Five Steps to Ensure a Successful ABM Campaign

About to implement or refine your ABM campaigns? Here’s a checklist specifically for the critical data segment of your ABM strategy, by Jeff Kostermans, Vice President, LeadGenius.

For an ABM campaign to be wildly successful, a lot has to go right. Fortunately, the discipline continues to mature with plenty of checklists and success stories to learn from, but when a campaign struggles, the underlying data often plays a larger role than the creative, offer or timing. 

CUSTOMER DATA PLATFORM (CDP) BUYERS’ GUIDE 2019

Welcome to the 2019 edition of CDP Buyers’ Guide. As customer data platforms are becoming increasingly necessary for enterprise marketers, it is also becoming more complex to choose the best fit CDP platform amongst the pool of new and old vendors.

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1. First, understand what your data goals are.

• Is it reaching out to your total addressable market in defined sectors?
• Growing the database to add many new contacts at existing accounts?
• Targeting specific segments for better engagement?
•  Identifying key stakeholders within target accounts?
• Collecting prospective buyer behavior to boost engagement and messaging?
• Identifying and targeting new verticals?

Also Read: How to Select a B2B Data Provider

It pays to be very intentional about the campaign goals.  Broadly saying “we want to target key accounts” doesn’t cut it.  Without more detail, fuzzy objectives that are not S.M.A.R.T.  (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timely) will only set you up for disappointing results.

2. Identify the data needed to get started

Next you will select the type of data for your specific ABM needs. This requires thorough research, but it is time well spent to ensure you’re acting on the right data to create opportunities.

Some types of data you’ll want to consider:

3. Evaluate your data sources and enrichment processes

Although some of the above may exist in your CRM, it’s important to identify areas where you need more detailed and updated information.  After you’ve assessed your data gaps and scoped the work needed to fill those gaps, you need to decide how to best source and maintain the data. The options are typically in-house, automated, outsourced or via campaigns.

If the amount of data is relatively easy to compile and has a long shelf life, you may choose to collect in house.  For data that does not have to be 100 percent accurate, or is not custom-curated, leveraging bulk data may be appropriate.  However, when the data volume is sizeable, customized, and critical to the sales process, is difficult to compile, and must be timely and accurate, an outsourced solution makes sense.  Often a blend of the three is suitable and a specialized data partner can help you optimize the mix and fill any gaps.

You’ll also be collecting data in the normal course of executing campaigns including data provided directly by the client, third party intent data, and data on hand-raising activity from your MarTech stack.  You may also want to consider working with a partner dedicated to enriching both inbound records and records from off-line sources like conferences, with truly actionable data points. The goal is to ROI-justify your investment in data by deploying the most effective resources and processes.

4. Create a systematic, scalable plan for enriching the data that matters.

Look at your 12 month ABM plan and think about the following: what SLA’s have you put in place, are your inside sales reps responsible for coverage and engagement within accounts weekly, and do they require accurate business email addresses and direct phone lines? For prioritized accounts, do they need highly personalized emails not available from bulk data providers? 

Knowing these data points, two key questions remain. 1. Does your insides sales team have the capacity to complete the data leg-work required?  2. Is that the best use of their time?  If the answer is “no” to either of these questions, then a discussion with a partner specialized in data orchestration is in order.

An ABM strategy is a long term commitment and with long sales cycles you need some quick wins aligned to your spend on data.  To accomplish this, consider a scaled approach whereby you invest in data based on how the lead is progressing through your funnel.

Whatever your ABM playbook calls for, align your data investment to the leads and accounts displaying the highest likelihood of becoming an opportunity. The last thing you want is to waste your data budget on records unlikely to become customers. 

Also Read: It’s Time to Spring Clean Your Data: Get Started with These 3 Steps

5.  Measure the projected ROI on your data investment.

As your ABM strategy takes shape and you begin to see accounts reach engagement thresholds and become opportunities, it’s important to measure investments in all aspects of campaign execution.  Traditional ROI measures return on creative, delivery, and channel, but you should also measure return on your data investment.

Even if you don’t track data investment at the account level, it’s still important to track data sources and their impact on the funnel as a whole. Doing this at the account level makes more sense for ABM because you’ve likely invested in multiple influencers to the single or handful of decision-makers at the account that reached a certain stage.  You can build this reporting directly in your CRM, or you can work with a data partner that has a flexible reporting solution enabling you to see how your various data investments are performing in real-time.

When you apply each of these five steps to your ABM strategy, you should see measurable results with greater ROI. Many factors contribute to success, but data is one of the most critical, and it’s essential to map out your data investment, the enrichment process, and data performance measurement.  A solid investment in data, along with a well-orchestrated data strategy, will dramatically increase your ABM success.