Leading ABM Practitioners List Three Learnings from B2BMX That Are Worth Highlighting
There were a number of informative ABM sessions at B2BMX this year. They covered everything from AI and what’s in the hype to winning case studies and sales support.
In between sessions, I had the chance to catch up a few of the Triblio users who were on stage–
- Jen Dimas, VP Integrated Marketing and Business Operation, initiated and continues to lead a seasoned, full-funnel ABM program at Plex. She’s been named “one of the world’s leading practitioners” by TOPO.
- Ciaran Mahoney is the Director of Demand Generation at FinancialForce, the number one cloud ERP built on the Salesforce platform.
- Michelle McCabe, Manager of Demand Generation and Marketing Operations at Trapeze Group, which took home a “Finny” for Best Account-Based Marketing Campaign.
I got the inside scoop on one-on-one interviews and found three lessons that are worth highlighting. All three leading practitioners–
- Use tiered account segmentation
- Focus their marketing efforts on revenue generation
- Execute omnichannel campaigns
Below are the three key ABM strategies illustrated by 3 case studies.
Use a Tiered Strategy to Scale ABM
Plex, a leading manufacturing cloud ERP, serves various industries around the world. Despite its large market potential, Plex’s marketing isn’t scattered. It remains focused and never swerves from a set list of target accounts.
Of course, Plex revisits this account list periodically, adding new targets and removing closed opportunities, but in the end, Plex is 100% account-based. It runs an impressive, full-funnel ABM operation.
According to Jen Dimas, “I think of everything we do as account-based because we focus every single marketing activity on that list.”
How can it Plex scale an account-based strategy to reach over 40,000 accounts?
The reason Dimas’s team can focus on its master account list is that its uses a tiered account segmentation strategy. Plex organizes its target accounts by geography, verticals, and buyer cycle stage to create tiered account lists. This way, the message doesn’t get diluted to a wide-ranging audience. Instead, their strategic segmentation, powered by cutting-edge MarTech solutions, enables Plex to reach over 40,000 accounts with personalized campaigns, landing pages, and content hubs.
Plex can easily create large volumes of seemingly custom campaigns on account-based platforms that execute and personalize campaigns at scale. To optimize these campaigns, they receive account-based insights with tools like Triblio. They can filter these reports for, let’s say, the top 25 accounts that have been on the site and see which segments they belong to, which pages they’ve visited, and when.
Always be Driving Pipeline/Revenue
Demand generation involves advertising campaigns, SEO, paid media, email, direct mail, and the list goes on. What’s different for Ciaran Mahoney’s team at FinancialForce is that they can see above all the day-to-day activities across various channels and say, “Really, my number one KPI is driving pipeline for our sales team.”
Why did they move to an ABM strategy?
Yes, ABM can help them focus on a really defined target market. Yes, it can help them penetrate into target accounts across various channels. Yes, it can help them deliver personalized campaigns at scale. But in the end, FinancialForce is in the ABM game because ABM helps them grow pipeline and generate revenue.
FinancialForce ensures that its marketing campaigns impact pipeline and revenue by investing in sales enablement. As Mahoney said, “Our ABM strategy at FinancialForce is around delivering segmented playbooks through SDRs and our AEs to our target accounts. We use a wide range of tools and channels to be able to deliver them a personalized message at right time with right segmentation.” In other words, marketing’s responsibilities don’t end after they press play.
Marketers at FinancialForce follow their campaigns and manage SDR outbound campaigns to follow-up with active, in-target accounts.
Another sign of its devotion to revenue generation lies in its segmentation. At FinancialForce, marketing segments mirror sales. Because their SDRs, who are assigned to AEs, report to marketing, their marketing segments are also organized by sales territory. This neatly aligned segmentation strategy further strengthens the tie between marketing efforts and pipeline numbers.
In the end, Mahoney mentions that “the journey to a complete ABM strategy really requires you to use vendors that can support you on that journey.” They’re strategically moving budget towards select vendors because “there are only certain vendors out there that can target your target accounts.”
When you’re on the cutting edge of B2B marketing, and you’re reinventing the way vendors should interact with buyers, your efforts are only made fruitious by account-based tools. FinancialForce utilizes an ecosystem of MarTech tools to help enrich their data, automate email, execute personalizations, trigger sales actions. Solutions include Triblio, Salesforce, Marketo, Sendoso, and ZenIQ.
These tools are well curated so that its entire MarTech stack works together towards revenue generation.
Win with Omnichannel Orchestration
In an interview with Michelle McCabe, she explained how Trapeze Group brought home a “Finny” for Best Account-Based Marketing Campaign. Trapeze Group is a Toronto-based hardware and software provider for public transportation systems throughout the world. Its marketing team didn’t bombard public transport centers with a bunch of letters or a bunch of emails. It spread its touches across the various touch points in the day-in-a-life of a buyer for an omnichannel approach.
From direct mail to social campaigns, events, email, personalized websites, and display ads, McCabe’s team drove awareness, reinforced its messaging, and activated sales.
The results?
The key account they were going after is set to close by the end of this quarter.