Use Predictive Marketing to Deliver ABM Throughout the Funnel

As we work on applying ABM principles throughout our internal pipeline, a big challenge is finding the right mix of tactics to continue engaging a prospect organization’s buying center without overstepping the boundary. If marketing gets too aggressive, you could do more harm than good (and really piss off the salesperson working on the account), but based on ABM principles we also know marketing cannot completely disengage.

We’ve come to understand that using display ads informed by predictive is the best way to use a soft enough touch while still staying in the prospects’ top-of-mind. Here are the best practices we’ve developed.

Ensure that an opportunity can be created in your CRM as an MQL and you can maintain the thread as it is handed off to sales.

For us, we BANT qualify our net new opportunities prior to be handed off to the sales team. After the meeting occurs and the salesperson confirms that the lead is indeed a qualified opportunity, we they associate a pipeline value with that account and note it in our CRM in a prescribed way. At this point the opportunity is included in our sales pipeline report and everyone from the marketing team to the CEO can see it and where it originated.

Segment those accounts in a display campaign.

Using BANT qualification and intent data collected through our predictive platform, we can easily keep track of clients’ buying stage, but now it’s time to take action on that information. We’ve automated our process: we take those late-stage accounts and the IP addresses associated with them and we drop them into a segmented display ad campaign so that they receive ads more associated with our branding initiatives, case studies and events. The earlier-stage IP addresses are served our early stage whitepapers and awareness messaging.

Keep retargeting running at all times.

Alongside your display campaign, we’re also always running general retargeting campaigns to revisit any prospect that spent time on our website. Their time on our site shows that they’re still interested, and retargeting is a good way to nurture leads, no matter what stage they’re in.

So far, display ads combined with an e-mail campaign is the best mix of tactics we’ve tried for nurturing prospects down the funnel without too much heavy-handedness. And by merging the predictive data we collect with the automation of our delta platform, we can provide appropriate content to accounts just entering the funnel, different content to accounts that already exist in our pipeline, and retargeted ads to all for a highly-targeted, consistent, branded message that’s always on. This assists our sales team in shortening the sales cycle and realizing that revenue.

This is another example of online and off-line tactics aligning using an account-based marketing methodology directed by predictive analytics.