At this month’s B2B Marketing ABM Conference, Kirsty Dawe revealed and rated four piece of tech Really B2B has been using to change the game when it comes to personalisation on its ABM campaigns
Personalisation is a crucial element of all account-based marketing. After all, if the content’s not personalised, it’s not really ABM.
“ABM is not just saying ‘I want to focus my existing campaigns on those accounts and do it more intensely’, it’s how do you make them as personalised as possible,” says Really B2B MD Kirsty Dawe.
Why is personalisation so important to ABM?
Kirsty has figures that speak for themselves:
- 5-15% increase in revenues
- Up to 30% increase in marketing spend efficiency
- 88% of B2B marketers expect a personalised experience
- 49% of B2B marketers say personalised content is their most effective ABM channel
Personalisation is just as important for customer experience as it is for customer acquisition, she says, working at three levels.
- Recognition and engagement. Do you know who I am, what’s important to me and what I’ve done?
- Nurture through the buyer journey. Are you teaching me something new? Are you making it easy for me, i.e. serving the content that’s relevant to me based on what you know about me now? Are you reassuring me with the right case studies and brands that look like me, and directing me to the right areas based on who I am?
- Create a great customer experience. Does my communication look different from that of other customers so it feels really relevant?
At the recent B2B Marketing ABM Conference Kirsty highlighted four pieces of technology the agency has been using, and revealed the impact these tools have had on the campaigns it’s been running.
But before she did, she raised two warnings.
“Personalisation starts with the data – I can’t labour this point enough,” she said “If you don’t have all of the insight on the prospects you’re going after in your ABM campaigns, you can’t personalise effectively.”
And personalisation must go deeper than simply using pictures of men on building sites for a campaign targeting construction companies.
“I urge you to work with your sales teams and third-party providers to get as much insight as possible, both on a business and personal level, so when starting on the journey you have that idea what they’re like, what they’re needs, challenges and drivers are – not making the investment in technology first.”
The other cautionary note she put forward was despite all these personalization efforts half of all prospects you target will bypass your carefully curated journeys and just go straight to your website.
4 game-changing account based marketing personalisation tools
1. Webeo
Webeo is a web personalization tool that can provide prospects with a bespoke experience tailored to them when they visit your site.
“The reason I feel so passionately about this is we spend significant budget creating these wonderfully personalised ABM campaigns for clients – but that fact 50% of people go to the website direct, they’re getting this awful vanilla experience,” Kirsty says.
Webeo allows you to replicate that personalised campaign experience on your site. This works for both one-to-many ABM, and even one-to-one prospects.
Ease of use:
8/10
Impact:
10/10
Budget impact:
££/£££££
There is a monthly fee, but you get return very quickly. Really B2B has seen a 20% increase in dwell time plus a much higher form completion conversion rate.
2. Crystal
Previously known as Crystal Knows, this tool uses DISC profiling to help give you a greater understanding of your prospects. It analyses social profiles and social behaviour, to advise on what language, subject lines and approach to use in your response to them.
It’s great for one-to-one campaigns, says Kirsty. Also, sales teams love the insights it comes up with.
Ease of use:
8/10
Impact:
4/10
Budget impact:
£/£££££
The real investment here is in the time taken to use the insights
3. Movable Ink
More commonly used in the B2C world, this allows you to personalise all elements of your HTML emails for every prospect, meaning everyone on your database could receive a completely individual email.
Kirsty admits that at Really B2B they tend to use highly-personalised plain text emails rather than HTML for ABM, but this can be used to change imagery, content and links, and tailored based on firmographics, job function and funnel stage.
Ease of use:
6/10
Impact:
8/10
Budget impact:
££££/£££££
You need to invest in the platform, and then there is an additional CPM.
4. Radiate B2B
This tool allows you to use digital display ads to target ABM prospects at the right place and right time. You can also target businesses at functions level – it reads content prospects are consuming and identifies functions are most likely to read that particular content.
Ease of use:
8/10
Impact:
8/10
Budget impact:
££/£££££
There is a minimum spend, but you can test with this and you aren’t committed
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