Jun 13 2024
Account-based marketing, or ABM, is a strategic approach that focuses marketing and sales efforts on targeted accounts rather than individual leads. Powered by technology, ABM helps companies personalize messaging, coordinate teams, and accelerate revenue growth.
ABM MarTech refers to the technology solutions and platforms used to enable an account-based approach. This includes tools for data enrichment, content personalization, account-based advertising, sales engagement, and analytics.
When coordinated properly, an ABM MarTech stack aligns sales and marketing teams to orchestrate tailored messaging and outreach to priority accounts. The technology supports the overarching account-based strategy.
Implementing ABM MarTech offers numerous advantages for businesses seeking to enhance their sales and marketing efforts:
With detailed account data and integrated platforms, teams can craft customized messaging and campaigns matched to each account's needs.
Shared tools, account insights, and coordinated workflows help unify sales and marketing around targets to avoid wasted efforts.
Automated tasks, streamlined workflows, and optimized processes enable teams to focus their time on revenue-driving activities.
Robust analytics and reporting provide real-time visibility into target account engagement to guide spending and strategy.
Companies report 12% average boosts in account engagement, deal sizes, and customer retention from ABM MarTech personalization.
A complete ABM MarTech stack will comprise solutions across these key capability areas:
Collect and monitor third-party data on target accounts for complete, up-to-date profiles. Tools like Sapiengraph can help enrich missing data for both
Identify and focus on accounts with the greatest revenue potential based on key traits.
Adapt messaging and assets for each account then distribute via suitable channels.
Serve customized ads to associated contacts across digital channels.
Equip sales teams with account insights and tailored playbooks to drive conversions.
Quantify account engagement, campaign efficacy, pipeline influence, and revenue for optimization.
The process of building an ABM MarTech stack can seem overwhelming, but with a structured approach, it becomes manageable:
Are you aiming to penetrate new accounts, expand existing relationships, boost retention, or accelerate deal cycles? Defining primary goals steers tool selection.
Determine highest-value accounts based on revenue potential then expand to additional segments over time.
Outline how you engage accounts across awareness, consideration, conversion, and expansion stages currently.
Audit current marketing, sales, and CRM platforms for account-based capabilities or gaps needing fulfillment.
Shortlist tools that align with goals and complement existing systems while optimizing budgets.
Follow vendor guidelines for installing and connecting software APIs for interoperability and data flows.
Educate staff on the purpose of additions, how to leverage capabilities for their role, and processes.
Monitor and Optimize
Continuously refine strategies, messaging, and channel mix based on account engagement analytics.
While needs vary by business, these platforms commonly form core components of an enterprise stack:
â¢CRM (Customer Relationship Management) â Central database integrating account and contact data for unified insights. Salesforce, HubSpot, or Microsoft Dynamics are common choices.
â¢Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) â Orchestrates personalized account-level interactions across channels and the buying journey. Used for workflows, email, SMS, ads, landing pages, and analytics. Leaders include Marketo and Pardot.
â¢Account-Based Advertising Platform â Enables customized display, search, social media, and video ad creative to associated buying groups. Options like Terminus, RollWorks, and Demandbase integrate with CRM and MAP data for accuracy.
â¢Data Enrichment Toolâ Appends third-party B2B data on technologies used, keywords, social handles, and other intel to expand profiles. Lattice, Clearbit, and TechTarget specialize in technology intelligence.
Beyond these, sales engagement platforms like Outreach, website personalization tools like Drift, and attribution analytics software further enhance coordination.
Follow these proven recommendations when deploying your tech stack for the greatest impact:
Target a small, defined initial set of accounts to test processes and build proficiency before enterprise-wide rollout.
Prioritize customization for named accounts representing the top 20% of revenue first over one-to-many tactics.
Adapt messaging themes, offers, and assets for the specific needs or traits of each account rather than generic blasting.
Orchestrate coordinated interactions across email, advertising, phone, events, and personal contacts tailored for the account rather than disconnected efforts.
Closely monitor front-end account engagement and downstream funnel metrics per account to refine your approach.
Get all stakeholders strategically aligned on target accounts, playbooks, capabilities, and messaging for synchronization.
Set quarterly reviews of search queries, asset downloads, form completions, hyper-personalized content performance, and other engagement intel from your MarTech to guide refinements.
Key performance indicators to gauge success include:
â¢Account Engagement â Uplift in account-level search queries, form fills, downloads, email opens, and event sign-ups signal relevance.
â¢Pipeline and Revenue Influence â Growth, shorter deal cycles, and bigger deal sizes denote sales impact.
â¢Customer Satisfaction and Retention â Net Promoter Scores, renewals, or expansion orders quantify relationship gains.
â¢Marketing ROI â Connecting the dots between account behavior stemming from campaigns and downstream deal flow allows accurate measurement of activities, channels, and assets fueling the most pipeline.
While delivering proven results, deploying an ABM MarTech stack also poses some common hurdles needing mitigation:
â¢Data Quality and Integration â Invest in ongoing data hygiene, de-duplication, and integrations between platforms to maintain accuracy as changes occur.
â¢Personalization at Scale â Look to automation, artificial intelligence, and stacked nurture workflows to ease volume delivery burdens.
â¢Measuring ROI â Blend marketing analytics tracing behavioral paths to deal influence with revenue intelligence data providing a full account view to confidently correlate programs and profit.
â¢Sales and Marketing Alignment â Embed processes ensuring joint KPIs, account list transparency, defined handoffs, and regular cross-team planning to sustain coordination amid churn.
ABM MarTech solutions offer compelling benefits - from amplified personalization to sales and marketing alignment - for companies seeking to refine their enterprise account engagement strategies. As we have explored within this guide, taking a systematic approach to building your technology stack anchored around strategic business goals promises significantly moving the revenue needle.
While capability gaps may exist initially, dedicating resources to enrich account insights, coordinate cross-channel workflows, and quantify downstream impact at scale will reap rewards over time. Indeed the hallmark of ABM success rests on unified orchestration more than any one software. Keep the end in mind and progress will follow.
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