well as the target market. We need to look beyond the technology, tools and tactics used to plan and execute programs. It starts with the needs of the organizations you’re aiming to engage—not just of the businesses’ needs, but also of the people within those companies. People make purchase decisions...not accounts.

The simple fact about targeting accounts is that every company has an audience who hears their value proposition better because it’s valuable to them. Because of this, they’re able to make a decision faster, pay more for it and will stay longer. The essence of ABM is to define this Ideal Customer, segment them and develop relationships with them. Don’t complicate the strategy! - Mark Ogne, Founder and CEO, the ABM Consortium

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Documenting the ideal customer profile is vitally important, including:

• Targeted industries and potential for profitability/growth• The people who lead those companies and make decisions• Company size• Revenue• Business model

Beyond these superficial elements, you also want to delve into some factors that will likely have more variance across companies within your target account list. This may include factors such as:

• Culture – is it top-down or bottom-up? Are individuals in the organization empowered to find solutions to business problems or are those solutions handed down to them from the executive suite?• Decision-making process – is it centralized, decentralized, long-term or short-term• Purchase cycle – how often do they evaluate new products and solutions? Are they in a research or purchase cycle now?• Technologies – what technologies, solutions and partners are they using today and how does your company fit into that picture?

Understanding the people, providing unique, tangible value and building meaningful, interconnected relationships—those are the fundamentals of an ABM program, and the pieces to completing your marketing puzzle as a whole. - Matt Heinz, President, Heinz Marketing

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Start with the People

While all these elements are useful in identifying the right companies and individuals to target, they won’t help you engage the decision makers within those organizations. Therefore, it’s at least equally as critical that you drill into the needs of each person you typically encounter in your sales cycle to understand:

• What’s their role and what responsibilities do they carry?• What goals and metrics are they accountable to?• What challenges can your product/service/solution solve for them?• What questions do they typically ask when considering your product?• What purchase triggers can you leverage to help stimulate a decision?• Where do they go for industry education?• What influencers do they lean into?• What types of resources and content do they prefer to consume?

Make Sure You’re Aligned

Organizations that truly commit to an ABM strategy are not only committing to knowing their target customers intensely, but also to creating company infrastructures to make that account-centric culture come alive throughout their planning, marketing, vendor choices, communications and operating systems. After all, while the “M” stands for Marketing, ABM is a business strategy. Success requires a company-wide effort.

Today’s CEO and CFO—and not just the CMO needs to understand and embrace the philosophy behind ABM and properly resource for it. Prospect knowledge, intimacy, and focus must be an organization-wide philosophy.

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The most obvious and important cross-organizational alliance is, of course, marketing’s counterpart in the revenue lifecycle – sales. In account-centric companies, marketing and sales need to be lockstep with one another.

While ‘sales and marketing alignment’ may seem to be nothing more than just a buzzword, it’s actually the key to reaping the rewards of ABM. In fact, organizations in which marketing and sales are aligned report a 67 percent improvement at closing deals.2

When you ask a salesperson about a target account, the first thing that comes to his or her mind is people, not a company—who he knows, who makes decisions or who she went to lunch with last week. Sales is a human activity, and by listening to sales professionals, marketing can do a better job, develop richer and more targeted content and better understand frequency and mode of communication.

2: https://ww

w.precisionm

arketinggroup.com/blog/sales-m

arketing-alignment-statistics

Make Sure You’re Aligned

Alignment is not a one and done exercise. These two teams must work together throughout the entire customer lifecycle, meeting regularly to:

• Agree on business objectives• Select and prioritize target accounts• Identify all the decision makers involved in each account based on each company’s decision-making processes• Document relevant value propositions and messaging for each role• Collectively plan and execute integrated campaigns, often alternating touchpoints between sales and marketing• Measure results at the account, contact and campaign levels

Sales and Marketing need to be measured and held accountable for the same goals in order for this to be successful. If sales are being held accountable for 10 accounts at $2M per account, then so does Marketing. The teams should meet weekly to plan, execute, measure, adjust and optimize ongoing program activities. Successful ABM is a marathon, not a sprint. When done well, the payoff is tremendous.- Jeff Pedowitz, President and CEO, The Pedowitz Group.

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3: http://communications.on24.com/rs/848-AHN-047/images/Forrester - Evolve ABM to ABE.pdf

The Talent That Drives ABM

Both internal and external resources are key to ABM success. Within the marketing/sales organization, each role is vital to program success. According to Forrester, only 32 percent of companies polled have a senior leadership team member dedicated to ABM, let alone a strong alliance across the entire leadership organization. 3

The challenge of launching ABM largely depends on a company’s appetite for collaboration.”- Jared Dodson, Marketing & Sales Consultant“

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CMO: Understands

both the human and technology-based aspects of marketing.

Thorough understanding

of persona research.

Ability to “sell” ABM into other functions within the organization

and measure/communicate

results

CRO or other Sales Leader:

Works as a true partner with CMO

in identifying prospects and

providing insights to the marketing

team on an ongoing basis. The sales team

itself needs to be well trained on

how people-based decision-making

takes place within the corporate

ecosystem. (See “The Buying

Team.”)

CFO: Works closely with CMO and

Sales Leader to establish KPIs,

funding for ABM programs,

technologies and talent.

CTO or CIO: Weighs in on

decisions about the tech stack, new

implementations and integrations

and support needs.

HR: Develops

a thorough understanding of how marketing

has evolved and can assist in

sourcing subject matter experts

and relationship-oriented sales

team members.

Third Party Partner:

The term “partner” is used deliberately

here. The right ABM service

provider is not just selling a

software solution. They act as a

valued consultant, understand the market being

served, and have skin in the results

game.

CEOCEO: Has a clear vision for the target market—present and future—and must be open to investing in key market segments.

The Buying Team is a Living and Breathing Entity

A humanistic and strategic approach to ABM also involves the deep understanding that the “prospect” is not just a title or organization. How organizations make decisions to invest in new products and services is a function of their cultures and processes, as well as the needs and aspirations of the decision-makers within those companies.We would like to believe that all large companies have tight and tidy systems for decision-making. Although some do, many purchase decisions are a function of an individual organization’s own talent team, each professional’s personality and motivations and timing priorities based on a variety of factors.

The Soar Performance Group breaks down some of these roles in a five-point graph, that takes into account individuals’ roles in buying. 4

Knowing how, when and where to reach decision-makers is highly personalized. Although direct response marketing, targeted social advertising and phone campaigns are obvious tactics, the best ABM marketers also integrate “old school” methodologies like face-to-face sales calls and meetings at industry conferences. Some vendors have even streamlined the timeless practice of gift-giving with automated programs.

In short, truly successful ABM results from:1. Understanding and buy-in of ABM’s meaning from all functions within an organization.2. Approaching ABM as a company-wide strategy; building relationships rather than adding functionality and processes to a tech stack.3. Investment in knowing—at a deep and personal level—the prospects you’re targeting.4. Treating those individuals as people rather than simply prospects or team members and creating content streams that show your knowledge of their needs, goals and positions within their companies. 5. Partnering with technology companies that have a true understanding of the human elements of ABM.

4: http://soarperformancegroup.com

/best-practice-5-understand-the-buying-team-and-buying-process-for-target-accounts-2/

MRP Prelytix has established a blueprint to client success, based on three core principles. We work with our clients’ organizations to develop:

• Insights – because scale isn’t a substitute for intimacy. Insights identify the needs of target account buyers, select targeted content and trigger orchestrated plays. This is true across the entire customer lifecycle, from acquisition, to cross/up-sell through retention.• Precision segmentation – know how to scale intimacy In order to scale, measure and optimize ABM programs, we hone our client target account segmentation through powerful AI and Machine Learning capabilities. These groupings make it possible to automate laser focus on targeting and create replicable learnings.• Orchestration – coordinate collaborative sales and marketing actions. Today, we apply insight and trigger collaborative marketing plays across six channels for our clients. We provide the flexibility to use MRP or client platforms and are rapidly assimilating new channels. This flexibility is critical as it better addresses client-by-client needs and reduces both decision and execution risk for them. MRP closes the loop on integrated ABM Marketing strategies so clients can identify and replicate high performing tactics and eliminate low performing.

The Strategic Trio: Scaling Intimacy

The Role of Communication in Scaling Intimacy: The $9.7M Pipeline Case Study

All too often, ABM marketers utilize one-size-fits-all messaging to reach prospects. But a key component of human-centric ABM is writing and speaking to each decision-maker as an individual.

AI now gives marketers the insights they need to reach and communicate with prospective buyers at the right time, with the right keywords, addressing their specific needs and tailoring benefits to buyer journey stage.

One enterprise client utilized MRP Prelytix to monitor their customers’ intent signals across the nation by utilizing over 1,500 keywords based on their solution and value proposition. The platform also orchestrated display, re-engagement email and direct mail acceleration efforts to generate compelling and targeted messaging within a consistent customer experience.

The results of this methodology speak for themselves. By using automation to communicate with your targets at the right time with the right messages you can see tremendous sales acceleration.

6% of total deals closed for USD

9.7 million with 65% deals

still open

1% of total re-engagement deals closed for

USD 756,094 with 82% deals

still open

8% click-through rate for

acceleration email interaction

12.88% click-through rate for re-engagement email interaction

39.19% increase in

display view ability

51% of accounts converted after direct mail with one additional

touch point

16% of accounts converted after direct mail plus

two or more additional touch

points

Expanded cross-selling

opportunities to different LOBs

CAMPAIGN HIGHLIGHTS

Just as you’re building a deep understanding of the customers you’re building relationships with, you need to select a technology partner that truly understands your business goals and culture and can help you evaluate the effectiveness of your ABM initiatives.

MRP prides itself on understanding the strategic, human, and tactical elements of successful ABM and looks forward to partnering with you on bringing our methodology to your enterprise.

US TAM Identified –4,300 Accounts

US TAM Engaged –3,007 Accounts

US TAM in Pipe or Won –878 Accounts

ACCOUNT REACH

IMPRESSIONS ANDVIEWABILITY

Total Impression Served:

1,890,000 across 2,085

unique accounts

63.5% in view rate

through viewability optimization

DIRECT MAIL

823 accelerate handwritten notes sent to prospects with a CTA to connect with Sales or visit hosted landing page for

content

2070 re-engagementnotebooks and 1655

follow-up handwritten notes sent to stalled prospects with

additional resources to connect them to sales

MRP Prelytix, the Only Enterprise Class Predictive ABM Platform.For enterprise organizations that serve multiple geographies, lines ofbusiness or industries, Prelytix is the only ABM platform designed togive you control of your data, visibility into your target market and scalein the delivery of the highest impact engagement strategy.

Leading B2B sales and marketing organizations choose MRP for ourability to deliver and measure revenue impact across a half-dozenonline and offline channels, our global workforce with expertise across100 countries and 20 languages and our ability to simplify connectionsbetween insight and action using the industry’s first application ofreal-time AI and Machine Learning. Powered by Kx, Prelytix sits on topof the fastest streaming analytics database in the world.

Schedule a demo today to learn more about how MRP Prelytix can helpyour team revolutionize your marketing goals.

For more information visit: www.mrpfd.com