There are several types of specialized ABM software solutions. Examples include:
Data: Bombora, 6Sense, LeanData
ABM solutions can (and should) be integrated with a CRM and/or Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) for maximum effectiveness and efficiency.
Integrations help you not only to more seamlessly reach audiences within your database, but more so the specific decision-makers within your key target accounts.
Different softwares and integrations help you achieve wide range of activities to support your overall ABM initiative.
This touches the areas of lead management (e.g., lead scoring, lead nurturing), marketing automation, sales intelligence and intent data collection, content and email marketing, CRM data management, predictive analytics, and more!
But...
To gauge whether or not an ABM software or platform is right for your business, first consider how it could enhance your organization's competencies.
In particular, how would it affect the way that you:
PART 1 OF 4: DATA
WHAT THEY DO
Collects, tracks, and interprets (using AI) data about web users’ online behaviour (GDPR compliant) from its network of partners to gauge the buying intent (intent data) of different prospects and accounts.
WHO IT’S FOR
Companies that want to use intent data to better understand their audiences, improve their content strategy and ad campaigns, and enhance the way they segment and target accounts.
EXAMPLE USE CASE
Exterro subscribes to a Bombora “growth package” that includes Bombora integration with both LinkedIn and SalesForce.
Bombora is then able to consolidate information from both LinkedIn and SalesForce into a single “intelligence dashboard”, which tells Sales who their most interested accounts are on a weekly basis.
Uses AI, big data, and machine learning to deliver data on anonymous buying behavior and accounts in-market to help revenue teams generate more opportunities quicker and increase deal sizes.
B2B organizations looking to engage resistant buying teams with more personalized, multi-channel and multi-touch campaigns.
Within seven weeks of launching their first 6sense campaign, MindTickle saw over $1m in additional pipeline and has since experience 6x increase in conversion rates. 6sense provides predictive analytics and intent data across a series of dashboards.
When an account fits MindTickle’s ICP and moves into a 6sense (predicted) buying stage that marks them as “ready to make a purchase decision”, the account is considered a Marketing Qualified Account (MQA). MQAs are then populated onto a dynamic dashboard to help Sales prioritize the account.
Offers a suite of Salesforce-native products to help revenue teams to automate the way they match, route, and engage persons and accounts.
For organizations whose sales people are constantly hunting and pecking for the right data to help them along their sales problems and need technology to do the hard work of fixing data issues and organizing workflow rules (e.g., routing, attribution).
6sense uses LeanData ‘Matching’ and ‘Routing’ with their own platform, which together increased 6sense’s pipeline by 60% per month. Through their own technology and operations, 6sense successfully finds a great amount of high-quality accounts and are constantly working to get them in-market. However, 60% of all of their in-market opportunities were getting thrown out the window, until they started to use LeanData’s Matching’ and ‘Routing’ capabilities. LeanData lets them automatically match and route their leads (e.g., giving them time stamps, making sure they get worked, etc.) as soon as they come in, rather than letting them sit on a shelf and fizzle out.
Uses AI, predictive analytics and intent data to identify and unify disconnected person and account data (including both first- and third-party data) into a single dashboard that measures intent, engagement, ICP fit, pipeline predictions, custom account journeys, and more.
For B2B revenue teams that want to improve and scale the way they find, consolidate, segment and engage with in-market accounts.
DocuSign increases sales pipeline by 22% for its top six industries, page views by 300% and click-through rates by 300%. Using Demandbase’s ‘Company-Targeted Advertising’ and ‘Website Optimization’ solutions, DocuSign’s team was able to focus on attracting and engaging the companies most likely to convert into revenue.
PART 2 OF 4: MEDIA AND ADS
Using intent data from your website, ads and marketing automation platforms to create ABM segments (using lookalike-, firmographic-, and technographic data), find and match accounts to your ICP, and view everything in a single platform.
For organizations that advertise to enterprises via platforms such as Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn and that are looking to use real-time account data to boost their digital ad efforts, account segmentation, and revenue attribution.
If a marketer is already doing ABM on LinkedIn, N. Rich acts as a complementary ABM component by providing ABM account analytics and cookie analytics from sources such as Google and Facebook.
Consolidates person and account data into a single dashboard, integrates with various platforms (e.g., CRM, MAP), and allows teams to run multi-channel engagement campaigns (via ads, email, chat, and website).
Organizations looking to boost ad, email, chat, and website experiences, as well as consolidate data into a single platform (e.g., first-party CRM and MAP data, intent data, behavioural and engagement data, etc.).
Terminus influences 92% of pipeline and 1900% ROI for CRMNEXT by helping them figure out what the market is saying and how they're engaging with the company, from awareness to post-purchase. The team targets accounts with digital ads and weaves in engagement data from Terminus and intent data from Bombora. This enables them to track search and engagement activities across ads, email signatures, chat, social media, and webpages.
Ties into over 100 ad networks (e.g., Google Ads, LinkedIn, etc.) to help organizations target known and unknown stakeholders in the top-revenue producing accounts.
Teams looking to retarget, nurture and grow awareness among key stakeholders through ABM advertising.
Trapeze uses Triblio to automate digital advertising and calls-to-action for each of its top 10 accounts. Results show a 240% improvement in pages/session, a 243% improvement in session duration, a 140% reduction in bounce rate, and a 314% increase in form-fill conversions. Trapeze’s ABM program encompasses 100 target accounts, divided into 3 account tiers.
This targets not only large new logos but also dozens of smaller accounts, upsell, and cross sell opportunities. Tier 2 and Tier 3 accounts receive segment-specific personalizations like industry-based popups and event-specific CTAs. Top tier accounts receive 1:1 marketing and sales attention across the web and throughout the purchase journey.
This includes a personalized view of the website, from home page messaging and landing pages where prospects can view calendars and book meetings, to case studies and resources pages, also powered by Triblio.
PART 3 OF 4: ENGAGEMENT
Uses real-time behavioural data, integrations (e.g., with MAPs, CRM systems, etc.), and advanced data orchestration capabilities to find and engage with in-market accounts, as well as to match leads and contacts to those accounts.
Teams looking to emphasise their marketing strategy on prioritisation of accounts that are engaging most and providing more personalised web experiences that drive engagement.
Since using Demandbase, Lacework has seen a 2x increase in both sourced pipeline and sourced bookings. Their Sales and Marketing teams are now able to meet weekly to discuss which accounts are engaging the most, and therefore set up an integrated strategy for each one. Marketing budgets are also assigned based on the importance of each account, so that they can maximize their return on investment.
Uses AI and automation technology to build and segment target account lists, apply predictive scoring to prospects, and generate account-level personalisation across multiple channels (e.g.,email, web, ads, mobile, events, nurtures, etc.).
Organizations that want to leverage Marketo (marketing automation) to execute account-based strategies.
With Marketo, SchoolDude runs large ABM campaigns that include up to 30 lists covering 140,000 educational institutions. The campaigns personalize content and experiences based on school name, location, size, email addresses, domain names, and known lead profile data such as job title, status, and opportunity.
SchoolDude uses Marketo Real-Time Personalization to entice prospects to complete specific activities: adopt new products, register for demos and events, etc. In adopting this strategy, they’ve increased average session duration by 394% and average pages per session by 405%.
Drift is a revenue acceleration platform, that helps generate more qualified pipeline in a faster way – using chat functionalities combined with live chat to hugely reduce speed to lead time. It helps grow revenue more efficiently by identifying site traffic and quickly engaging visitors in the right way.
Drift helps deliver better engagement & a more positive customer experience. Your customers can now get the information they want 24/7 by using your ever-working Drift Chat Bot. Drift also helps engage target accounts with a VIP experience and can alert sales in real-time.
WHO'S IT FOR
Drift is ideal for Marketing teams that need better support with shifting to digital marketing tactics and have an ever-online presence, all the while delivering a personalized experience. It enables a better alignment between sales and marketing efforts and can assist on quick and easy lead (dis)qualification, whilst gathering and tracking actionable customer data.
Read more.
Outreach is an engagement and intelligence platform that helps sales teams, together with marketing’s input and content guidance, manage workflows, gain actionable insights, and navigate the increasingly complex buying process - in real time - to beat your sales goal.
Additionally, there is the game-changing AI assistant, KAIA, who helps guide reps with offering real-time relevant content during meetings (which can hugely reduce onboarding time!), track key moments with live transcription, notes and bookmarks, plus automatically tracked action items and post-call meeting summaries.
Organisations who need to improve their sales processes, improve execution and visibility into their deals, their buyers and their teams.
At Zoom, they were able to improve the alignment drastically between marketing and sales. They were finally able to get data-drive insights into messaging tactics and were able to leverage the tailored messaging by persona’s that Outreach supports. A hugely important benefit was that they were able to streamline onboarding and provide specialized coaching to their teams.
“Having Outreach to target a certain title, or a certain line of business was the real game changer because we were able to go after the right people at the right time, with the right message." Lindsey Liranzo “ Director of Online Sales & Sales Development
Visit the Outreach Use Case page.
PART 4 OF 4: CONTENT
Lets revenue teams develop and analyse micro-targeted audiences, which Folloze pulls from 1st and 3rd party data and powers with AI, and offers a no-code designer for users to easily create content boards for them in just a few minutes.
Organizations that want to improve the way they segment and analyse audiences, deploy ABM campaigns globally, and develop adaptive and micro-targeted content within a single platform.
ABM is a key component and driver of FireEye’s overall go-to-market efforts. It builds a whole new level of partnership with sales that marketing never had before.
With Folloze ABM program, FireEye achieves 5x more engagement and pipeline and get to 20x more C-level people, compared the performance of the rest of their marketing team/efforts. Specifically, FireEye builds unique content and omni-channel experiences (e.g., Folloze ‘content boards’) for each of their customers.
They also leverage Folloze’s deep data integration with other platforms (e.g., marketing automation and CRM systems) to continually analyse their results.
What started as a content hub / resource centre builder is now an end-to-end content experience platform that helps organizations upload, edit, publish, organise, display (e.g., on microsites), and analyse their content in a single space.
Customer-facing teams looking for a content experience platform that helps centralise and organize content, as well as to better distribute and analyse content experiences to audiences at every stage of the buyer journey.
With the help of Uberflip, Degreed generates $3.4M in pipeline in three months with only USD 40,000 spent on campaign efforts. Degreed targets specific accounts with general messaging on ads served on LinkedIn or Terminus, then driving accounts to an Uberflip destination where they could self-select the pain point that resonated best with them and choose to read more content associated with that pain point.
Allows teams to develop highly visual, responsive, and interactive (e.g., polls, videos, audio, form fill-outs, etc.) pieces of content in specific Turtl-doc-formats, which are designed based on the science of how humans like to read and engage with content.
Brands that want to elevate the look, feel, and conversation rates of their content, as well as to analyze the digital “body language” and demographics (e.g., unique readers, reads, links clicked, time spent on pages, average read times, geographic location) of their audiences in a single platform.
With Turtl, Cisco achieves 7x more engagement at 10% less cost, and also reduces content production time by weeks, if not months in some cases. Within one year, Turtl is now used globally by 24 different Cisco teams in over a dozen countries and languages. Overall, Cisco uses Turtl to lower the cost of content creation, reduce production time, dynamically update existing content, streamline brand consistency across teams and geos, and get insights into audience behaviour and demographics.
