[ABM Work Example]
There was a need to break into acquisiton target accounts at the enterprise level and the sales team lacked the bandwidth to develop these opportunities. While a variety of sales and marketing programs were developed, the Account-Based Marketing (ABM) program was starting to make an impact in establishing new relationships within the enterprise.
And this came with its share of challenges. First, our primary buyer continued to be IT, however our primary target for this new campaign is a new buyer target which sometimes reports up to IT, the big data, analytics group. Second, competitors were already “landed” in the same large enterprises we were targeting for acquisition, however we segmented renewal data to refine the account list and Sales were pretty sure we had opportunity there, so we also surfaced visit data to narrow down list.
The campaign goal was to drive awareness and demand to gain a foothold into acquisition accounts to win a greater share of the market. We also had to prepare content, key selling points for the new buyer target persona. The team decided to use the digital marketing transforation iniative underway, which quickly became a clear differentiator for existing commercial campaign process and a new way to develop the buyer journey and “test” drive predictive activitaions to increasse awareness and demand at scale. This campaign became the “Data Science DMT Pilot.”
The Data Science DMT Pilot is ABM operating at high performance peak levels. Along with an alliance partner and Sales we identified a customer to champion our solution is more used in a high performance use case and is successful in their enterprise. With that champion our Data Science DMT Pilot uses a process we colloborated to define and executes a series of marketing campaigns and events that support the customers use cases and allows us to open up into the new buyer target community at that enterprise.
Budget for content development for each program was allocated @$125k, marketing expertise, and custom program development and funding underway with internal agencies, CoEs and external agencies. The program established us as not just a IT provider/vendor, but a partner that ensures success of underserved data science and analytics audiences. This was a key focus for the solution offering. This positioning, along with a clear journey-based ABM strategic framework, was easy to communicate and activations and bill of materials were clearly spelled out early in the campaign to make a very tight launch timeframe.
The marketing team also aligned with Sales and alliances with a fully integrated set of marketing and sales activities including:
• A custom multi-page personalized web experience using personalization and a new Adobe Experience Manager template.
• New content for each journey stage (awareness, consideration, evaluation/purchase)
• Fully-integrated and highly targeted media outreach (digital, social, paid search)
• Comprehensive nurturing efforts including marketing automation emails and social and programmatic retargeting.
• Integrated Sales and Channel outreach activities.
• Alliance partner support + joint training and sales and marketing activities.
• Release of our First Account Dashboard to deliver real-time customer and account insights and measurement results.
The Data Science DMT Pilot was initially developed to promote “hunter/gatherer initiatives” which are custom but longer running campaigns with tailored content and messaging and targeting focused at new acquisition audiences developed specifically for the enterprise. It was discovered that a more robust program could drive significantly more value (for us and the customer), as long as there was thoughtfull and data enriched customer account targeting. After developing the program template and process, the Account Based Marketer works with a sales sponsor to the target segment accounts to create the specific offer and campaign program.
Critically important to the successful execution of the program is alignment with Sales and (you can add the Alliance Program manager) and a sponsor identified in the account. Program, campaign and account activity is reported and available through Account Based dashboards supporting sales management and marketing management involved in the program. Each component of the program is its own campaign and the reporting tracks engagement, marketing influence on existing pipeline, marketing sourced pipeline, database growth, and services, revenue won.
The ABM Marketing Manager takes the lead and develops the strategy with Sales. Sales helps to identify the aquisition contacts or executive sponor in the target account through the entire development and deployment process. After identifying the acquisition targets, the ABM Marketing Manager;
- Offers ABM template as an integrated campaign targeting acquisition accounts with vetted contacts that can influence within their organization.
- Schedules and executes a -90-min Acquisition Hunter Workshop to develop segmentation and buyers journey.
- Works with an agency partner to develop custom content with a bill of materials personalized to the account/segment use cases with persona tracks based on detailed buyers journey.
- Develops the marketing program and presents it to sales/executives/alliance stakeholders.
- Establishes the program budget and secures budget approval.
- Executes the marketing program, via standard marketing processes and tools.
- Requests and self-service access to account based reporting to provide feedback to sales and stakeholders.
- Post mortem to optimize the program.
The DMT Pilot framework has been very successful. It delivers the benefits of Account Based Marketing and increases oppportunities and pipeline. Since the DMT Pilot campaign Sales has tools to better leverage training and access to additional contacts in the account to continue with success to land in the account, penetrate new areas of the customer’s business, whether that be lines of business (Analytics, Finance, IT, Security, etc.), establishing new executive relationships, and/or engaging with new divisions or sites.
The Data Science DMT Pilot impact is measured as follows: revenue growth, database growth, executive and line of business engagement, and ABM activity. To date, the program is working. When Data Science DMT Pilot template is deployed, there is a 27% year-over-year growth in acquisition accounts.
To listen to my 10 minute overview of this campaign where I explain more in detail, please mouse click the play icon below for the video to start playing (or simply click into the video).
