Account-based marketing (ABM) is here to stay, not just because it helps teams use their resources more effectively on the accounts most likely to convert, but because of the return on investment (ROI) and impact on their bottom line. According to Forrester’s Demand, ABM, And Customer Marketing Survey, 2023, 99% of those with an ABM team said that their ABM programs delivered higher ROI versus their traditional marketing programs.
But while ABM has proven to be a highly effective strategy to reach and engage key accounts and potential customers, executing it can be challenging. Unlike traditional approaches, which focus on reaching a broad audience, successful ABM campaigns zero in on specific high-value accounts. This shift in focus often requires teams to implement more sophisticated and complex strategies and tactics to see results.
That’s why we’ve rounded up four success stories featuring marketing leaders and their marketing teams who used the best account-based marketing campaigns to disrupt their industries and show how you too can action on ABM best practices to achieve more from your campaigns.
T-Mobile for Business: Engaging Every Buying Committee Persona for Ultimate Account Impact
We’ve entered what Forrester calls the buying groups era. Gone are the days when your account-based campaigns just needed to reach a single decision-maker to make an impact and close the deal. Today’s buying decisions are made by a group of individuals who complete their online research independently but work together to identify the best-fit solution for their organization. You can’t just target one persona—you need to speak to every persona that has a say in the purchase decision.
As the Senior Marketing Media Manager at T-Mobile for Business, Janice Barbosa realized the need to get away from a one-size-fits-all approach to engaging the buying committee and more effectively nurture them with personalized content and messaging that would move them through the funnel faster. Leveraging ML Insights intent data, Janice and her team better understand the different buyer personas and their pain points, but also track their progression through the buying journey. This allows the team to create content that resonates with each decision-maker and ensure the delivery of it when they need it the most—establishing more trust and helping to drive them through the sales journey faster.
Armed with a better understanding of who they’re targeting, the team then relies on a unified, multi-channel approach to activate their ABM strategy. For example, when targeting top-of-funnel accounts, they leverage thought leadership pieces and white papers through ABM Content Syndication to those buyers. Retargeting through ABM Display Advertising keeps T-Mobile for Business’s solution story relevant and persistent, with additional touches and content further down the funnel for decision-makers already engaging. Janice and her team then share the account’s journey and engagement story with sales teams for stronger conversations.
This data-driven, personalized approach led to higher engagement with content, resulting in more qualified leads within the T-Mobile for Business sales pipeline. With one of their key metrics being appointment rates, the team has reported achieving 3X and 5X increases in appointment rates for two of their key segments.
Flexential: Leveraging Data to Maximize Reach
Wide-approach B2B marketing tactics revolve around aiming for the accounts you and your company think are a good fit. ABM takes a different approach by using intent data to refine audience targeting to identify and prioritize accounts that are moving in-market and ready to buy. This helps increase campaign efficiency, relevance, and ROI with personalized experiences more tailored to the specific attributes and needs of the account. Erin Pak, Senior Demand Generation Manager at Flexential, leads a team responsible for creating and executing multi-touch demand generation strategies that grow awareness for the company among its existing customers and prospects. Yet Flexential’s diverse product and service offerings combined with its wide and complex target audience makes it challenging to ensure they deliver the right message to the right account at the right time.
ABM allows the team to limit waste and focus on the accounts that are the best fit for their solutions. With access to better intent data, the team leverages ML Insights to identify and prioritize the accounts in an active buying cycle and most likely to engage or create an opportunity. The large and diverse database enables them to consistently find and add new quality contacts to their campaigns instead of having to re-target old ones.
As a result of these data-driven targeting efforts, the team has seen a 22% increase in registrations, website traffic, and lead generation and a 25% increase in conversations.
Says Erin of this approach, “Data is very important to our success. The intent data that Madison Logic provides helps us to identify the accounts who are in an active buying cycle and are most likely to engage or create an opportunity. It has been magic for us just because Madison Logic has one of the largest and most diverse databases. So, they’re consistently able to add new quality contacts instead of recycling the old ones.”
Akamai: Accelerating the Buying Journey with Full-Funnel ABM
Effective ABM is more than just identifying and targeting in-market accounts and the buyer personas making the purchase decisions. In a crowded marketplace, being present with relevant information throughout the entire buyer’s journey is the most effective way to stand out. With data suggesting that most buyers choose a vendor from their initial consideration list, you need a unified, data-driven multi-channel ABM strategy that delivers consistent and cohesive content and messaging to buying committee members before they begin the buying process.
Serving as the Senior Digital Marketing Program Manager at Akamai Technologies, Max Kaskons understood the need to implement multi-channel ABM to surround buying committee members and influence their purchase decision with a full-funnel approach. Using ML Insights to not only prioritize in-market accounts, but also identify accounts not yet ready to make a purchase to build more brand awareness with, Max and his team engage buying committee members with a multi-channel approach by running ABM Display Advertising and ABM Content Syndication programs in parallel. This allows them to make more data-informed decisions to surround buying committee members with the right content based on where they are in their buying journey.
Max credits this approach for helping his team drive quality site traffic, engage new accounts, and lower cost per lead with their multi-channel programs. The team has seen more engaged contacts coming through their programs with higher click-through rates and more leads as a result of their efforts.
ContinuumCloud: Increasing Campaign Effectiveness with Optimizations in Real-Time
A key benefit of a multi-channel ABM is that it provides the best view of account progression through the buyer’s journey. This makes it easier to review the health of your campaigns, allowing you to more easily identify trends, adjust your approach, and make data-driven decisions that will improve campaign effectiveness rather than waiting until the end to realize something went wrong.
For Erica Kavanagh, Director of Demand Generation at ContinuumCloud, finding target accounts and personalizing messaging and content across the channels they visit the most is just one piece of the marketing puzzle. She and her team also need to ensure that their programs are impactful and efficient for their business.
Leveraging ML Insights, the team creates account lists that prioritize their outreach based on signals of intent and see what assets yield the highest conversion. This allows them to extend their reach and have a consistent approach across all channels and refine their resource allocation for the most impactful and efficient campaigns. They also use the reporting data from ML Measurement to inform their sales teams of surging intent for our top priority accounts. This has produced better alignment with sales and makes outreach easier knowing the accounts they’re engaging have a higher probability of converting to an opportunity.
Through a process more focused on continuous strategy measurement and optimization, Erica and her team have increased their average campaign influence by 10% and limited the average cost-revenue ratio for new business opportunities generated by 60%.
Explains Erica, “The biggest benefit of using ABM in our marketing strategy at ContinuumCloud is the alignment between sales and marketing, as well as limiting the resource leakage of our campaigns so they are the most impactful and efficient for the organization.”
Disrupt Your Industry with ABM
In recent years, ABM has emerged as a powerful strategy for securing top-tier customers and specific accounts ahead of competitors. By emphasizing personalized approaches, targeted outreach, and tailored messaging, businesses can engage key decision-makers, secure more qualified meetings, and significantly boost their pipeline and revenue. This makes ABM campaigns essential for companies looking to differentiate themselves in today’s crowded markets.
Madison Logic is the only ABM activation solution that combines market-leading intent signals, four dominant media channels, and real-time measurement to drive quality conversions faster for exceptional ROI and accelerated sales cycles. If you’re ready to disrupt your industry and make our list of the best account-based marketing campaigns, contact us!
In the meantime, be sure to check out our 2024 Full-Funnel ABM Playbook for your step-by-step guide to the best account-based marketing campaign.
