Core ABM
GlobeNewswire | January 25, 2024
Seeding and harvesting the sales pipeline — the process of acquiring, capturing, qualifying and converting business opportunities — are essential to the growth and profitability of B2B marketers across every industry and geographic sector. Marketing is largely responsible for driving this business process, yet nearly two-thirds of lead gen and engagement strategies are underperforming.
A new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council report, produced in collaboration with WM America, entitled “Fire Up Your Revenue Generation Engine,” covers critical aspects of lead generation and engagement. This includes models and metrics for tracking and measuring performance, best practice demand-gen execution, ways to score effectiveness, and more.
The latest CMO Council research finds scores of marketers falling behind in lead scoring, account-based marketing, accelerated pipeline, and intention-based marketing. Key findings from a Q4 survey of over 170 B2B marketing, sales, revenue, growth, demand gen and campaign execution leaders include:
63% say marketing must own and optimize a company’s revenue-generation engine
64% say their lead gen and engagement strategy underperforms
78% of highly evolved marketers are satisfied with their accelerated pipeline, compared to only 15% of lesser evolved marketers
“In today’s competitive data-driven environment, marketers should no longer be satisfied with paltry returns on their sizable lead-gen and ABM investments,” the report notes. “It’s time to turn the tables on inefficient, ineffective, and outdated practices for anticipating, adapting, and responding to customer needs and opportunities.”
“Marketers must climb the evolutionary ladder and leave behind outmoded and dated practices,” notes CMO Council executive director, Donovan Neale-May. “Using AI-derived, intention-based buyer data and advanced sales intelligence are among the ways growth marketers bring more precision, predictability, and performance to B2B account marketing investments.”
The CMO Council’s research revealed the top five skill sets contributing to improved ABM-driven business outcomes:
Better segmentation and precision targeting of buyers and influencers
On-demand customer business intelligence and personal buyer insights
Tighter integration of demand gen, channel, direct sales, and support teams
Greater utilization of tools and data sources for richer prospect profiling
Proactive and timely pre-sales follow up and cultivation strategies
The CMO Council has uncovered widening gaps in performance between highly evolved marketers and lesser evolved marketers. Gaps are occurring in four core capabilities: lead scoring, account-based marketing, accelerated pipeline, and intention-based marketing.
This report tiers factors that make up a model for better identification, engagement and conversion. The model coincides with the CMO Council and WM America’s thought leadership initiative to advance lead revenue science practices through a certified Lead Evaluation and Assurance Process, or LEAP model. “Marketers will need to take a few LEAPs of faith in the coming months, because sticking to the status quo is just not practical or possible anymore. As data becomes more critical than ever before, CMOs need to extend their visions for innovation and forward-thinking strategies,” according to Lee Salem, WM America’s Vice President of Sales.
Methodology
The report is based on a survey of over 170 heads of B2B marketing, sales, revenue, growth, demand gen and campaign execution in Q4 2023. It also included content from in-depth interviews with executives from Netline, Autodesk, T-Mobile, NTT, ABM Consortium, TechTarget, IBM, B2B Marketing, Reachdesk, Momentum ITSMA, and Xometry.
About the CMO Council
The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council’s 16,000+ members control more than $1 trillion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include over 65,000 global marketing and sales executives in over 110 countries covering multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The Council’s strategic interest groups include the Customer Experience Board, Digital Marketing Performance Center, Brand Inspiration Center, Marketing Supply Chain Institute, GeoBranding Center, and the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE). To learn more, visit https://www.cmocouncil.org.
About WM America
WM America is a leading B2B marketing company specializing in targeted in-market demand generation. The intent database at WMA tracks the intent behavior of over 75 million business professionals globally, 24X7. The database is segmented into 3,300 categories. WMA keeps around-the-clock track of buying signals from each category in this database. Based on this extremely strong foundation of data points, the company delivers precisely targeted prospects for focused marketing. Accurate keyword search enables deriving of active content consumption and opt-in content downloads. WMA's deep search ensures accurate and targeted information delivery that helps craft successful, cutting-edge marketing strategies. For more information, visit www.wmamerica.com
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ABM Accounts
Business Wire | January 12, 2024
Bloomreach, the platform fueling limitless e-commerce experiences, today announced Bloomreach Discovery will continue to power product discovery for Sonepar, the global world leader in B-to-B distribution of electrical products, solutions, and related services, as the companies renew their existing partnership. With Bloomreach Discovery’s AI-driven search and merchandising capabilities, Sonepar enables customers around the world to find what they want to buy — when, where, and how they want.
“Sonepar is pleased to partner with Bloomreach as we continue to pursue our next stage of digital transformation,” said Fabrice del Aguila, SVP Digital Factory, Sonepar. “We look forward to leveraging Bloomreach’s expertise in product discovery as we become the first global B2B electrical distributor in the world to offer the best omnichannel experience to all our customers.”
Sonepar leverages Bloomreach Discovery to drive personalized experiences across its omnichannel platform. Using rich data to refine search results, Bloomreach Discovery helps customers easily discover the products they want. It also accounts for a range of attributes and quantitative search queries, creating a search experience that is not only personalized, but personalized to the unique needs of B-to-B buyers.
“We’re thrilled to continue our partnership with Sonepar,” said Jordan Roper, General Manager and Head of Product, Bloomreach Discovery. “The B-to-B space has so much to gain from digital transformation, and Sonepar is a leader in making that transformation a reality. We’re proud to join them on this journey and look forward to continuing to support their omnichannel experience with the fast ROI and relevance of Bloomreach Discovery.”
Learn more about how Bloomreach Discovery and Sonepar are working together to drive success.
About Bloomreach
Bloomreach personalizes the e-commerce experience. Its data engine unifies real-time customer and product data so businesses understand what customers really want. By connecting that understanding to every channel, the e-commerce experience becomes limitless — reflecting a changing customer as they shop. Amplified by the speed and scale of Loomi, Bloomreach's AI for e-commerce, this creates endless new paths to purchase, greater profitability, and fast business growth. Bloomreach products include: Engagement, a marketing automation platform; Discovery, an e-commerce search solution; Content, a headless CMS; and Clarity, AI-powered conversational shopping. The company has multiple AI patents and serves 850+ global brands including: Albertsons, Bosch, Puma, and Marks & Spencer.
About Sonepar
Sonepar is an independent family-owned company with global market leadership in B-to-B distribution of electrical products, solutions and related services. Through a dense network of brands spanning 40 countries, the Group has an ambitious transformation agenda to become the first global B-to-B electrical distributor to provide a fully digitalized and synchronized omnichannel experience to all customers. Drawing on the skill and passion of its 44,000 associates, Sonepar had sales of €32.4 billion in 2022. www.sonepar.com
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Buyer Intent Data
PRWeb | January 11, 2024
Integrate, a leading B2B marketing demand management platform, today announced the launch of Pipeline360, its media arm that offers an all-in-one integrated media solution for content syndication, account intelligence enhancement, and digital advertising. Pipeline360 incorporates what was previously known as the Integrate Lead Generation Marketplace with multichannel, full-funnel, global campaign management, including real-time analytics, lead validation and standardization, and enhanced segmentation.
In "The 2024 State of B2B Pipeline Growth" survey conducted by Pipeline360 and Demand Metric, 80% of B2B marketers report getting new qualified leads is mission critical or an urgent priority, yet 53% of B2B marketers report not being able to meet their pipeline goals. Additionally, an overwhelming 93% of B2B marketers say that data compliance and accuracy is a priority at their company.
"This gap in marketers' ability to meet pipeline goals underscores the complex intersection of challenges B2B marketers face today - budget constraints alongside rising targets, a convergence of brand and demand, all while facing heightened scrutiny on data privacy," said Jeremy Bloom, co-founder and CEO of Integrate. "We developed Pipeline360 to provide our customers with a flexible solution that makes it easy and seamless to generate a robust pipeline enriched with high quality leads. This complements our SaaS platform's capability to connect, govern, and measure performance across multiple demand channels."
"The 2024 State of B2B Pipeline Growth" survey found that the #1 challenge in marketing today is budget constraints (50%) followed by economic slowdown (40%) and impossible targets (32%). In response, B2B companies are adapting to fewer resources by consolidating teams and/or job responsibilities (79%), cutting travel budgets (33%), and relying on agencies (33%).
The survey also found that 61% of B2B marketers who use content syndication were able to reach their goals as compared to 45% for those who do not use content syndication.
However, the survey also found that 37% of respondents have not considered using content syndication for lead generation, 38% don't know what content syndication is, and 35% don't understand how it works.
"These data suggest that more than a third of B2B marketers are not maximizing the tools and channels available to them, and by not leveraging the power of content syndication, advanced display advertising, and a full-funnel approach, they're losing out on pipeline and revenue," said Tony Uphoff, President, Pipeline360. "That's why we created Pipeline360 - to support marketers to maximize the value of a multichannel approach, bring their brand and demand efforts together, and drive marketing pipeline in a scalable, compliant, and predictable way."
"The 2024 State of B2B Pipeline Growth" was conducted with global research and advisory firm, Demand Metric and surveyed 400+ B2B marketers across North America and the UK. The questions were fielded in Q4 of 2023 to unveil key challenges, investments, and priorities for demand marketers.
To learn more about "The 2024 State of B2B Pipeline Growth," please visit our blog, "B2B Marketing Trends: The Realities of B2B Marketing Pipeline Growth in 2024." To learn more about Pipeline360, please visit www.pipeline-360.com.
About Pipeline360
Powered by Integrate, a leading B2B marketing solutions provider, Pipeline360 solutions combine three powerful demand generation tools: targeted display, content syndication, and a comprehensive marketplace model. Pipeline360 ensures that marketers achieve 100% compliant and marketable leads by effectively engaging with audiences much earlier in the buying cycle, connecting with buyers at every stage of the process, and optimizing programs to drive performance.
Pipeline360 enables a strategic, holistic demand generation approach tailored for the reality of today's B2B purchasing process. Customers include high-growth and enterprise organizations like Salesforce, Cisco, Dell, and VMware. For more information, please visit www.pipeline-360.com.
About Integrate
Integrate offers a cross-channel demand management SaaS platform for enterprise B2B demand and marketing operations teams. Integrate accelerates speed-to-business value through powerful integrations, delivers 100% marketable and compliant leads with trusted governance, and provides AI-powered insights to enhance and expedite smart decision-making. Integrate works with high-growth and enterprise organizations like Salesforce, Microsoft, Akamai, and Pluralsight to power their B2B marketing strategies. For more information, visit www.integrate.com or engage with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, X and Instagram.
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