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Sponsored by The Power Behind Account-Based Marketing B2B marketers find that targeting to key accounts and “flipping the funnel” drive double-digit ROI THE POWER BEHIND ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING T here’s good reason account-based marketing (ABM) is top of mind for many chief marketers: Eighty-four percent of B2B marketers say that ABM delivers a higher ROI than any other approach, reports the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), a m arketing-insights firm. ABM, whose beginnings ITSMA traces back 15 years, has been given new life owing to advancements in marketing automation and behavioral data collection. Engagio CEO Jon Miller describes ABM as turning the traditional demand process on its head. In fact, the strategy is referred to as “flipping the funnel.” A typical lead gen process starts with the offer, moves to how and where to promote it, and then finally to whom. ABM, Miller notes, starts with the who, moves to the offer, and then to where and how it’s delivered. Instead of looking to attract hundreds of leads to the sales funnel, ABM promotes a more-targeted approach for B2B firms, aiming to leverage accounts that are likelier to provide revenue and/or that are strategically important. ABM practitioners ditch the marketing approach that looks to impress by amassing a large quantity of leads, using time and energy to focus on crucial contacts and accounts. AMB’s advocates stress that by leveraging its key strengths — highly effective targeting to a company’s most important client accounts — ABM offers a strategy that is both profitable and sustainable. Many of ABM’s key strategies, such as targeted marketing, are already in play at many B2B firms, which means that you may currently have some of the key technology components in house. And, with all the chatter about tearing down silos, it’s interesting to note that ABM’s success rate depends on collaboration between various functions within a company, most decidedly marketing and sales. TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 Understanding Account-Based Marketing 5 The Magic of Account-Based Marketing Learn more about ABM in this eBook, specifically: ■ Why ABM delivers such stunning results ■ A BM best-use scenarios ■ T he challenges of ABM ■ T ools you’ll need to build a scalable ABM system ■ P itfalls to avoid 9 Why the Pendulum Is Swinging Back to Outbound Marketing dmnews.com | The Power Behind Account-Based Marketing 2 THE POWER BEHIND ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING Understanding AccountBased Marketing Building in-house relationships in order to reach target audiences is key. By Kim Davis W hy is everyone suddenly talking about ABM? After all, it’s hardly a new concept. The reason is that marketing automation technology is just catching up with it. If you’re a B2C marketer, then most of the time you’re targeting individual human beings — whether in store, on a billboard, or online. You want to engage with Jack or Jill and start them tumbling down the funnel. For B2B marketers, matters have always been a little more complicated. Jack may be one member of a sixperson purchasing team. Perhaps he’s trapped in mid-management between an executive setting his budget and end users grumbling about the products he buys. What’s more, maybe next week Jack will have moved on to new pastures, to be replaced by Jill. As a B2B marketer, you’re not really selling to an individual — although there will always, of course, be a role for personal contacts and relationships. You’re selling, by definition, to a business, or more likely to specific accounts within that business. A vital strategy The concept of ABM was codified by ITSMA some years ago. ABM, according to ITSMA, “provides a vital strategy for companies that want to create sustainable growth and profitability within their most important client accounts. ABM focuses explicitly on individual client accounts and their needs. More importantly, it is a collaborative approach that engages sales, marketing, delivery, and key exec utives toward achieving the client’s business goals.” In ITSMA’s view, ABM helps marketing and sales teams work together to build relationships with the key players in the accounts that generate the most revenue. Obviously, B2B marketers have long understood the importance of accounts but have had to rely on outmoded tools to engage with them: spreadsheets, telephone conversations, random meetings at events, and email chains (which may or may not be shared with the sales team). Increasingly, however, marketing automation platforms have honed and launched ABM offerings to take the pain and strain out of managing relationships with multiple accounts and increase opportunities for personalization. ABM does have its critics. Some say it’s an overhyped marketing term for a long-established practice. But there are more substantial criticisms: It mainly supports outbound efforts, it puts sales in the driver’s seat, and its benefits are hard to measure. There’s some basis for those complaints, but first, here are ABM’s strengths, when it’s automated. “If you’re selling to a team, then you’re selling to people with different roles in the process across multiple touchpoints, channels, and devices,” says Kevin Bobowski, CMO of ActOn Software. “These people need content personalized to their needs at various stages in the purchase jour- The Facts Behind the Hype Account-based marketing lives up to its promises 97% of marketers who try ABM report higher ROI with ABM than with any other marketing tactic. MID-MARKET ACCOUNTS $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ ENTERPRISE ACCOUNTS $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ Contract value for ABM-targeted accounts increases an average of 40% for mid-market accounts and 35% for enterprise. ABM is linked to improvements in close rates approaching 300% according to one study. Source: Act-On Software Source: Act-On Software dmnews.com | The Power Behind Account-Based Marketing 3 THE POWER BEHIND ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING If you’re selling to a team, then you’re selling to people with different roles in the process across multiple touchpoints, channels, and devices — Kevin Bobowski, Act-On Software ney. You can market to all these folks differently, and you should.” That assumes that ABM can be embedded in a m arketing-automation solution. Indeed, Bobowski thinks that marketing automation is ABM’s natural home. Act-On Software has an automated ABM offering, as do other players in the space. “The solution makes it possible to do ABM at scale,” says Steve Pogorzelski, CEO of Avention, which also offers ABM technology. Scale is the key for the modern B2B marketer. Yes, it’s primarily an outbound tool. It’s more suited for chasing accounts in a defined market than for lead gen, “with the caveat that it can help businesses understand what their market is,” Pogorzelski notes. At the same time, a more-evolved under- standing of account personas can inform inbound marketing content. True, a sales team can dominate ABM efforts by ensuring that businesses they’re comfortable selling to make up the bulk of the accounts on the list. A more-positive view is that ABM can help align marketing and sales around common goals. Think that might prove hard to measure? What isn’t? But an agile marketing automation platform ought to offer good visibility into accountbased activity. What’s more, vendors will affirm that relationships with ac counts rather than with individual purchasers facilitate retaining business. One outstanding reason that ABM is suddenly on everyone’s radar is that it comes down in the end to good data and a dashboard. n The Numbers 84% of B2B marketers say that ABM delivers a higher ROI than any other approach (ITSMA) +80% of marketers said that ABM had significant benefits to retaining and expanding existing client relationships (Alterra Group) +90% of marketers worldwide believe that ABM is essential to B2B marketing (SiriusDecisions) 41% of B2B marketers worldwide said they would increase spending on ABM (ITSMA) dmnews.com | The Power Behind Account-Based Marketing 4 THE POWER BEHIND ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING The Magic of AccountBased Marketing From building personas to improving sales alignment to increasing lifetime value, ABM may be the B2B marketer’s panacea. Here’s how to decide whether it’s right for you. By Jason Compton A ccount-based marketing may not be new, but its recent rise in popularity is capturing the attention of B2B marketers who are looking for innovative ways to increase marketing performance. “At face value, ABM sounds easy to understand — the term is descriptive,” says Mark Ogne, EVP of partner marketing at Demand Metric and founder of the Account-Based Marketing Consortium. “But it’s not just a tech platform or a marketing activity. It involves changing the campaigns, content, and audiences that marketing is known for.” These characteristics prequalify an organization to look deeper at ABM: A keenness to understand the buyer’s individual experiences and challenges as they are, not as you hope they will be ■ “You can’t just name 20 accounts and then throw generic marketing and advertising campaigns at them,” says Beverley Burgess, senior VP of I TSMA Europe. “That is not ABM.” The willingness to look for prospects and opportunities outside the traditional funnel ■ ABM represents a deliberate shift away from the standard marketing auto mation practices of recent years that focused on giving prospects abundant opportunities to raise their hands and opt in to the funnel. That last point is crucial. In fact, ■ A business-to-business model ABM expert Jon Miller says he became Although households can have multi- a proponent of the approach precisely ple stakeholders in large purchases, the because he had hit a wall with standard account concept is most applicable to marketing automation. Speaking of his time as VP of marB2B firms. keting at automation vendor Marketo, ■ High-value products or services he says, “We got well known for being extraordinarily with a lengthy consideration-to- a company that was good at demand generation, but when purchase cycle “If you’re highly transactional and your we tried to move up-market, that customer lifecycles are fast- moving, playbook just didn’t work with larger it won’t work,” says Micky Long, VP named accounts.” Developing an account-based stratand practice director at digital agency egy ultimately inspired him to coArketi Group. found Engagio, where, as CEO, he’s ■ An account-based sales model trying to do for named-account marAlthough not mandatory, it usually in- keting what he once did for large-scale dicates that the other characteristics of marketing automation. “We want to the company and its customers war- get B2B marketers to the point where they’re not waiting around for the right rant the adoption of ABM. people to swim into their net but can reach out to them.” Take, for example, SheerID, which helps clients like Spotify and Expedia instantly verify consumers’ eligibility for special offers. Instead of focusing exclusively on driving leads with acquisition-marketing programs, they began targeting prospects they knew would both benefit from their products and provide them with long-term revenue. And they identified and built individual relationships with everyone involved in the buying process while simultaneously tracking and responding to accounts as a whole. They also started using Act-On marketing automation software to drive this approach. Act-On serves as their command center, allowing them to precisely target all the decision- makers with relevant content, record individual responses as part of the big picture, and provide both marketing and sales with the account-wide insight they need to effectively lead a company to purchase. This allows SheerID to deliver a strategic and unified nurturing experience — and to enhance the overall value it provides customers after the sale. Acquiring enterprise customers Big-ticket B2B purchases typically need the involvement, support, and approval of multiple stakeholders. For years account-based sales techniques focused on the approach of maneuvering between business users, champions, and executives. ABM brings a similar dmnews.com | The Power Behind Account-Based Marketing 5 THE POWER BEHIND ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING We want to get B2B marketers to the point where they’re not waiting around for the right people to swim into their net but can reach out to them — Jon Miller, Engagio approach, aiming to engage, educate, and activate the right individuals within a viable prospect organization at the right time. It doesn’t mean forsaking a one-to-one approach to marketing. It simply addresses the complexities of the considered purchase. “ABM recognizes the B2B reality that organizations purchase through buying centers” says Jerry Rackley, chief analyst at Demand Metric. “There are individuals involved, and it’s good to identify them, but ABM offers a more holistic process than finding a name or email address, firing up the nurturing process, and aiming all the guns at that one lead.” Video advertising platform vendor Vidyard recently switched to ABM for large accounts. The drive started, as it often does, in sales, where the company added enterprise account represen- tatives and implemented a territoryand account-based sales model. Marketing then followed. “Twelve months ago the focus was on lead volume and flooding the sales team. Today we’re driven by pipeline and revenue, not by volume of leads,” says Tyler Lessard, Vidyard’s CMO. “We care about lead quality and the kinds of com panies we think our people can sell into, not just finding everybody connected to sales and marketing activities.” Vidyard works with Terminus and the Big Willow to identify patterns of intention and then targets messages into those accounts. The firm regularly monitors for companies that are actively hiring video- marketing professionals, performing high search volumes on related terms, or scaling up the activity on an in-house YouTube channel. Vidyard automatically Six Steps to Kick-Start Your First ABM Program ■ ■ ■ Develop specific measurable business goals. Know who your best and most profitable customers are and identify any strategic new markets. Based on your business goals, choose the accounts on which to focus. Set up account-level intelligence on incoming leads. Define your messages and create content targeted to buyer and influencer personas. ■ Determine which channels to use to reach your targets. ■ Choose the corrent metrics and apply them. ■ Observe your results. Is the approach working? Source: Act-On Software tailors content to suit those signals and performs coordinated sales and marketing outreach behind the scenes. Lessard credits the ABM approach with the recent signing of a global insurance company — a vertical to which the company had paid little attention in the past. As a matter of fact, the client was once rejected as a qualified lead under conventional marketing metrics. “Everything we knew about their business had them below a [quality] lead score, but the real-time intent information tipped them over and spawned a campaign,” Lessard says. “Once we saw data around the technology they were thinking of using, we put them in our account marketing and signaled our sales team to actively start the process.” Anticipate, identify, and attack ABM forces marketing o rganizations to set aside their usual points of pride — like keeping the funnel full — in favor of approaches that focus on quality over quantity and reaching prospects before they even know they’re in the funnel. “It’s a change of mind-set from what B2B marketers have historically done, like focusing on getting people to come to events and put business cards in fishbowls or buying random lists,” says Doug Bewsher, CEO of Leadspace. Associating individuals with accounts rather than thinking of them as a stand-alone lead is a major first step. Taking a page from account-based dmnews.com | The Power Behind Account-Based Marketing 6 THE POWER BEHIND ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING sales, and staying in alignment with the approach to the prospect, is the next. “If a lead comes in from a certain account,” Bewsher says, “are you making sure you route it to the relevant salesperson assigned to that account? It’s simple, but very few are doing it.” Technology’s role On the technology side, ABM-focused vendors are hitting the market with new tools for prospect identification and targeting. The usual focus is to deliver targeted display advertising and content to organizations that are showing signs of being in the market even if they haven’t begun a formal evaluation process. One typical approach is to pair IP addresses with corporate identities, making it easier to identify when a particular company is searching for or engaging with relevant content. “Display ads for B2B are traditionally a huge waste of money because you reach people who may or may not be buying what you’re selling,” says Demandbase CMO Peter Isaacson. “With ABM, if your target audience is 500 companies and you only want to target those 500, you can now purchase advertising to display only to those companies you’re interested in.” Think of that aspect of ABM as branding at a highly refined level. There are no billboards or TV spots during sporting events, just a steady stream of messages reaching only the screens of the decision-makers at relevant likely buyers. “We’re actually taking a page from the B2C world, where big brands like Coca-Cola and Pepsi work to create shelf space in our heads as part of their brand awareness,” says Sangram Vajre, cofounder and CMO of Terminus. “In B2B, you know which companies are going to buy from you and who the decision-makers are, so why wouldn’t you do everything you can to get in front of them when they’re making the purchasing decision?” The importance of marketing’s alignment with sales cannot be overstated. In the Demand Metric study Account-Based Marketing Adoption, conducted in partnership with Demand base, 60% of organizations using ABM report a revenue increase attributable to the strategy, and most of those reporting success enjoyed a boost of at least 20%. The laggards hadn’t put their houses in order first. “When we looked at the 40 percent using ABM but not getting a revenue lift, all rated their sales and marketing alignment poorly,” Demand Metric’s Rackley says. “Alignment matters.” In B2B, you know which companies are going to buy from you and who the decision-makers are, so why wouldn’t you do everything you can to get in front of them when they’re making the purchasing decision? The Numbers 66% B2B marketers who claim that ABM is favorably impacting their revenue 80% Marketers who use ABM that say it’s the most or one of the most important revenue-generating strategies they use 84% Users of ABM with mature programs who collaborate closely with their counterparts in sales 63% Users of ABM with mature programs who use data to drive account selection 60% Users of ABM with mature programs who use it for both prospecting and customer retention 55% Users of ABM with mature programs who use it to support account profile development — Sangram Vajre, Terminus dmnews.com | The Power Behind Account-Based Marketing 7 THE POWER BEHIND ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING Marketing’s job is to listen, to advocate, and to add insights to the process at every step of a sale. ABM also relies on marketers to help sales take a longer-term view rather than narrowing their focus on quarterly results. “You’re hardly ever going to get a good hunter to nurture a lead,” says Dan McDade, president and CEO of marketing services firm PointClear. “They don’t like to do it, perceive that they don’t have time to do it, and are probably no good at it.” A new alignment When collaboration software vendor PGi diversified its solutions and widened its appeal beyond IT- minded buyers into sales and marketing departments, it needed a new sales and marketing strategy. The expanded solution set and buying audience left the sales organization off-kilter; under conventional practices, marketing was ill equipped to help. “It was up to sales to figure out who the best contact was to try to sell the product to,” says Jennifer Zember, PGi’s senior director of digital marketing. “Sales would think they weren’t getting enough leads, but we felt we were sending enough leads and they weren’t following up.” PGi’s sales and marketing departments had always reported to a single EVP, but a shift to ABM made that alignment much more meaningful. “Today we work with sales leaders to understand what kinds of accounts we should be targeting and which roles at those accounts are going to be the best for them to speak to,” Zember says. “And we know how to target the right roles in each organization and make sure the salesperson is equipped with the right content for any buyer.” That approach is table stakes for marketers using ABM. Marketing is responsible for identifying and under standing the triggers that indicate a prospect in the making, such as a company hiring a particular role or suddenly entering a new marketplace. Developing content that can be customized in an automated fashion is essential, primarily to avoid the need for an impractically large marketing staff to serve each account. As useful as ABM is for customer acquisition, the approach also creates opportunities to engage in a meaningful fashion with existing accounts in ways that increase future lifetime value. To be truly successful, however, this strategy requires compensating marketers for ongoing conversions. “Often, your most valuable accounts are your current customers,” Engagio’s Miller says, “but the traditional marketing model is focused on generating net new leads and some marketing departments don’t get credit if they generate a campaign response from a current customer.” Core Technologies Required Many of the core technologies required to run a successful ABM campaign are already well in use by B2B marketers. According to the ABM Leadership Alliance, these include: Customer Relationship Management Marketing Automation Data-Management Platform Content-Management System Greater opportunities Shifting to ABM presents B2B marketers with a raft of new opportunities for engaging current and prospective customers in new ways. But some relationship-focused marketers wor ry that the approach may appear to be forced or impersonal. In fact, the opposite is true. Using ABM doesn’t mean abandoning the one-to-one connection marketers have been striving for decades to create. It simply pairs that mind-set with the complex realities of the considered-purchase buying cycle. “People, not companies, buy things,” Miller points out According to Leadspace’s Bewsher, “The magic of ABM is being able to connect the people to the company, understand the personas, and engage with the different individuals in the accounts.” n Tag Management Live Chat The Numbers When ABM has been in use for at least a year , of users reported a revenue increase of at least and reported a revenue impact of Source: Demandbase or greater 60% 19% 10% 30% dmnews.com | The Power Behind Account-Based Marketing 8 THE POWER BEHIND ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING Why the Pendulum Is Swinging Back to Outbound Marketing New approaches for ABM allow B2B marketers to join forces with sales and reach key target audiences at scale W ithout doubt, there’s a continuing push across B2B industries to align the goals and strategies of marketing and sales teams. Along with new technologies designed to help achieve that goal, there comes renewed hype around ABM, which over the past 15 years has shown promise to help marketers meet this often-elusive objective. “While ABM is a hot topic, it isn’t a new strategy,” says Emily Sue Tomac, research manager and lead analyst for research firm TrustRadius. “Rather, it’s a swing of the pendulum back to outbound marketing, from marketing automation and social media marketing’s focus on inbound efforts.” According to TrustRadius, technology that enables ABM is the sixth- fastest-growing marketing-tech category. Tomac warns, however, that this renewed interest stems more from companies that offer technology that enables ABM strategy than it does from B2B marketers themselves. But she acknowledges that increased options do indeed allow marketers to have an even bigger impact on sales than earlier. “There are different categories of software that can contribute to a com- pany’s ABM strategy. Predictive analytics, sales intelligence, marketing automation, lead management, content personalization, and ad serving and retargeting software number among them,” she says. “We believe that ABM is more of a philosophy or strategic approach than a fully fledged software category. But this could change moving forward.” Sangram Vajre, CMO at ABM platform provider Terminus and author of Account-Based Marketing for Dummies, insists that ABM will move from experimental territory into a marketing must-have. “A few years from now this will be the standard B2B market- dmnews.com | The Power Behind Account-Based Marketing 9 THE POWER BEHIND ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING ing playbook,” he says. “The reason it’s exciting today is because there are technology solutions that can finally help B2B marketers execute ABM at scale, just like email campaigns.” Vajre points out that ABM breaks down the silos that have been dividing marketers and sales for years by recognizing that most B2B buying decisions are not made by a single person, but rather by a group of people, and then marketing to that group as one account or audience, not as a group. “ABM starts by identifying the best-fit accounts for your business, expanding the target audience within those accounts with contact data, engaging those contacts — your audience — on their terms across multiple channels, and then turning your customers into advocates,” Vajre says. Five ABM Pitfalls to Avoid ■ already have, noting you’ll probably see results fairly quickly. Then you can build on your success. That said, the technology landscape keeps changing, so make sure to stay on top of developments that can help drive your program. Just because ABM is all the buzz, don’t assume it is right for your company. ABM makes sense for B2B companies that exist in a defined customer universe, be it a specific vertical or customer type that your company targets. ■ Same old marketing mind-set: Your marketing team will require a new mind-set to run ABM. For one thing, it is a more complicated campaign to run than a typical lead gen program. It’s not just about filling the funnel with leads. It requires careful orchestration across the account as you nurture leads and more content and offers directed to different accounts and personas. It’s a not a one-size-fitsall type of program. Steps for success Whether a marketing team is just launching ABM or has been using it, there are crucial universal steps to help ensure success. Peter Isaacson, CMO for ABMsoftware provider Demandbase, insists that fostering collaboration is an imperative first step to ensuring that ABM actually works. “ABM requires a shift in thinking in how a company approaches leads and generates revenue,” says Isaacson, “so it’s important that the entire company be on board. Success comes from collaboration across teams.” Success also comes from having shared goals — not only between marketing and sales but also across the organization. Doing so is necessary to track and demonstrate the effectiveness of ABM. “The only way to measure true business impact is to grade your performance on metrics that are tightly aligned with your overall business goals,” Isaacson points out. A collaborative environment along with shared goals can also help marketing leaders achieve a third element ABM isn’t right for your company: ■ Jumping in feet first: Act-On recommends that you start small by using the technology you needed for effective ABM: shared customer insight. Customer attributes Jennifer Pockells-Dimas, VP of marketing and business operations at Plex, knows this firsthand. She says that to succeed everyone on her team needs to understand the makeup of a media-streaming company’s audience. “Understand the attributes that describe your most successful customers,” Pockells-Dimas says. “Then build a list of accounts that meet that same criterion. It’s then that you’ll be able to focus on delivering targeted messages to those accounts that honors who they are and where they are in their buyer journeys.” Despite ABM’s history, many mar- ■ ilos in full force: Before impleS menting an ABM program, make sure sales and marketing are already aligned in the effort. Without close collaboration between these two areas, your ABM is destined to fail. ■ ustomers falling through the C cracks: Use ABM to expand your business with current clients, not merely to acquire new clients. Also, don’t broadcast your team’s devotion to key accounts, because doing so may not resonate with other clients. Be sure all your customers feel well taken care of. keters — especially key constituents outside the marketing team — lack a full understanding of the approach. So basic education about ABM is critical to its success, says Colby Fazio, senior marketing strategist at the Pedowitz Group, a revenue marketing agency. “From program managers and content developers to digital marketers and salespeople, educate the team on what ABM really is,” Fazio says. “You simply can’t start blasting a [prospect] company without really understanding how to design account-based programs. If it’s done incorrectly, ABM will build trust with the target account. This is a new way of thinking for most marketers, so failure to educate will undoubtedly result in failure of the business strategy.” dmnews.com | The Power Behind Account-Based Marketing 10 THE POWER BEHIND ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING The challenges of ABM A limited understanding of ABM isn’t the only challenge marketers face in trying to adopt or use it. There are several — along with the obvious issues involved with fostering collaboration, aligning goals, and sharing data. And, as Terminus’ Vajre points out, identifying obstacles is as vital to a winning ABM strategy as is identifying the steps for success. Vajre lists three of the biggest challenges with ABM: finding new, moreeffective metrics; having a too-narrow focus; and thinking short term. “Marketers are used to looking at quantity of leads instead of quality,” he says, referring to identifying the right success measures. “The same metrics that made marketers heroes are no longer good enough. Metrics such as leads, attendees, website traffic, open rates, and click-through rates will need to be retired. And metrics such as pipeline, revenue, account-level engagement, and personalized campaigns will become the norm.” ABM “FLIPS THE FUNNEL” Instead of the traditional lead-based funnel, ABM begins with identifying a brand’s best-fit customers IDENTIFY EXPAND ENGAGE ADVOCATE Source: Terminus Opening the funnel An ABM program with too narrow a focus on too few accounts also can negatively affect the program’s effectiveness and, worse, company growth. “If the number of accounts is too few, it might be hard to scale the program and see results,” he says. Vajre warns that marketers need to realign their efforts to be in it for the long haul. “ABM is a marathon — not a sprint. In this type of strategy there isn’t the instant gratification of number of downloads, clicks, or open rates,” he points out. “Marketers need to be patient and need to focus on the longterm view of account engagement and generate velocity. Then turn opportunities into customers.” MedAssets CMO Michael Donohue and his team recently implement- ed an ABM strategy to improve lead quality and conversion. He says that since implementing ABM, the sales team at that healthcare consulting and tech provider has seen a 389% increase in accepted leads. For those who haven’t taken the plunge, Donohue offers this advice: “Without the right people, process, technology, and content in place, it becomes very difficult to pull off. Without the right customer data and insight, it’s difficult to deploy. Without sales being all in, it’s difficult to implement. Without the right enabling technology, it’s difficult to support. Before anything else, build a solid foundation first.” n The Numbers B2B organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing operations achieved faster three-year revenue growth and faster three-year profit growth or greater 24% 27% Source: SiriusDecisions dmnews.com | The Power Behind Account-Based Marketing 11