As a marketer, you would agree that at some point in time you have sent email campaigns that were not targeted to a segmented audience but you just went with it in the hopes of finding some leads. Now you might even have got good results but you yourself know that with a proper alternative strategy and a clear vision, you would have succeeded in achieving even better goals.
Account-based marketing is one such alternative to avoid looking for prospects in a dark room. In this strategy, each email campaign is uniquely designed and delivered according to the preferences, traits, and journey of each account or prospect. The most important feature of this strategy is that the marketing and sales team sit together and analyze the prospects and target them in a way that the needs of the recipient and the services of the sender resonate.
According to Altera Group, 97% of marketers have achieved higher ROIs by implementing this strategy as compared to any other. And why wouldn’t they?! The audience will never look away when an email they receive not just stands out amongst a hundred other emails but also fulfils their needs.
We are familiar with email personalization but what if someone said, let’s jazz it up with ABM strategy and deliver even more relevant, unique, and targeted emails? That is exactly what Marketo said and has made ‘fishing with spears’ possible, instead of just laying a net and waiting. Read on to know more about how you can incorporate this strategy into your campaigns:
How does Marketo help bridge personalization and ABM?
To put in simple words, Marketo implements the ABM strategy by not just personalizing the content of the campaign according to the account but by personalizing the customer experience and increasing engagement by delivering the right message to the right accounts
It also empowers businesses to communicate in real-time with such targeted accounts and maintain a consistent brand image across all marketing platforms of the company. This makes it possible to maneuver the customer’s digital journey with the brand and offer as much interaction as possible.
3 things to understand before we go further
Account-based targeting tools
Modern age marketers have been targeting niche prospects for quite some time now. However, targeting specific and unique accounts requires an advanced toolkit, which Marketo provides. Further, by tracking an organization’s APIs and tracking them with the ABM strategy will help one deliver content and services to a focused population.
Sales engagement tools
Jon Miller in his e-book about Account Based Marketing, mentions this strategy as fishing with a spear instead of with a wide fishing net. Sales engagement tools are the equivalent of that spear. In simpler words, sales engagement tools bring together personalization and persistence that are powered by automated platforms like Marketo.
Lead-to-account matching
Leads can be generated through multiple sources like email, webpages, web traffic, and so on. With varied sources of engagement, it might become difficult to monitor and match the leads from different sources to their respective accounts. With the assistance of AI, Marketo’s lead to account matching deals with this process efficiently.
Making the most of ABM strategy and email personalization in Marketo
Profiling accounts
The sales and marketing teams target the right accounts by profiling them with the help of AI. Apart from that Marketo exclusively enriches the engagement data and prioritizes the accounts accordingly. Further, it matches the lead to the account and manages the lists. The factor that makes Marketo stand out in this service, although it partners with a CRM, is that it not just targets accounts but also tries to recognize the persona and target leads accordingly.
Building the right contact list
As mentioned earlier, attracting the key personas and acquiring new leads and contacts across targeted accounts, extends the reach of the account-based marketing, controlled from a single point.
Approaching across channels
Marketo enables automating the complete approach of marketing from acquiring the leads from sources to nurturing them to delivering a personalized experience that expands the communication, opportunities, and conversions irrespective of the source of engagement.
Sales & marketing partnership
Marketo offers a smooth and hassle-free experience for the sales and marketing teams to work together on targeted accounts. This allows internal teams to work together with full visibility of activities related to account, sales, and marketing. It also makes tracking the performance of individual client accounts and monitoring how the engagement filters and trigger points for them.
Measurement
Being accountable is one of the most important steps of email campaign management. Knowing which sales, advertising, and marketing campaigns are delivering the best ROIs and which are not, will help you enhance your account-based marketing approach. Marketo offers the best compatibility to monitor all such activities, its results, and metrics, which together helps you analyse the overall performance.
Wrap Up
ABM and email personalization are an unbeatable pair when it comes to generating conversions and nailing that ROI. ABM is here to stay. Although there are chances the trend might evolve with time, for now, make the most of ABM with Marketo.
Let us know your experience with account based marketing and email personalization on any other marketing platform.