Molly Raycraft discusses when’s the right time to buy technology to support your ABM efforts, which tech to pick and how much you should be putting aside for it.
ABM technology has developed a reputation as being ‘untrue’ to the ethos of account-based marketing. Sceptics feel it takes out the essential human aspect, replacing it with cold automation.
More suspicions mount when tech vendors share lofty tales of an ABM tech utopia, which don’t meet reality. Furthermore, some companies have been taken-in by the vendor’s spiel too soon and invested in ABM tech before their programme is properly established. Unsurprisingly these programmes can plummet from the weight of this heavy investment and resulting expectations.
While all you need during the early-stages of ABM is time, good people, and an Excel spreadsheet, bringing in technology at the right place and time (particularly when scaling) can really boost your efforts.
This article will help you understand when to use ABM technology, what kind of tech you should be looking at, and how much it’s going to set you back.
When should I use technology in my account-based marketing programme?
ABM technology has a place among all styles of delivery, from one-to-one to one-to-few, and one-to-many, but it best serves the latter. Think of using technology in a lightly personalised way to warm up accounts before they’re ready to move onto a more intensive ABM method. With the use of technology, large numbers of accounts can be nurtured with an approach that has elements of ABM but also automation. Once these accounts have warmed up they’ll be moved into a cluster of one-to-one or one-to-few ABM accounts, depending on their value.
Enigma Marketing’s award-winning ABM programme for the cyber security company Symantec demonstrates this perfectly. They used technology to target a whopping 1500 accounts, by segmenting data into three core personas (business, technology, operations), and three streams, targeting the accounts through different stages of the customer journey.
To keep ABM’s personalised approach (which is the most impressive bit of this campaign), they took a method that Martin Simcock, founder of Enigma compared to the Subway food menu. The sandwich chain provides a choice of seven breads, two sizes, 19 filling options, cheese or no cheese, and 64 salad variations. That adds up to 272,348 potential sandwich combinations before even considering grilling or not grilling and sauces, explains Martin.
Enigma proposed a generic ‘ABM sandwich menu’, which consists of nine vertical markets, two sub sectors, eight personas, six messaging variations (for sub-sectors), 14 unique assets, three asset variants and six languages. This creates 217,728 options to choose to give those 1500 accounts a deeper personalised experience than what they’d receive with classic automation.
On Symantec’s programme, the ABM sandwich was tailored to meet the size and sectors of its customer base (shown below). It resulted in the company having 5030 variables to target accounts with. The campaign used Eloqua and LinkedIn to track and schedule activity.
This approach works because realistically you’re not going to be able to conduct one-to-one on 100 accounts, let alone 1500. “It’s completely impossible to target and personalise at that one-to-one level,” says Martin.
What kind of technology should I be thinking about? And where does it fit on the customer journey?
I don’t need to tell you how many pieces of martech are out there. You know. And you’ve probably spent ages looking blankly at the chiefmartec map without being any closer to a decision.
It’s important to get the right products that suit your ABM ambition, customer journeys and your existing martech stack. For Kirsty Dawe, MD at Really B2B, getting the right tech for ABM has meant segmenting the activities within a campaign and the technologies that should be active in each of them. In the case of Really B2B those are ‘identify’, ‘create and connect’ and ‘convert’. It’s chosen technologies that resolve the different challenges each of those activities encounter.
1. The identify technology
When identifying who to target, Kirsty sees the main challenges as the size of the decision-making unit; the larger it is, the more difficult it is to locate the important decision-makers. This also makes investing in the right contacts difficult, and doesn’t help with the added challenge of an overarching cynicism from the sales team.
To bust these challenges, Kirsty suggests using tools such as:
- Zoominfo: Essentially a CRM system where you can store information about accounts, and search for them. This tool lets you run ABM campaigns.
- DiscoverOrg: The parent company of Zoominfo, which conducts lead generation and finds decision-makers from data.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator: A tool for LinkedIn which allows you to contact people through InMail and company networks, as well as add notes and receive sales updates on accounts.
- Mintigo: A predictive marketing platform that uses data to recommend your next steps with accounts.
- Bombora: An intent data platform that allows you to see which businesses are researching topics connected to your company.
2. The create and connect technology
When conducting ‘create and connect’ activities, a big hurdle is delivering messages that are relevant to the accounts you’re targeting, as well as speaking to them in the right way. Most marketers will also have to contend with continued scepticism from the sales team on the value of ABM in doing this.
For these challenges, Kirsty suggests using tools such as:
- Crystal: Probably better known as Crystal Knows, this AI personality platform analyses your account contacts against data points and tells you their personality. For example: how quickly they make decisions or how they like to receive content.
- Turtl: A content marketing platform that allows you to create interactive and measurable ‘e-books-like’ content.
- Radiate B2B: An ABM platform to help marketers conduct a programme at scale by tailoring online ads and showing where and when accounts are interacting.
3. The convert technology
When you see the home-run, you’ll be looking to convert. However, this isn’t time to relax because you’re still likely to face difficulties, such as using the right metrics and continuing to ensure you’re in contact with the right people.
For this, Kirsty recommends using technology such as:
- Webeo: A platform used to personalise your website depending on who is visiting your site. This means the most relevant content will appear on the landing page, and it may even address the visitor by their company name.
- Lead Forensics: A lead generation tool that marketers can use to find out who is searching for them.
- Tableu: A platform that helps you analyse data and act upon it.
Of course, there are more technologies you could consider for these activities but these are just some you could start out with. Once you’ve figured out which tech you’re going to use for each of the activities within your campaigns, you’ll have to understand where their usage fits in the customer journey. (Kirsty’s customer journey tech map also provides some other handy tools you could consider).
How much is this going to cost me?
Your budget is clearly going to dictate what technology you can buy to support your ABM programme. Demandbase recently did some research on how much budget an ABM programme had before it started investing in technology.
It found that it wasn’t until an account-based marketing programme began considering scaling (stage 4 on the maturity map below) that businesses began significantly investing in technology. Although some businesses may prefer using tech earlier on in a lighter ABM approach.
For these programmes the budget was between £35k-£99k, and 25% of that budget was dedicated to technology. “At this stage, you need to understand when to leverage technology and internal resource,” says Leanne.
At this stage Leanne suggests you could be using tech investments to help you with:
- Targeted emails with personalised content.
- Drip campaigns for those who aren’t ready to engage.
- Personalised sales streams for key accounts.
- Targeted ads to traffic from competitor websites.
- Personalised chatbots.
Once ABM programmes are in full swing with a budget of more than £100k, marketers typically allocate 35% of the budget to technology. “Your strategy will become more sophisticated at this stage. Your efforts will start to extend into lead nurturing tactics, field marketing, and up-sell/cross-sell strategies,” says Leanne.
At this advanced stage (stage 5 on the maturity map below) you should be using your tech investment to help you with:
- Website personalisation.
- Exchanging deeper insight into accounts with the sales team.
- Specific VIP events for target accounts.
