ACCOUNT BASED ADVERTISING
RollWorks | August 12, 2022
RollWorks is bringing ABM to INBOUND! Today, the account-based marketing (ABM) platform and division of NextRoll celebrated its powerful partnership with HubSpot and announced its presence at HubSpot INBOUND® 22, September 6-9, 2022, in Boston. RollWorks has 16 inspiring sessions designed to help B2B teams ABMify their inbound strategies, as well as the first ever ABM Lounge.
"We're excited to have such a strong presence at INBOUND this year, which reflects our market-leading end-to-end partnership with HubSpot. Our integration drives account-focused organizations' strategies by enabling teams of all sizes to identify high-fit, high-intent accounts and buyers, reach them efficiently, and measure impact — truly democratizing ABM and illustrating the power of ABM and inbound marketing," said Mike Stocker, VP of Partnerships at RollWorks.
RollWorks ABM Lounge (Level 0, East Side of Boston Convention Center):
Inspire your marketing programs, optimize your inbound, and accelerate your impact. Stop by 8:30am - 4:00pm ET to check out the sessions and for your chance to win $25K in RollWorks advertising media credits! Custom design a screen-printed t-shirt or tote bag of your choice, pick up one of our limited-edition ABM hoodies, and grab a coffee and snacks. Schedule a meeting with an ABM expert and learn how to get started with ABM and RollWorks or optimize your ABM program. ABM Lounge special events:
Happy Hour: On Thursday, September 8th, from 5:30 - 7:00pm ET, come grab a custom Aperol Spritz or your drink of choice. RSVP for happy hour here.
Customizable Donuts & Bottomless Espresso: On Friday, September 9th, from 8:00 - 9:00am ET, join us to celebrate our last few hours at INBOUND with customizable donuts and bottomless espresso drinks. RSVP for breakfast here.
2022 RollWorks + HubSpot Continued Product Innovation
Throughout 2022, RollWorks has continued to deepen its commitment to adding more utility in its platform for HubSpot users. This summer, the company launched two new ABM tools:
Journey Events for HubSpot®: delivers consolidated account-level visibility within the HubSpot interface to enable B2B organizations to understand what activities are working to drive accounts through the stages of the buying journey, and which activities need to be further optimized.
Sales Insights for HubSpot: uses data science to provide a 360-degree view of accounts throughout the buying journey, helping B2B marketers and sales teams to eliminate the guesswork and create timelier and more efficient sales outreach.
"RollWorks is a fantastic complement to HubSpot, combining best-in-class inbound marketing and account-based marketing capabilities to effectively grow B2B revenue," said Scott Brinker, VP of Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot.
"RollWorks is a fantastic complement to HubSpot, combining best-in-class inbound marketing and account-based marketing capabilities to effectively grow B2B revenue," said Scott Brinker, VP of Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot.
RollWorks + HubSpot Customer Success
In April, the RollWorks ABM HubSpot App achieved a significant milestone for surpassing 500 installs (150% more than the nearest ABM competitor). Global organizations that leverage the combined power of RollWorks and HubSpot include:
SnapFulfil: SnapFulfil leveraged RollWorks and HubSpot to launch and maintain a sales-aligned ABM program that generated high-value leads. Within 10 months, the Cloud Warehouse Management System (WMS) saw 27% of new website visits come from RollWorks and 4,000 new top-of-funnel leads with a 6% conversion to MQLs. "The prospects generated from all of our marketing activities get pulled into HubSpot automatically, where we then narrow our target list to sync with RollWorks. That automatic bi-directional syncing alone saves us a lot of time on manual input." - SnapFulfil
Goverlan: Within 13 months, Goverlan identified 95% of closed/won deals were influenced by RollWorks and generated revenue 15x the initial investment cost—all with a nimble, two-person marketing team. "Things have changed since we started targeting accounts, as opposed to just contacts. We're generating 40-50 demo requests a week thanks to this happy marriage between our HubSpot inbound and RollWork ABM program." - Goverlan
To learn more about how the market-leading combination of RollWorks and HubSpot drives even more value for your ABM programs, schedule a custom demo today.
About RollWorks
RollWorks, a division of NextRoll, offers ambitious B2B companies an account-based platform to align their marketing and sales teams and confidently grow revenue. Powered by proprietary data and machine learning, RollWorks' solutions address the needs of organizations large and small — from those with best-in-class ABM programs to those just beginning their exploration. By empowering teams to identify their target accounts and key buyers, reach those accounts across multiple channels, and measure program effectiveness in their system-of-record, RollWorks is an indispensable platform for marketers and sellers who believe that an account-based approach is just good business. To learn more visit www.rollworks.com.
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ABM ACCOUNTS
Crunchbase, Alignment Growth | July 21, 2022
Crunchbase, a prospecting platform powered by best-in-class proprietary data, today announced it has secured $50 million in connection with its Series D funding. Alignment Growth led the oversubscribed round, with participation by existing Crunchbase investors including OMERS Ventures, Mayfield Fund, and Emergence. Alex Iosilevich, Partner at Alignment Growth, will also join the Crunchbase board of directors.
Crunchbase's account-based prospecting software enables prospectors—in sales, recruiting, business development, and finance—to find and engage with qualified accounts, while simultaneously creating awareness for companies that want to be discovered. Crunchbase attracts more than 75 million unique visitors annually and recently surpassed 60,000 paying customers with over half of the Fortune 500 and thousands of SMBs represented.
"It's more important than ever for businesses to tap into account-based intelligence for their prospecting, whether they're selling, investing, or fundraising. With fast-changing market conditions, prospectors can't rely on spamming contact lists to hit quota. They need a targeted approach that starts with finding qualified accounts and ends with compelling outreach to the right decision-makers—that's exactly what our customers do on Crunchbase," said Jager McConnell, CEO of Crunchbase.
"It's more important than ever for businesses to tap into account-based intelligence for their prospecting, whether they're selling, investing, or fundraising. With fast-changing market conditions, prospectors can't rely on spamming contact lists to hit quota. They need a targeted approach that starts with finding qualified accounts and ends with compelling outreach to the right decision-makers—that's exactly what our customers do on Crunchbase," said Jager McConnell, CEO of Crunchbase.
The company accelerated its highly capital efficient product-led growth last year with the launch of a suite of all-new SaaS products. These drove a 5x year-over-year increase in new recurring revenue in Q1 2022, and total software ARR is on track to double by end of year. With this upward growth trend, efficient cash management and Series D funding, the company is on a path to profitability.
Crunchbase's platform has evolved significantly since its last funding round. The company's software now offers features to guide prospectors throughout their workflow. Customers are reporting improvements in account identification, pipeline generation, email open rates and meeting booking volume. New product capabilities that power these results include:
Account discovery: Find companies that meet your ideal customer profile with territory filters, AI-powered recommendations, similar company suggestions, CRM data in search, and 6 billion new data edits in the last year.
Account qualification: Focus on growing companies that have buying power using new growth and contraction signals, layoffs and hiring filters, Chrome extension, and Salesforce integration.
Account tracking: Stay up-to-date on changes at priority accounts with email alerts, saved searches and lists, as well as searchable user-generated notes and tags.
Prospect engagement: Connect with the right leads at the right time directly on Crunchbase with newly added contact data, contact search, Outreach integration, Gmail integration, and auto-generated email templates.
"The Crunchbase SaaS platform combines rich and proprietary company data with direct access to decision-makers within a single intuitive interface—at compelling price points—making it a powerful tool for driving ROI across a variety of use cases, from sales to recruiting and more. We expect that Crunchbase will continue to gain accelerated industry adoption and are excited to support the company's growth momentum alongside strong participation from the existing investor group," said Alex Iosilevich, Partner at Alignment Growth.
Crunchbase plans to use funds from the Series D to accelerate product innovation and deepen relationships with dealmakers in sales, marketing, finance, recruiting, and executive leadership roles. Upcoming product improvements will include third-party integrations that embed Crunchbase more deeply in existing prospecting workflows, enhancements to actionable machine-learning powered recommendations, new data that delivers insights only available on Crunchbase, and reporting tools to quantify customers' ROI. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC acted as exclusive financial adviser to Crunchbase in connection with the transaction.
Crunchbase is actively hiring. Candidates can view the latest job openings at https://about.crunchbase.com/about-us/careers/.
About Crunchbase
Crunchbase is a prospecting platform powered by best-in-class proprietary data. It helps over 75 million dealmakers discover, qualify, track, and engage with the right opportunities so they can search less and close more. To learn more, visit about.crunchbase.com and follow Crunchbase on Twitter @crunchbase.
About Alignment Growth
Founded in 2021, Alignment Growth partners with category-leading companies in Consumer and Business Media, Entertainment, and Technology industry sectors. With its team's multi-decade track record of senior executive operating, strategy, and deal making experience at global Fortune 500 companies, Alignment Growth provides value-added capital solutions to help its portfolio companies achieve their growth ambitions. Additional details are available at alignmentgrowth.com.
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ACCOUNT BASED ADVERTISING,TARGETED ACCOUNT STRATEGY
transmission | August 10, 2022
Despite historic skepticism from B2B boardrooms, brand building has been going through somewhat of a renaissance over the past few years.
For all too long, the B2B marketing function was seen as a cost-center whose existence was to support sales in accelerating pipeline and maximizing ROI. Mentions of brand in the boardroom could be met with disinterest and to a certain extent, fear, driven by difficulties in measuring its impact on the bottom line.
The effects of a negligent approach to B2B brand building were clear. In 2019, the Financial Times partnered with the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) – a professional institute for agencies and individuals working in the UK’s advertising, marketing, and communications industry – to publish the ‘Board-Brand Rift’ report revealing that over half of business leaders rated their knowledge of brand building as ‘average’ to ‘very poor’.
But things are changing. In just a few short years, brand has made its way to the top of B2B marketing leaders’ priority lists. Our ‘State of B2B Brand Building 2022’ research report reveals that 71% of B2B marketing leaders acknowledge that boardroom views of brand building have changed significantly in the last 12 months – with over 60% now believing that brand marketing is a strategic business priority.
B2B buyers want more from business:
The marketplace has seen a huge shift in B2B buyer behavior driven, in part, by the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerns over public health, the environment, and job security contributed to a climate of fear and anxiety in which buyers looked to make more ethical purchase decisions – turning to business as a bastion of societal leadership.
Two years on, B2B buyers are increasingly looking to engage with highly resonant and authentic brands. They want to know that the companies they buy from reflect their own values and whether they contribute to wider society, putting purpose above profit.
"COVID-19 has accelerated the need for our brand to have a real and meaningful purpose; one that contributes more to the local community and improves lives. This is what our buyers now expect from us."
- Survey response from a B2B marketing leader.
B2B brands need a clear and defined purpose to stay competitive in today’s marketplace. Brand trust, transparency, and authenticity are all high on the list of customers’ brand selection criteria, and organizations need to respond to match. Thankfully, it seems like they are: Over one-third of those surveyed said they needed to reset their brand strategy and proposition to strengthen the emotional connection with their audience.
Competition is at an all-time high:
The pandemic, however, was not alone in shaping today’s B2B marketplace. A surge in mergers and acquisitions across B2B industries has intensified market competition, reducing the effectiveness of demand generation campaigns on revenue growth.
As a result, B2B organizations have started taking a progressively long-term view of brand. Many are turning to brand awareness campaigns to build memory structures in the minds of prospective future buyers – reflecting Professor John Dawes’ 95:5 heuristic.
"We need to keep our company in users’ minds. Creating memorable impressions and standing out from the crowd through our brand is more important than ever before."
- Survey response from a B2B marketing leader.
However, as brand continues to skyrocket in importance, so does the role of creativity in B2B brand building. Of the B2B marketing leaders we surveyed, 42% highlight the need to better define their brand to help differentiate themselves.
Buyers today can be fairly confident that a range of companies can deliver what they require, leaving differentiation to brand rather than a product or service. And this is reflected in how our respondents agree that a shift away from the B2B ‘safe and steady’ approach enables more unique brand positioning and ultimately, improved standout in the hearts and minds of their audience.
New approaches, old problems:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, shifts in boardroom priorities aren’t without their challenges. While over half of our survey’s respondents said that brand building is equally as important as demand generation in achieving their marketing goals, 40% told us that only 5-20% of their annual marketing budget is allocated to brand building programs.
This comes in stark contrast to Les Binet (Head of Effectiveness at adam&eve DDB) and Peter Field’s (a seasoned Marketing Consultant) seminal research piece stating that B2B brands should look to spend 60% of their budget on brand and 40% on demand for optimum effectiveness. For B2B brand marketers to allay boardroom concerns and win increased brand investment, they need to become more market-oriented and talk the language of finance.
Providing a clear link between authentic, purpose-driven brand building initiatives, customer acquisition, and increased revenue growth – along with the ability to command higher prices, negotiate better supply chain contracts, and attract better employees – can help demonstrate the commercial value and competitive edge of a brand.
Alternatively, B2B marketing leaders can look to relate brand investment to the challenges that keep their CFO awake at night. The B2B Institute’s Jon Lombardo recently spoke on Fergus O'Carroll’s ‘On Strategy’ podcast about the importance of the relationship between marketing and finance. In general, 20% of a company’s stock price is based on short-term cash flows, while the other 80% is based on the long-term.
Lombardo argues if CMOs work with their CFO to pair this cash flow-centric view with a customer-centric marketing strategy, they can pave the way for a rebalancing of the marketing budget in favor of brand building initiatives – enabling greater investment in capturing the 80% of future buyers.
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