Account Based Data
Article | August 19, 2022
In 2018, Demand Gen Report’s ABM Benchmark Survey found that 25% of participating B2B companies used buyer intent data and monitoring tools. 35% of them planned on using intent data within a year. Cut to 2022, and about 99% of B2B marketers are using some form of B2B intent data in their marketing campaigns to target accounts (Source: InboxInsight).
In his exclusive interview with Media 7, Gil Allouche, CEO of Metadata.io, talked about how data helps convert leads.
“With access to valuable data, marketers are focused on leads that are more likely to become buyers. They can also work on targeting their messaging towards these potential buyers.”
Buyer intent data helps in creating a robust foundation for your marketing efforts. Let us look at how intent marketing can help you get the sales and ROI you desire.
Intent Marketing: The New Normal in B2B
Intent-based marketing uses consumer data that signals purchasing intent through consumption of relevant content like blogs and infographics; product comparisons; product reviews; message boards; case studies; and news. Through this data, you can find out what your prospects are looking for, which stage of the customer journey they are in, if they are researching solutions or ready to make a purchase, and what kind of steps you can take to get in front of them.
One of the most important benefits of intent marketing is that it removes the guesswork out of your marketing campaigns and ensures that you are targeting the correct prospects. This targeting can be done through either intent-based branding or intent-based marketing. Intent-based branding decodes the behavior of your target audience online while intent-based marketing harnesses data on the prospect’s buying behavior so you can tailor your marketing offerings accordingly. Consequently, your sales cycle is shortened.
Power-up Your Content Strategy
The biggest challenge B2B marketers like you face today is to cut through all the noise and create an impact on their prospects. Consumers have a host of content options. However, they do not want to consume unnecessary information. When the content is personalized to match their needs and goals, they are more likely to engage with it. Intent data helps you plan your content as it provides you with information on the theme, buyer personas and their behavior, buyer journey maps, content formats, copy, call to action (CTA), and keyword strategy that will best suit your prospect targeting efforts.
An intent-based content strategy can deliver leads while increasing conversion rates and sales. It can give you the competitive edge you need to influence your prospects at the right time.
Drive Sales and ROI
Intent marketing brings in more conversions on landing pages and overall higher traffic and qualified leads to your website. It uses intent information to recruit engaged prospects for sales demos and events. It helps sales teams to effectively rank their leads and accounts so that they can focus on the right leads at the right time and not miss out on any sales opportunities. Your sales teams can execute effective nurture campaigns and create sales pitches with messaging that appeals to a target account’s buying committee. This messaging addresses the account’s pain points and requirements and accelerates the buying decision.
Additionally, intent marketing helps improve customer retention rates and makes it easy for teams to identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities. It takes into consideration the existing customers’ signals to find any at-risk accounts to prevent churn and increase renewal.
Data-driven Marketing Personalization
Intent data makes it easy to personalize your marketing efforts and provides an accurate report of prospective signals, their needs, and interests so that you can segment and categorize them. Once this segmentation is done, you can determine what kind of content needs to be created and displayed for these accounts depending on their position in the buying cycle. With this kind of personalization, your target audience gets to know that you care about them and you can connect with them on a deeper level.
Increase ABM Efficiency
B2B buyer intent data helps your marketing, sales, and customer success teams align their goals so that they can agree on target accounts, establish lead hand-off processes, and diversify investments to target newer, relevant accounts while maintaining the current customer list. Intent data provides marketing intelligence for creating ICP in marketing, messaging, and brand positions for B2B account-based marketing. Additionally, it provides account intelligence for target account list creation, ways to increase engagement, improve lead scoring in ABM and lead nurturing tracks, thus increasing the efficiency of your account-based marketing.
Summing It Up
Intent-based marketing helps B2B marketers like you to understand potential customers so you can find high-value accounts and nurture them through customized content and targeted campaigns.
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Buyer Intent Data
Article | September 11, 2023
Are you thinking about ditching your revenue team’s creaky, ineffective sales approach and embracing ABM … but aren’t sure of what you need to know? You’ve found the right blog post.
Today, we’re providing some mind-blowing highlights from a recent webinar hosted by Kerry Cunningham, our Senior Principal of Product Marketing.
The webinar unpacked what matters most for launching an effective ABM program and offers actionable tips for sales and marketing teams. It’s well worth a watch. But if you’re short on time, here are some insights. Kerry started the webinar by sharing some hard truths about the state of selling:
Hard Truth #1: If They’re a Lead, You May Be Too Late
B2B sales used to be all about leads. Even now, many revenue teams lean heavily into the lead-based mindset. But the emergence of Account-Based Marketing brought many revelations to revenue teams, including that account opportunities are far more important than individual leads.
When you turn your (obsessive) attention from solo buyers and instead examine the full spectrum of interest or intent that an entire organization is expressing in your solution, you’re able to dramatically increase the quantity and quality of your sales intelligence.
Without this analysis, your team won’t be aware that buyers are conducting so much research on their own that by the time your team determines that they’re an early-stage “lead,” they may in fact be much farther down the buyer’s journey than expected.
Your team plays catchup after that, putting them at a competitive advantage.
Hard Truth #2: B2B Buyers Aren’t Even ‘Buyers’ Anymore
These days, buyers are no longer individuals, but rather teams of people. On average, buying teams often include 10 people, Kerry explained.
“Not everybody involved in the buying process is going to be sitting at the table at the end of that last meeting when they sign the deal,” Kerry said, “but all of those folks are doing some research.”
How big are these teams? From the webinar’s transcript:
Kerry: “For bigger deals, there may be as many as 20 or more people involved. And again, all of those folks are having interactions. In fact, Forrester Research did a study recently that showed that on average, post-pandemic, buyers are having 27 interactions each. So when you have 10 people or 20 people, and they’re having 20-something interactions each, that adds up.”
But there’s an upside to all this activity, Kerry said. As buyers conduct research, they leave behind digital “breadcrumb trails” or “footprints in the snow” across the internet.
Sellers armed with leading account engagement technologies can track, aggregate and de-anonymize these intent signals. ABM tools help them better understand the buyers’ research and buying processes.
Hard Truth #3: You Might Deal with Multiple Buying Teams
Depending on the scope of your solution’s capabilities, your sellers may contend with more than one buying team.
Here’s an example: Let’s say a company is looking for a solution to handle the needs of many departments or divisions. Each division may task its own buyer or buying team to conduct its own research to find solutions that effectively solves its own business problems.
If your solution can serve the needs of multiple divisions, your revenue team is in a good position, especially if your team can proactively identify the divisions’ unique needs. (Account engagement platforms do a great job of this.)
However, don’t assume that your solution can be everything to every division, Kerry warned.
Kerry: “If you sell multiple solutions — say you’re a big tech company and you have three, four, five solutions — you may be selling to multiple buying centers. But those buying centers may not all be great prospects for your solution. So take into account the fact that some of the buying centers inside those specific accounts may or may not be good prospects for you.”
Hard Truth #4: Buyers Think They Know Everything About Your Solution (But Actually Don’t)
Many buyers believe they can get all the information they need about your solution (and your competitors) exclusively through online research, Kerry said. This is super-convenient for buyers, but sellers can’t fully control the narrative. That leads to big problems.
Kerry: “Not all the information that they get is going to be accurate. It certainly may not be how you’d like to present yourself. So one of the things that’s really important is you have to understand how your buyers are finding out about you.”
This requires identifying other likely sources of information — such as content from competitors or unreliable analysts — and proactively engaging buyers with data and talking points that counter this misinformation.
Conclusion
Pivoting to an account-based approach isn’t always easy, especially for revenue teams that are entrenched in a older sales approaches. But making the change to ABM can revolutionize your business, Kerry said.
“Within the first year, 6sense clients who take all of these new techniques on board are able to produce substantially better results, bigger deal sizes, better win rates, and even shorter sales cycles,” Kerry said. “This is really the way B2B ought to be done.”
We’ve covered a few hard truths in this post, but come back tomorrow for Part 2 of this series. We’ll provide some helpful and actionable ABM tips then.
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Account Based Analytics
Article | August 3, 2022
Many marketers define ABM as good B2B marketing. Targeting the right accounts at the right time with an appropriate message is the golden aim of account-based marketing (ABM). ABM ensures not only reach but also accuracy.
In an interview with Media 7, Ryan Phelan, Marketing Chief / Fractional CMO at Origin Email, talked about the importance of ABM technology and the challenges in marketing after the COVID-19 pandemic began.
"B2B companies should adopt ABM technology to level up their communications and react quickly."
ABM technology enables marketers to hit pipeline and revenue targets swiftly while working alongside sales teams.
Salesforce provides ABM automation to its clients using AI Einstein technology in their Customer Success Platform. But what does Salesforce’s ABM platform look like? How are they finding accounts that need a sophisticated AI-run ABM marketing platform?
How Salesforce Created Its ABM Program
Salesforce considered B2B buyer behavior (purchase intent and engagement) to deliver a solid marketing and sales experience for each of its strategic accounts. Accordingly, it took the following steps to kick-start its ABM program:
Defining ABM
Salesforce ABM marketing team handles campaigns that target 300 or fewer accounts.
An ABM program can have many approaches. It can be 1: Many, 1: Few, or 1:1. The smaller the radius of the process, the more hyper-focused the campaign, content, budget, and customer journeys are.
By simply aligning their approach strategy with defined ABM, Salesforce achieved larger deal sizes, higher sales win rates, higher ROI, and faster revenue growth compared to other marketing strategies. It suitably approached accounts that it thought were high value and showed buyer intent for their products and services.
Choosing a Suitable Account-based Platform
Salesforce was aware that it would have to engage a variety of vendors and platforms to run its ABM program smoothly. It had to go beyond building a foundation for its program. For that, it needed dedicated tools and resources. Without account-based partners that could provide them with these tools and resources,it would be difficult to implement their program. They chose RollWorks as their account-based partner, to set up their ABM program.
Putting Together a Dedicated Team to Ensure ABM Program’s Success
Creating a single team to support and execute the ABM program was crucial before launching the ABM campaigns Salesforce had planned. They had teams who knew what ABM was all about; they even ran campaigns in silos. So, Salesforce pooled its ABM resources and formed a single team to carry out ABM-related operations.
Identifying Strategic Target Accounts
With the support of technology, Salesforce validated the list of target accounts and filtered out accounts that weren’t such a good fit using their first-party data. They made sure they looked at all the possible data they had, including third-party, so there was no scope for error. As a result, they had a list of high-value accounts with an ideal customer profile (ICP).
Engaging the Target Accounts
After the target accounts were identified, Salesforce ran campaigns of highly customized content for each stage of the sales journey to entice prospects. Once the prospects entered the sales pipeline, hyper-personalized messages, ads, and emailers were sent to them using AI.
Using Data for Continued Engagement
Salesforce ABM campaigns used all available data to create new or repurpose existing content assets like customer stories, consultation forms, research reports, and blog posts to nurture the leads at every stage.
Cultivating Customer Relationships
Using a specially created ABM dashboard, Salesforce monitored its campaign results to understand which content its leads engaged with the most. Then, it removed the content that did not generate engagement to streamline engagement with previous unengaged leads. The secret was to create humane content that didn’t have buzzwords, consistently maintain brand voice and tone, and make special content that the leads could resonate with.
Educating and engaging the leads increased the deal sizes and customer lifetime value. Holistic reporting helped them evolve their ABM strategy continuously.
By creating a robust ABM program that took care of its targeting accounts’ evolving needs, pain points, and expectations, Salesforce saw a 24 percent faster revenue growth and an 87 percent higher ROI.
How Salesforce Got a 30 Percent Close Rate by Using ABM Technology
While promoting their Boston World Tour Series, Salesforce used ABM campaigns to get registrations. One out of their fourtarget accounts engaged with their content, and an average of five contacts per account engaged with them. In six weeks, they got in touch with 410 target accounts, of which 110 engaged with them. They achieved a 30 percent close rate for their campaign.
Creating an ABM Program like Salesforce
Salesforce has come a long way by using ABM technology to expand its offerings. It has AI-powered products, tools, and services that provide ABM automation to other companies. For example, their ABM Salesforce Marketing Cloud product has helped brands like Herman Miller achieve a 200% increase in their email revenue.
To create an effective ABM program like Salesforce, you can use their steps as a blueprint. These steps apply to all kinds of businesses, but if you still don’t know how and where to start, find the answers to the following questions to comprehend what you can do next:
Do you think ABM is right for your business?
Are there any customer accounts that require special attention?
Can your business fund expert consultation for ABM and eventually an ABM program?
Once you find the answers to the above questions, you can take your first step towards building an effective ABM program that can help you scale your business.
Conclusion
ABM technology is revolutionizing B2B marketing by harnessing AI and targeted approaches, personalization, and automation using high-quality intent data. Implementing an effective ABM strategy is crucial to driving ROIs and growth.
FAQ
How does ABM differ from a traditional lead generation marketing strategy?
ABM helps you target high-value accounts with hyper-personalized content, instead of presenting generic content to unclassified accounts.
What is an ABM platform?
An ABM platform is a technology that helps marketers run their ABM programs at scale.
Why is ABM important in your marketing efforts?
With the help of ABM, marketers may be able to shorten their sales cycle, increase their marketing involvement in the sales funnel, and achieve a high ROI.
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Core ABM
Article | December 24, 2021
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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