The AdRoll Guide to Account-Based Marketing

AdRoll’s Guide to Account-Based Marketing

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Account-based marketing (ABM) has recently become a popular term among business-to-business (B2B) marketers. ABM refers to a marketing practice where efforts focus on a predetermined set of customers who meet certain criteria. A set of customers can be narrowly defined and specific—like CIOs, or decision makers at Fortune 100 companies. It also can be more fluid and based on a set of parameters—like marketing directors at financial institutions or technology companies.

At its core, ABM combines long-standing marketing best practices with new technologies. It allows marketers to target the right prospects with personalized marketing messages and then automate their entire customer acquisition process.

INTRODUCTIONACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING

Combines long-standing marketing best practices with new technologies

BEST PRACTICE ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES

Targeting key accounts

§ Analytics,

§ Third-Party Data Sets

§ Look-Alike Targeting

§ Machine Learning Algorithms

Executing ABM § Real-Time Bidding and API-Based Ad Buying

§ Data Onboarding

§ Marketing Automation

§ Behavioral Email

Optimization your campaigns

§ Machine Learning and AI

§ Programmatic Advertising

§ Dynamic Ads

§ Dynamic Content

Reporting your results

§ Data Visualization

§ Advanced Marketing Attribution

§ Full-Funnel Marketing Metrics

AdRoll’s Guide to Account-Based Marketing

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Given our strength in performance marketing, it’s not surprising that the tools AdRoll has built can be applied seamlessly to any ABM strategy.

For instance, effective retargeting requires segmenting specific audiences and creating targeting rules to convince those audiences to convert. Given our roots in retargeting and our new products like AdRoll Prospecting and SendRoll, our suite of marketing tools readily lends itself to any ABM strategy.

This step-by-step guide can help both experienced and novice ABM marketers by showing them how AdRoll can be their partner in success.

HOW TO EXECUTE ABM WITH ADROLL STEP 1:

Defining your audience

This is the first step to take when implementing an ABM campaign. In this section, we discuss how to align marketing with sales to develop an account list and leverage your site’s visitor data.

STEP 2: Onboarding your data with AdRoll

With your target list in place, the next step is to upload your customer data. To make this easy, we have integrations with the most popular CRM systems. You can also upload data manually.

STEP 3: Attracting, converting, and growing your business

Reaching your target customers is only the beginning. In this step, we help you develop an ongoing strategy that will nurture prospects and convert them into paying accounts.

STEP 4: Measuring your ABM campaigns

Measurement is crucial to the success of your ABM strategy. This section discusses campaign Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and how to use them effectively to allocate your marketing budget.

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Sales and marketing working together

To launch a successful ABM campaign, it’s necessary for sales and marketing to align with the same goal: acquiring high-value customers. Because a disconnect can arise when each department has a different definition of what a high-value customer is, this step is crucial.

To achieve this alignment, marketers should work with sales to understand who the ideal customers are and then define these customer segments. A number of factors can be used to define a customer segment, including demographic data, sales data, industry, location, and more.

By working together from the beginning, both teams can ensure they are marketing and selling to a set of customers who are the best fit for the business.

How to define your audience

In conjunction with stakeholders from the sales team, start by looking at what companies you are currently targeting. Be sure to interview individuals on the sales team; don’t just speak with management. You will want to get a good sense of how they actually sell your product and whom they sell to.

Review current lead lists and outreach emails. You will also want to review any sales data you have from accounts that have closed. Here are some data points to consider when analyzing past sales:

§ The average company size of a closed account and the account value

§ How many people sales speaks to in order to close a sale

§ Industries or geographic locations the sales team has had the most success with

§ Any other demographic or firmographic information that might be applicable

Armed with data, work cross-functionally to develop a shared definition of your ideal customer. It may take some back and forth, but once in place, it will ensure that teams are aligned and that you’re all working together toward one common goal: growing your business.

Audience segmentation for ABM

With a definition of your ideal customer in place, the next step is to create unique audience segments. This will allow you to target different marketing messages to them.

Here are some suggestions on how to segment your list

§ Existing CRM segments: If you use Marketo, MailChimp, Salesforce, or HubSpot, for example, you can seamlessly integrate existing CRM segments into your campaigns.

§ Warm leads and prospects: Target users who have elected to provide contact information but haven’t yet converted. Consider discounts or offers.

§ First-party intent data: Use the AdRoll pixel to create an audience of users who have visited specific pages of your site and begin serving them ads with targeted messaging.

§ Cold leads: With AdRoll’s IntentMap™, our system uses sophisticated AI and data science to automatically find new customers who resemble your current customers.

§ Upsells: Create a segment of your existing accounts. Target messages with products that complement your customer’s current marketing strategy, or upsell them new services.

STEP 1: DEFINING YOUR AUDIENCE

“Salespeople talk about accounts, they talk about customers... They don’t talk about leads. Salespeople think about how they’re going to win accounts in the first place, then how they’re going to keep and grow those accounts.” —Megan Heuer, SiriusDecisions

AdRoll’s Guide to Account-Based Marketing

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AdRoll allows you to upload a customer list directly to our dashboard. You can also onboard contacts from a wide variety of business systems, including: Salesforce, MailChimp, Marketo, HubSpot, and more.

Click here to view a current list of integrations.

STEP 2: ONBOARDING YOUR DATA WITH ADROLL

HOW TO ONBOARD DATA

Getting your customer data into AdRoll is easy. We have integrations with many different vendors that work to seamlessly import your data. We also allow you to upload a flat file:

1. Go to the AdRoll dashboard and navigate to the “Audience” page.

2. Click “Segment Visitors” on the right-side toolbar.

3. Under “Segment Type,” click “CRM Emails.”

4. Finally, click “Choose File” and select the .csv file that holds your contacts. Note that the file should contain only the email addresses, listed in a single column.

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Finding the right prospects, the ones who match your ideal customer set, is easy with CRM and AdRoll Prospecting.

With CRM, you simply define the segment you want to target—which you create. Once in place, it will bring new users into your marketing funnel.

AdRoll Prospecting harnesses the power of the AdRoll IntentMap, a database of over 1 billion anonymous user profiles, to find the customers most likely to convert. For account-based marketing, these data points can help you remove assumptions and guesswork to key in on the prospects who will be most important to your business.

Retargeting is a great way to nurture prospects as they move through the sales process.

In addition to segmenting from your CRM data, AdRoll can run retargeting campaigns based on how customers have interacted with your site. For example, web visitors can be segmented based on whether they’ve visited the home page vs. the pricing page, or whether they’ve watched a product video vs. a webinar. AdRoll uses this information to help determine the likelihood that a customer will convert on a marketer’s site.

Personalization is a core aspect of ABM. AdRoll can dynamically change campaign messaging depending on how someone has interacted with your site. For instance, B2B marketers can upload ad creative that generates awareness for customers

who have only visited the home page. Marketers can then target more aggressive messaging to customers closer to subscribing or signing up for a demo.

Email is a high-value channel that’s easily integrated into any ABM campaign at this stage. SendRoll, AdRoll’s retargeting email product, automatically sends triggered emails to your prospects who have entered an email address but never converted. This is great for getting more customers in the sales pipeline and setting up product demos.

AdRoll’s suite of products is designed to convince as many users as possible to convert. Marketers looking to grow their bottom line should combine Retargeting, CRM Retargeting, and SendRoll to create a seamless flow from the top of the funnel to the bottom.

At AdRoll, we have been helping our clients run display campaigns personalized to specific accounts and customers for many years. Whether you want to attract new customers, convert target accounts, or maintain your biggest clients, we have the solutions to help you grow your business.

STEP 3: ATTRACT, CONVERT, AND GROW YOUR BUSINESS

ATTRACT: REACH NEW PROSPECTS

Prospecting CRM

CONVERT: TURN PROSPECTS INTO CUSTOMERS

Retargeting CRM

Retargeting CRM

GROW: MAXIMIZE CUSTOMER VALUE

SendRoll

SendRoll

Dynamic Creative

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There are a variety of long- and short-term metrics that every marketer should consider before running ABM campaigns—for example, the number of opportunities that are currently open or being worked in your company’s pipeline. Marketers can also look at the close rates and retention rates to get a better sense of which customers are churning and why. It’s important to note that, due to the personalized nature of ABM and the inherently smaller audience, marketers should make sure that their strategy doesn’t target campaigns too narrowly or it will be hard to increase revenue.

In other words, there may be fewer “wins,” but each win matters much more.

Engagement metrics

ABM campaigns will often be the first time you reach out to many of your ideal prospects. The most important metric to your company’s bottom line may be revenue, but the success of your ABM campaign is best measured by how your prospects respond to your messaging. Here are some possible metrics:

§ Clicks on ABM blogs and ads

§ Whitepaper downloads

§ Webinar signups

§ The number of sales meetings arranged

§ New accounts reached

Bottom-line metrics

Bottom-line metrics show the tangible impact your accounts have on the growth of your business. As you close more deals, these metrics will provide insights into evaluating lifetime value (LTV) and optimizing your marketing mix. Metrics at this stage include the following:

§ Average revenue per account

§ Number of closed deals

§ Retention

§ Customer LTV

Efficiency metrics

Efficiency metrics best compare to those of past marketing campaigns. These data points show you exactly how efficient your marketing budget is and how quickly you move your customers through the sales pipeline. Here are some examples:

§ Cost per click (CPC) on ads

§ Cost per action taken

§ Cost per new account acquisition (CPA)

§ Return on investment (ROI)

§ Sales cycle length

Retention/upsell metrics

Beyond reaching high-value prospects, the ABM philosophy also values customer retention. These metrics should help you compare churn rates and upsell revenue between your ABM and traditional campaigns:

§ Churn rate

§ Length of account activity

§ Upsell per account

STEP 4: MEASURING YOUR ABM CAMPAIGNS

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ABM combines advertising best practices with technologies that enable marketers to effectively target their key accounts. And its end objective is quite simple: understand, identify, and target ideal customers with personalized messaging.

Our suite of tools can be a core part of any ABM program. AdRoll Prospecting, AdRoll Retargeting, and SendRoll help marketers effectively reach potential customers throughout the marketing funnel, no matter what device they are on.

With AdRoll, you can target the customers who are most important to your business.

CONCLUSION

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AdRoll maximizes the value of customer intent data to attract new prospects, convert them into customers, and grow their value over time.

ATTRACT How do I reach new customers who are unfamiliar with my brand?

§ Prospecting: Drive new potential customers to your website

§ CRM: Maximize the value of your CRM data to target prospects

CONVERT How do I turn prospects into customers?

§ Retargeting: Target high-intent audiences with relevant ads

§ Dynamic Creative: Increase performance by using custom dynamic creative

§ CRM Retargeting: Re-engage existing customers using CRM data

§ SendRoll: Send triggered emails tailored to prospective customers

GROW How do I maintain customer loyalty and increase lifetime value?

§ Retargeting: Run loyalty campaigns and cross-sell to existing customers

§ CRM Retargeting: Leverage CRM lists to re-engage existing bases

§ SendRoll: Send triggered emails tailored to prospective customers

MARKETING THAT DELIVERS PERFORMANCE AT EVERY STAGE

AdRoll is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York, Dublin, Sydney, London, and Tokyo.

AdRoll’s inventory includes:

Learn more at www.adroll.com.

AdRoll is a leading performance marketing platform with over 25,000 clients worldwide. Its suite of high-performance tools works across devices, helping businesses attract, convert, and grow their customer base. The company is home to the world’s largest opt-in advertiser data co-op, the IntentMap™, with over 1.2 billion digital profiles. AdRoll’s goal is to build the most powerful marketing platform through performance, usability, and openness.

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