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Summer 2017
marketing automation system to segment lists that you’ll use for crafting personalized emails based on the account’s stage in the buyer’s journey.
• Video – Produce personalized videos, using tools such as Vidyard to engage contacts at a one-to-one or one-to-many scale.
• Direct mail – Use your print and direct mail vendor to trigger a direct mail package to be sent to accounts based on their activity.
Finally, you’re ready to turn your customers into advocates for your brand and products, which Vajre believes to be one of the most underused strategies in today’s marketing. “This is despite the fact that retaining customers is far cheaper than bringing in new ones,” he says. “Most marketing teams have zero budget to spend on existing customers, when these customers represent the greatest way to drive demand and buzz around your products.” Remember, when starting with your efforts to identify your ideal customer profile, be sure to record all your account activities in your CRM or marketing automation system.
You may think you don’t have the tools
or resources to operate as an ABM business,
but whether your business is large or small,
it’s possible to grow revenue by focusing your attention on best-fit prospects and customers.
It’s not even crucial to know a ton about digital or direct marketing. Instead, the trick is knowing your target list of companies and having your message ready to make an impact with that ideal audience. Vajre says the challenge occurs when companies attempt to play the volume game, trying to run
Recent research from ITSMA showed that 84% of B2B marketers agree that ABM has the highest ROI of any type of marketing strategy or program.
anything and everything on those accounts. “An ABM approach means you’re going to be strategic, with personalized activities and content, looking at results focused on business outcomes as opposed to vanity metrics, such as marketing-qualified leads,” Vajre says.
At Terminus, for example, Vajre and his team use a very personal approach, creating videos on their laptops and cell phones to send to prospects. The team does things such as invite them to events and ask them for a call to connect. Vajre says it works because it’s a connection on a personal level, rather than a sales rep sending an email blast from his email address. Human-to-human connection, he says, is the key. One of Terminus’s clients, Domo—a company that claims to “connect businesses to the data they need”—launched a campaign called “Wake up with Domo.” The company developed the theme with quotes from their clients, such as “Domo is the first thing I do in the morning,” “It’s like my morning coffee,” and “A perfect way to start the day.”
“They created a comprehensive ABM campaign that included direct mail with a branded
ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING
Bev Burgess (A Practitioner’s Guide to Account-Based Marketing). Senior Vice President/ABM Practice Lead at ITSMA, explains the three types of account-based marketing:
Bev Burgess
Author, Senior VP and
ABM Practice Lead at ITSMA
Strategic ABM:
Creating and executing highly customized marketing plans for individual accounts This original ABM approach is usually reserved for strategic accounts and executed on a one-to-one basis. With strategic ABM, account teams build stronger relationships with a company’s most- valued customers and prospects via highly targeted marketing interactions that demonstrate in-depth understanding of their business issues. Most
importantly, strategic ABM is done with clients, not to them, to drive value for both companies.
With this approach, a dedicated, senior-level marketer works directly with
one or a few strategic or key account teams on the sales side as well as
crafts fully customized individual marketing plans and programs
as an integral part of the overall account plan.
ABM lite:
Creating and executing lightly customized programs for clusters
of accounts with similar issues
and needs
This is a one-to-few model, typically applied to groups of strategic and/or second-tier named accounts. With ABM lite, marketing programs and campaigns are typically focused on small groups of accounts rather than on individual accounts, usually 5 to
10 that share similar business attributes, challenges, and initiatives.
Collaboration with sales is focused mainly on key decision points, such as which accounts to target, which business issues
to highlight, which propositions to promote, and how to tailor existing content for these one-to-few programs and campaigns.