Tara Allison, Robert Norum, and Tom Perry
Digital River defines ABM as “a complete alignment of sales and marketing into a single engagement stream with a common goal”. When introducing ABM to the company, the goal was to focus on net new customers. With a small team, they started with a one-to-many approach, clustering target accounts by industry and personas.
Once the one-to-many strategy was successful, they moved to one-to-one. This was a crucial time to extend support to sales. Tara Allison, global marketing director, advises an approach of monitoring and scaling your ABM programme as you go. In the second year of the ABM programme, Tara focused on growing accounts. This meant using the ‘80/20 rule’ and picking top of the pyramid prospects that drive 80% of the company’s revenue.
They created new tailored content for accounts and increased personalisation.
The result was accelerated contact acquisition at the top of the funnel, as well as adding value and therefore partnering with sales. Over the course of the programme, Digital River increased top of the funnel engagement by 907%.
The three areas of personalisation Digital River introduced were:
1. Intent monitoring
They tracked buying behaviour online, responding to the spikes in engagement to identify customers’ intent to buy. 2. Tailored social content
They took the intent data as well as topics customers were searching online and used that to tailor content personal to them. 3. Social selling
Digital River prioritised aligning sales by introducing social selling and coaching the team on the new strategy.
For McDonald Butler, ABM is a strategic approach to marketing, it’s not a separate programme.
If you want ABM to work it needs to be embedded in your strategy, it’s not a tactic, says associate director Robert Norum. “All your marketing strategies need to support it.” He suggests a one-to-many approach is a reasonable place to start, as well as being the least risky.
With one-to-one, you might spend your first year targeting one company only to get nowhere. One-to-many spreads the load when you’re just starting out.
Robert suggests a strategy whereby you lay the foundations for your ABM programme in weeks one to six, and then launch targeted content in week seven.
For a one-to-many approach, this could be sector-specific content which you can then personalise with company logos and quotes.
Robert’s 6-stage ABM process
1. Scoping. Use data and analytics to understand your customer base. 2. Account insight. This is mission critical. If you don’t have it you can’t do intelligent ABM. 3. Strategy. The strategy is your business approach to each sector or account, putting yourselves on an evening footing to sales. 4. Messaging and go-to-market. Create a value proposition that will resonate with the customer. It’s not about selling, but finding out what ignites and inspires their attention. 5. Campaign execution. Land compelling creative for your hard work to pay off. 6. Measurement. It’s not about MQL, it’s about pipeline and revenue.
The first question Tom Perry, founder and CEO at Sherpa, asked himself when deciding to deliver ABM through channel partners was ‘why’?
They’re a notoriously tricky group to manage, but Tom expected their client – a large software vendor – to bring new marketing tactics to the table.
The ABM programme was focused on net new accounts, and was pitched to their clients as a seven-step process and a way of aligning to their objectives.
Sherpa ran two ABM pilots with partners in the UK and two in the US in 2018, running for three months each. The aim was to target decision-makers and influencers and leverage technology platforms which might be out of reach for smaller clients.
The pilots consisted of a range of tactics, filling gaps in content and personalised marketing at all stages of the funnel.
Sherpa’s key learnings from ABM pilots with channel partners
