Buyer Intent Data
Article | September 11, 2023
Account-based marketing is the ultimate personalization tool.
Instead of incurring unnecessary marketing expenses, an account-centric strategy segregates vital business accounts and markets directly. This means, by appealing to specific market leaders, who can benefit from what your company has to offer, you can make marketing efforts more tailored and effective.
ABM strategy is not new by any means. Still, it has gained widespread recognition over the past few years as it's evolved along with the progression of technology. An entirely tech-based, the marketing automation solutions have made account-based marketing more measurable and affordable for all-sized businesses. Thus, ABM automation gained pace.
Research from Marketo suggests that account-based marketing delivers a better return on investment than other various strategies for 97% of marketers.
Marketing automation plays a vital role in driving impressive results. It allows companies to target their outreach based on interests and actions. But what makes ABM automation win the rat race?
ABM Automation: AI is the Driver
The reason why ABM automation has recently emerged is the availability of AI. Initially, AI was used by ABM to propel the automatic selection of target accounts through predictive analytics. Also, it is driving intelligent marketing nurturing and other marketing responses based on how the targets respond, their needs, and so on.
If you're targeting 100 accounts as potential new corporate customers, those accounts will visit different pages of your site. Some will download white papers and respond to emails. You will get leads from the targeted companies through these activities, and thus you can knock at their door.
AI enables quick responding to a dynamically changing engagement in the ABM platform and delivers the best action. This is how automation with AI is emerging in ABM platforms.
You can take four steps to automate your ABM to drive leads and create a successful ABM automated platform.
4 Steps to Plan ABM Automation
Draw the Automation Cycle
To start with ABM automation, firstly, create a blueprint of the targeted business. In this, you should identify the complete process of lead generation. The trail looks like; subscriber, lead, MQLs, SQLs, and a client to target. In this process, you cannot communicate at each phase. When one clicks on the particular link of your website, you should have a system-generated mail to send.
Once you track the movement of the lead, quickly trigger the sales team to take the follow-ups. This saves the time of salespersons, and therefore ABM strategies are implemented wisely.
Integrate your ABM automation software and CRM
Before you build your account-based marketing campaigns, you'll have to integrate your ABM automation software and CRM.
Integrating marketing automation tools is vital in the automation process. If your ABM software doesn't interact with the email marketing software, you won't be able to automate the process. In addition, if it doesn't relate to your CRM, it will be difficult to know if leads converted into accounts and track the ROI of an account-based campaign. So, to integrate ABM automation, you'll have to research and keep ICP, content, target accounts, and CRM all in one place.
Tailor Your Content
Ensure you're sending the right message to the right target account. Creating customized landing pages looking at how people have recently interacted with your brand is a great way to execute automation. Using ABM tools, you can automatically message target accounts with relevant messages when they engage with you and help you build the connections that become conversions.
Create Dashboard to Assess Efforts
The last step to automate your ABM platform is to track and measure the efforts you have put in to see information at-a-glance.
You get information about your target accounts on your dashboard, such as open deals, company score, total pipeline, and the number of decision-makers identified. In addition, you should consider ongoing A/B tests when started with ABM automation. This is because you can see what messaging appeals to your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile).
ABM is a result-driven approach. ITSMA reports that 87% of marketers consider ABM as delivering the highest returns. But without automation, ABM becomes a strewn process. Marketing automation lets your team offer a personalized approach and immediate outreach with valuable content that pushes visitors to become regular clients. Thus, using ABM software tools — ideally the marketing automation tools — can help you automate and scale your strategy and adds value to your ABM efforts.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the account-based marketing tactics?
Account-based marketing uses hyper-personalized tactics to attract, engage, and convert high-value accounts. Similarly, it uses emails to contact existing customers and target consumers and social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, and more to reach out to prospects.
Why is an account-based marketing strategy so important?
The importance of ABM lies in structuring marketing efforts and resources on key accounts to drive the most revenue. ABM maximizes the efficiency of your B2B marketing resources along with building the communication channel with sales to align with sales and marketing functions.
How to create the automated ABM strategy?
To create the automated ABM strategy, follow these steps:
Create your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
Align your target accounts
Build campaigns
Integrate ABM, marketing automation software, and CRM
Personalize content
Engage
Set up a dashboard for assessment
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Core ABM
Article | June 20, 2023
More than half the world’s population uses email. It is one of the most preferred means of communication today. For businesses, emails are a medium for account-based marketing. They help nurture leads, sell products, create brand awareness, drive website traffic and increase sales and revenue by conveying lucrative content to the target audience.
Sending emails to current and potential customers with the goal of improving your brand's standing, content engagement, and eventually landing a sale is an example of an effective email marketing campaign. Neglecting email marketing while carrying out your marketing strategy can be dangerous because it has the highest conversion rate compared to other marketing channels.
According to a 2020 Statista report, 3.9 billion people use their emails daily. By 2023, this number is projected to rise to 4.3 billion. Moreover, 78% of marketers have seen a steep increase in email engagement in the past year, based on Hubspot’s Not Another State of Marketing 2020 report. These statistics highlight the importance of email marketing in a marketing campaign.
Email Marketing: Implementation and Challenges
Ever since the pandemic hit, the importance of digital marketing has skyrocketed. Without utilizing all the digital marketing channels, it is impossible to reach the target audience. In the realm of successful digital marketing, email marketing has a big stake. It has the highest conversion rates, is preferred, and is simple and affordable.
In an interview with Media 7, Mike Dickerson, Chief Executive Officer at ClickDimensions talked about the importance of digital marketing in the current reality impacted by COVID-19.
"Digital marketing, and all the channels included within that, is more essential than ever before for businesses around the globe."
Businesses use email marketing to build brand credibility, deliver crisp and accurate messages to their target audience, and generate leads. They strengthen existing customer relationships, boost sales and achieve higher ROI, gauge the response of customers to content through metrics, and automate marketing workflows to streamline marketing processes. By interconnecting their marketing channels, they create a fluid buyer journey to increase the chances of conversion.
Like every other marketing campaign, an effective email marketing campaign needs effort, vigilance, testing, and upgrading. Email marketing can be challenging, but the good news is that you can remedy the issues easily. Here are some snags you might hit:
Ideal Email Frequency
Achieving the right frequency of emails can be challenging. If you send too many emails, the recipient might unsubscribe from your email list. However, if you don’t send enough emails, the recipient might not remember your brand. You can review your subscription process to know what frequency and information you have promised your recipients. You can consider revising the frequency based on the click rate, subscribe and unsubscribe rates, and post-click activity.
Low Subscriber Engagement
If your subscribers are not engaging with the emails, you can start by testing the segments and personalizing the content.
Data Syncing
You need to ensure that the data that comes from CRM and ESP responses is synced.
Irrelevant Content
Keep reviewing your click-through rates to pinpoint content that works. If your content is not relevant, your subscribers might stop opening your emails and may go as far as unsubscribing. Content includes everything from your subject line to your call to action, so make sure your content quality is high.
Unsatisfactory Campaign Results
If your delivery rates are lower than expected, consider subscribing to a list validation tool and reevaluating your subscription process. If the open rates are too low, try using different ‘from’ names to create a better impact. If the click rates are low, then align your content with your goals.
Creating Effective Email Marketing Campaigns for Business Success
To create an effective email marketing campaign, follow these crucial steps:
Decide Your Goal
Efforts without direction go nowhere. Define and understand the goals of your campaign. They can be anything from increasing website traffic, lead nurturing, creating brand awareness, or getting customer feedback. Aim for tangible results once you figure out what you want to achieve. Your goals should ideally align with larger organizational goals.
Define Your Target Audience
Identify the unique needs and pain points of the customer base you want to target. Create special campaigns for a specific group of customers. You can segment the customers based on their age, location, interests, gender, online activity, or engagement levels.
Choose a Relevant Type of Email Campaign
Depending on your campaign goal and target audience, choose a relevant email campaign. Some of the most popular email campaigns include welcome emails, cart abandonment campaigns, newsletters, re-engagement emails, announcements, holidays, invitations, promotional, seasonal, and testimonial or rating emails. These email campaigns can be executed using marketing automation workflows.
Time Your Campaign Correctly
Timing is important for effective email marketing campaigns. For maximum engagement, consider the ideal day of the week and time of day. Based on data from co-schedule, the best days to send out emails are Tuesday, Thursday, and Wednesday, while the ideal timings are 10AM, 2AM, and 8PM. Proactively verifying your target audience’s time zone and location before starting your campaign is advisable. Marketing automation makes it easy to time your campaign effectively.
Use a Conversational Tone
Nobody wants to read drab emails with no personal touch. For the recipients to respond, you need to create a relatable copy and an attractive subject line that compels them to open your email.
How Conversational Emails Helped the Obama Campaign with Fundraising
By using a conversational tone in the email and creating effective, attention-grabbing subject lines, the Obama Campaign raised a huge chunk of the $690 million.
They used great opt-in forms, which helped them collect more email leads. They also sent a follow-up/thank you page to encourage subscribers to donate to the campaign. They also kept on constantly testing email conversions using split testing of key pages.
Test Your Emails
A/B testing your emails is a good way to understand which of your email designs and content creates the most impact. Look at campaign performance metrics like open rate, bounce rate, click-through rate, spam complaints, and unsubscribes.
Make Great Opt-ins
Experiment with different opt-in forms like welcome gates, exit pop-ups, and lightbox pop-ups. They can help you get new subscribers.
Focus on Design and Content
Your content should offer value to your recipient. It should also be pleasant to look at, concise, and effective. Focusing on the design and content elements is vital to the success of your campaign.
Wrapping it Up
If executed correctly, effective email marketing campaigns can be a game-changer for your conversions and, in turn, your revenue.
FAQ
What are the benefits of email marketing?
Effective email marketing campaigns help businesses create brand awareness, outreach to new and existing customers, and achieve high conversions.
What are the important email marketing metrics?
Some of the important email marketing metrics are open rate, bounce rate, click-through rate, spam complaints, and unsubscribes.
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Buyer Intent Data
Article | March 6, 2023
The application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies is inevitable and necessary to achieve the potential of account-based marketing (ABM). However, I consider technology to be more of an enabler of ABM, while the driver always remains the same – enhancing the customer experience by helping clients sustain and grow their business in this dynamic digital era. The goal is not for AI to make marketing decisions but to enable marketers to make better decisions by leveraging the strength of AI in analyzing a large amount of data quickly to share action-oriented insights.
AI can be a friend or foe, depending on what decisions we make while evaluating and implementing AI. Following are key questions organizations should answer before deploying an AI-based marketing strategy.
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Core ABM
Article | November 25, 2021
We all know that account-based marketing means targeting the best customer accounts, creating personalized marketing campaigns, and getting to the conversion stage.
Though these steps may sound easy, it takes a lot of brainstorming to implement them to convert the accounts that matter the most. To know more about these steps, you can read six hard-hitting lessons for the ABM strategy.
This article will talk about the best and correct ways to implement ABM plans with examples.
But first, let us briefly inform you about ABM and how it works.
Brief Introduction to ABM
Account-based marketing is a marketing strategy implemented by B2B marketers to concentrate on their exclusive clients. First, the sales and marketing team collaborates to collect the maximum data about specific clients. Then these clients are targeted with personalized marketing campaigns on various platforms.
Thus, account-based marketing allows you to utilize your workforce and resources efficiently. It also helps to market your products to a handful of customers who have a 90% chance of conversion.
Now, let us see the correct ways to implement ABM for various B2B industries.
Ways to Implement ABM Plans with Examples
We have specifically chosen the four best ways to implement ABM in B2B marketing strategy. These are the core strategies that have worked for B2B and are sure to work for you too.
But first, look at these wise words from Maliha Aqeel, Director of Global Communications at Fix Network World.
'One of the most common mistakes companies make is implementing a brand strategy that isn’t aligned to the organization’s overall business goal.'
So before implementing any marketing plan, ensure that your brand strategy, marketing campaigns, and everything else aligns with the overall business goals.
Identify Exclusive Accounts
It is the root of your ABM strategy. Your fruits of labor will be decided by the correct places you plant these roots.
So basically, when you are filtering your clients/customers for ABM, here are the key factors to be kept in mind;
Choose the correct industry.
Know the size of the organization.
Identify the needs, challenges, and pain points of the organization.
Know the timelines and hierarchy of their decision-making process.
The answers to these questions will help you to recognize the target accounts precisely.
Example:
Vidyard is a video platform that helps businesses transform communications and drive more revenue through the strategic use of online video. It collaborated with SmartBug Media to change the video experience for users worldwide. Thus, they can target the correct customers on Hubspot. In addition, they help customers to make videos an integrated part of their marketing campaigns and other processes.
Craft Tailored Content
Every filtered account for ABM will have unique needs, demands, challenges, and pain points. Thus, you have to craft content to address the customers directly. They should instantly recognize that you understand them and have built solutions exclusively for their challenges.
You should also be ready with different content for different stages of the buying journey. And remember to design content for customers even after they convert. It helps you to be ready for the retention stage.
Like Mark Emond, Founder and President at Demand Spring quotes;
“Content is at the heart of great marketing today. It needs to educate, inspire, and convert. It must be tied to the unique rational and emotional needs of each target persona.”
Example:
Intridea executed an excellent content strategy to target the advertising giant Ogilvy. First, they rented a billboard right across Ogilvy’s Manhattan office. The billboard said, “Ogle this, Ogilvy.” Intridea also placed its logo and company URL at the bottom of the quirky line. This exclusive content got them an appointment with Ogilvy’s CEO!
Use Marketing Automation Tools
There are various personalization tools available to assist you in ABM. These tools provide centralized data collection and data analysis. They also coordinate your marketing campaigns across all platforms.
Example:
Growsteak is a Vietnamese company that provides advertising and digital marketing solutions. However, it faced several challenges like lead generation and competitor analysis. Thus, they incorporated Hubspot’s Partner Program. It not only helped them overcome their challenges but also generated 5,166% more leads overall.
Measure the KPIs
You need to measure the metrics once you implement ABM. It is one of the essential factors of a successful ABM strategy. However, these metrics are different from traditional marketing. Thus, you need to keep a hawk’s eye on them.
Some of the KPIs to consider are;
Is the current coverage of key clients sufficient and, is it growing?
Are there known or anonymous visits to your site? Have they increased?
Is the incoming traffic getting converted?
How much is the depth of engagement?
Has the strategy made it easy to get appointments of the target accounts?
Wrapping Up
The success of account-based marketing depends on research and personalization. The more effort you put in to know your clients, the closer you get to convert them. Thus, make use of the abundant data and accurately target your potential customers!
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ABM more successful than traditional marketing?
Yes. Compared to traditional marketing methods, ABM has proved to create wonders and save a lot on time, resources and workforce. It has also guaranteed a better success and conversion rate for the sales and marketing teams.
How important is personalization in marketing?
Personalization plays a prominent role in ABM. A trust factor builts if you can address the challenges and pain points of the client with personalized solutions.
Also, personalization ensures a higher rate of getting appointments and conversions of the targeted accounts.
Can SMBs also implement ABM?
Of course. SMBs have a higher chance of growing if they plan their marketing strategy along with ABM. It will allow them to understand the market and their customers from the very beginning. And once they have converted the customers, retention will be an easy task.
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