ABM Accounts
Article | July 14, 2021
As Account-Based Marketing (ABM) continues to grow and develop into a powerful marketing strategy, the conventional question remains: How to prove and measure my results?
Diving into your account-based marketing metrics to understand your results is all about asking the right questions. The metrics focus on quality over quantity. This means that looking at engagement levels above traffic volume and opportunities over leads have a close association with sales. Thus, it summarizes activity metrics and outcome metrics together.
If you implement a new sales methodology without adopting new sales metrics, you’ll have a much harder time tracking the progress of your marketing efforts. That’s why the companies, shifting to an account-based framework, should update their KPIs, as these are the leading indicators of success.
So, the account-based marketing metrics highly focus on the activity of an individual lead and look at crucial accounts that would likely drive the most revenue for your organization.
How are Account-Based Marketing Metrics Different?
The rate at which digital marketers have moved towards the ABM model by creating successful ABM campaigns is quite surprising. While many thought, ‘Will this thing stick?’ or ‘Is this just a whim that will go away in the future?’
But it’s 2021, and ABM has become even more popular in the B2B world as marketers see value in targeting accounts and not only leads.
Recent research from SiriusDecisions states that 93% of marketers consider ABM extremely important to their overall organizational success. With any marketing strategy, you are going to be asked whether your campaign is performing well or not. It indeed takes time for the programs to run for any marketer who has built an ABM strategy. So, what should you consider more in creating an ABM strategy?
Think quality, not quantity
A team working on the ABM model understands the priority—influencing customers who matter as crucial accounts. So instead of focusing on new lead creation, ABM focuses on activating and engaging the right leads (even if it’s smaller in number).
Similarly, your ABM team needs to focus on growing revenue from every single account. This means what would your team value more: ten random marketing professionals downloading a whitepaper or having a meaningful conversation with a decision-maker?
It’s About Engagement
SiriusDecisions states that there has been a 24% increase in the average B2B sales cycle length since 2019. It means that the larger the deal size, the longer the cycle. With such a lengthy process, you need to measure what’s happening during the progressing phase.
So, how do you do that?
It is engagement on which you need to focus on. Track how deeply the right account gets engaged with your brand. This way, you’ll have a measurable way of showing development in your business.
Engagement in ABM results in immense benefits for most businesses. Here is a list of the latest ABM statistics that shows companies that utilized the strategy saw incredible results, such:
200% rise in ROI
50% of sales teams were more productive and able to optimize qualified leads
30% boost in revenue
66% augmented the number of leads generated
83% saw amplified engagement from targeted leads
Shorter sales cycles grew by 27% and more
However, such benefits of implementing an ABM strategy are only the results of a successful ABM approach, as it’s not an easy task for every organization. The only way to ensure that your business’s ABM efforts are successful is by meticulously monitoring the most important metrics.
The 4 Crucial Metrics to Track
Reading further, you will come across the six crucial types of account-based marketing metrics.
Engagement
How are your prospects get interested and engaged?
The more attention they pay to your company, the more committed they tend to be. Measure the time they spend with your brand or on your website. Monitor when they respond to your marketing programs socially or when they use your product and connect with your sales team.
As one of the account-based marketing metrics, the amount of engagement will be the closest and essential. Therefore, your focus should be to measure how contacts are involved with your content, including the type of content. The following areas will help you understand it deeply:
Email metrics: Track the activities of your audience with your email marketing campaigns. You will want to know the open and click-through rates and look at the number of responses received from each email. Also, how email recipients are sharing your messages with others.
Social metrics: You can check with contacts from your targeted accounts if they have liked, shared, or commented on your posts. Are they following your business page and social accounts?
Consumption rates: Similarly, you can look at how contacts from your targeted accounts consume your online content, specifically information provided on your website and blogs. This shows several page views, average page time, and specific content being viewed and downloaded.
Offline Activity metrics: Beyond your digital information, track your targeted accounts engaging with you offline. Are they attending events you sponsor, readily contacting, and responding to direct mail?
Therefore, these account-based marketing metrics' primary goal is to know where your contacts are in their buying journey. In fact, through these metrics, you can uncover what information (content) your website lacks to support communications in their research.
Awareness
Do your prospects are aware of your company’s name and offerings? Web traffic is an ethical reflection of keeping prospects aware, specifically, traffic coming from within your target accounts. You should also track whether your contacts are opening your emails, attending your events, and contacting through calls, or using any other medium you provided.
Target-Account Reach
Are you able to reach specific target accounts in the right way? Where do you lack in your efforts?
These account-based metrics help you to track success by channel. In case of point, in a webinar campaign, you would measure its success by analyzing event attendance. So, track the percent of target accounts that have successfully enrolled in each program as well. And, finally, track your focus. What is the percentage of all program successes coming from key accounts? This will help you understand how many target accounts reach you through your ABM campaigns, ABM strategies, and other marketing functionalities.
Influence
Your marketing strategy’s influence on a targeted account will be measured mainly by your interactions with each account. However, some of the account-based marketing metrics mentioned above will help check your ABM strategy's influence metrics. But the big question is whether your efforts are working or not. To understand this, you need to evaluate some parameters such as:
The conversion rate for contacts in your targeted accounts
Converting of your targeted accounts in the marketing funnel
Frequency and volume of meetings or calls with each account
With whom you have the discussions— account influencers or final decision-makers
Finally, the results of your meetings
These parameters will divulge what efforts are working and where you need to change your approach or the information you provide to make your business successful.
Types of Account-Based Sales Metrics
Marketing and sales often measure success differently. Account-based metrics can help bring these closer by aligning their focus on a specific list of target accounts.
With an Account-Based Sales Development (ABSD) strategy, there are two types of metrics. These would help you understand whether your sales team is performing well in an account-based sales plan or not.
Activity-based sales metrics
You need to check and understand whether your sales team is doing various marketing activities in the right way or not. This will be specific for each account to be targeted and includes activities like task completion, emails, contacts per day, account coverage, meaningful conversations, and appointments.
Outcome-based sales metrics
It is generally considered under post-sale account-based marketing metrics. Now the time is to track the result of the activities mentioned above. Also, include the rate of accounts accepted from the pipeline created and revenue generated.
In short, the goal is to measure the monetary value of each transaction and to track your performance and successes over time in business. This information is also helpful in identifying new accounts to target.
To know how read through in the next!
Value
Measuring value is more important than your total sales volume, as it is a part of ABM metrics. The goal is to understand the worth of each account to your bottom line—how they compare to other accounts and see the performance of each sales representative. In this context, your account-based marketing metrics should uncover the following:
What is your average selling point value?
What is the average account sales volume?
What is the swelling value of each account?
What is the total sales volume?
How much revenue generated?
What is the value of each deal?
Having a clear answer to these aspects reveals the most tangible insights into your results. By looking at specific accounts, you can measure where you are growing, where opportunities exist and show underperforming accounts. Thus, it will make your work accordingly.
Retention
As account-based marketing metrics measure quality over quantity, retention is one part where this comes into play. In addition, it measures the possibility of a targeted account and their satisfaction level.
Measuring retention is a decent indication of the strength of your account relationships. Accounts that stay for a long term are generally satisfied. Thus, they provide the most value to your business.
On the flip side, dissatisfied accounts won’t stay with you very long. But they are virtuous indicators of areas you need to change and improve — either with the process, products, or account types.
ROI
The most crucial account-based marketing metrics is your return on investment (ROI). Eventually, you measure your ABM campaigns and marketing strategies—if they are effective. So, ROI is the percentage of your investment to earnings.
What makes these account-based marketing metrics so challenging in reality? Several factors influence each transaction or sale. Take a step back and consider these questions:
Has your closure rate improved over the past month, quarter, or year?
On average, how long does it take to close a sale?
What was your ROI for each campaign you launched?
The purpose behind considering these aspects is to know what marketing campaigns were successful and better understand inclusive marketing and sales effectiveness.
Putting all ABM Metric to Work Together
A successful ABM strategy requires various activities, technologies, and outlooks for B2B marketing or demand generation. Here, the use of ABM metrics becomes important for measuring pre-sale success and revenue potential. For this, B2B marketing organizations should monitor post-sale metrics to track client satisfaction.
Therefore, by monitoring the entire ABM funnel, you can incessantly optimize marketing activities and improve customer relationships for your business.
Conclusively, account-based strategies present an incredible opportunity for organizations to make marketing and sales more relevant, focused, and effective. However, to apprehend the benefits, it’s important to measure what matters.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is account-based marketing success measured?
To measure account-based marketing success, here are some important ways:
Understand targeted accounts and needs
Regularly check content analytics statistics
Account engagement
Rate of interactions
Amount of in-depth conversations
Conversion metrics
Sales cycle lengths
What are excellent ABM metrics?
Awareness, engagement, conversion, and outcome are some of the excellent ABM metrics. Putting them together, a business can arrive at a complete set of elementary account-based marketing metrics and attracts more customers.
How are ABM campaigns measured?
The value of your ABM campaigns is scaled by the lifetime value of each targeted accounts. When measuring these, elements such as customer retention, awareness, reach, pipeline velocity, and influence are responsible for making an ABM program successful.
What are key metrics in marketing?
The various key metrics in marketing are:
Viewership metrics
Lead-based metrics
Engagement metrics
Pre-sales metrics
Post-sales metrics
Conversion metrics
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ABM Accounts
Article | July 13, 2022
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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ABM Accounts
Article | May 26, 2022
Intent is an indicator that an account is interested in a certain topic, based on the content consumption of people within an organization. I know that sounds a bit abstract, so let’s look at how it actually works. Let’s say that Gio is looking at some content on marketing attribution. Gio is a Marketing Operations Specialist at Whale Enterprises, and he’s considering buying some new software. Gio’s research is creating intent data that can be tracked by intent providers, who can then let marketing attribution providers know that Whale Enterprises is showing intent to buy a marketing attribution solution.
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Buyer Intent Data
Article | June 20, 2023
Discover the key to enhancing marketing expertise through a carefully curated selection of top buyer intent data books to create effective targeted and customer-centric marketing campaigns.
In the dynamic marketing world, achieving a competitive edge requires a deep understanding of buyer intent data. Businesses can gain invaluable insights into their target audience's preferences, needs, and motivations by deciphering the intricacies of buyer intent. With the ability to unlock valuable insights into consumer preferences and behaviors, buyer intent data empowers businesses to create targeted and effective marketing strategies.
This article presents a curated selection of expert-level books that will empower businesses and marketers to master buyer intent data and optimize their marketing strategies. As the marketing landscape continues to evolve rapidly, businesses and marketers must explore the top books that delve into this subject matter and assist them in creating customized strategies, enhancing customer experiences, and driving meaningful business outcomes.
1. Total Customer Growth: Win and Grow Customers for Life with ABM and ABX
Author: Adam Turinas and Ben Person
A comprehensive guide, Total Customer Growth: Win and Grow Customers for Life with ABM and ABX, unveils the power of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and Account-Based Experience (ABX) in driving long-term customer growth and loyalty. Authored by industry experts Adam Turinas and Ben Person, the book offers a strategic framework for businesses to adopt a holistic approach toward building a sustainable, long-term business model. It also explains in detail how-to guides, strategic rationales, examples, and references to online resources.
2. No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls: The Next Generation of Account-Based Sales and Marketing
Author: Latané Conant
No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls: The Next Generation of Account-Based Sales and Marketing by Latané Conant is a groundbreaking book that revolutionizes traditional sales and marketing approaches by introducing a forward-thinking strategy for account-based success. It delivers an enlightening and engaging guide for salespeople and marketers on how to use technology to identify prospects and place them at the center of all they do. Conant, an esteemed industry expert, reveals strategies for building a tech stack that prioritizes their customers and ways for chief marketing officers to stop playing defense and go on offense.
3. Innovative B2B Marketing: New Models, Processes and Theory
Author: Simon Hall
With extensive expertise and profound industry insights, Simon Hall introduces readers to avant-garde strategies, cutting-edge models, and transformative processes that challenge conventional B2B marketing practices in his book, Innovative B2B Marketing: New Models, Processes and Theory. The book goes beyond the ordinary, offering practical examples, real-world case studies, and theoretical frameworks that empower marketing professionals to embrace creativity, adaptability, and customer-centricity in their B2B endeavors. It is an indispensable resource for marketing practitioners, strategists, and visionary leaders seeking to redefine the boundaries of B2B marketing and take their organizations to new heights of success.
4. Revenue Operations: A New Way to Align Sales & Marketing, Monetize Data, and Ignite Growth
Author: Stephen G. Diorio and Chris K. Hummel
Authored by renowned experts Stephen G. Diorio and Chris K. Hummel, Revenue Operations: A New Way to Align Sales & Marketing, Monetize Data, and Ignite Growth introduces the concept of Revenue Operations (RevOps) as a transformative strategy for organizations. It explains in detail how to connect the dots across an increasingly complex technology ecosystem to simplify selling and accelerate revenue expansion. This essential read is a compass for executives, sales and marketing professionals, and business leaders aiming to unlock their organization's full potential and achieve sustained success in today's dynamic marketplace.
5. Account-Based Growth: Unlocking Sustainable Value Through Extraordinary Customer Focus
Author: Bev Burgess and Tim Shercliff
A groundbreaking guide, Account-Based Growth: Unlocking Sustainable Value Through Extraordinary Customer Focus, explores the transformative power of account-based growth strategies in the realm of business-to-business (B2B) marketing. Drawing on their extensive expertise and real-world experiences, Bev Burgess and Tim Shercliff provide a robust framework for businesses to align their marketing, sales, customer success and executives around the customers. Each element of the framework is brought to life through viewpoints from industry experts and case studies from leading organizations, including Accenture, Fujitsu, Infosys, SAP, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Telstra.
6. Customer Data Platforms: Use People Data to Transform the Future of Marketing Engagement
Author: Martin Kihn and Christopher B. O'Hara
Authored by industry experts, Martin Kihn and Christopher B. O'Hara, Customer Data Platforms: Use People Data to Transform the Future of Marketing Engagement delves into the transformative capabilities of customer data platforms (CDPs) and their profound impact on marketing strategies. The book offers a deep understanding of CDPs and explains how to use AI and machine learning to drive the future of personalization. With this knowledge, marketers can create a data-driven culture that puts customers at the center and craft personalized and targeted campaigns that resonate with their audience, fostering meaningful connections and driving long-term loyalty.
7. Transforming the B2B Buyer Journey: Maximize Brand Value, Improve Conversion Rates and Build Loyalty
Author: Antonia Wade
Transforming the B2B Buyer Journey: Maximize Brand Value, Improve Conversion Rates, And Build Loyalty is a compelling and insightful book that illuminates the path to revolutionizing the B2B buyer journey. Written by an award-winning Chief Marketing Officer, Antonia Wade, the book provides a step-by-step guide to mapping the buyer journey, metrics, aligning channels, and tactics according to their needs at each stage. With a keen focus on the buyer's journey, the book provides practical insights and real-world examples of how to reengineer marketing's relationship with sales and develop marketing as a real lever for business growth.
Conclusion
As marketing continues to evolve, mastering buyer intent data is crucial for marketers aiming to succeed in 2023 and beyond. The curated list of expert-level books provides valuable insights, strategies, and frameworks to help marketers effectively harness buyer intent data's power. Marketers can tailor their strategies, enhance customer experiences, and drive meaningful business outcomes by understanding the nuances of buyer intent.
Armed with this knowledge, they can create highly tailored and engaging campaigns that resonate with customers on a profound level, ultimately driving increased brand affinity, customer loyalty, and revenue growth. Immerse in these top books and unlock the potential of buyer intent data to propel your marketing expertise to new heights.
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