To be successful at Account Based Marketing, you must answer two fundamental questions:
1) “Are the right people at accounts spending time with our company?”
2) “Is that engagement going up over time?”
These are leading indicators of success. After all, ABM is all about quality and not quality.
Fortunately, when you have account analytics, you can give your team these insights and more. And it all starts with one thing: engagement.
Engagement is a cornerstone concept in ABM. It denotes something fundamental about the customer’s connection to your brand. More engagement means the customer has a more profound commitment; engagement begets activity, such as buying and advocating.
For a deeper dive into measuring Engagement and how that important metrics fits into ABM analytics, check out Engagio’s Clear and Complete Guide to ABM Analytics. Download it free here. In this post, we’re not going to look at what engagement is, but rather how to measure it and how to take action on that data.
How to Use Engagement Data
There are multiple ways to use Engagement data. Here’s how we think about it and use it at Engagio.
Account Scoring
Assuming you have already identified accounts of potential interest, engagement data effectively prioritizes resources to the accounts most interested in your products or services.
Sales is always asking questions like:
“How do I get qualified meetings with key decision makers who understand why they’re meeting with me?” and “How can I engage everyone who matters at the account?” This means we must provide data to help them prioritize their time and efforts.
To do that, you can filter engagement data produced by marketing-driven activities. While sales-driven engagement (like meetings and replies) is useful for measuring relationship depth, it’s less useful for scoring.
Reps want to view their most engaged accounts immediately to help them understand where to focus their energy and what impact different activities are making on their target accounts.
Prioritize target accounts and personas based on most engaged accounts..
Aggregate Engagement
Measuring total minutes across all target accounts is an excellent proxy for overall engagement. If the overall trend is up, especially with the right personas, you’re likely connecting with target accounts.
For a company “all-in” on ABM, engagement minutes can replace marketing-sourced pipeline as the number-one marketing metric, and that’s precisely what we have seen with some of our customers. Target accounts with increasing engagement help teams understand the effectiveness of their ABM efforts.
Show where your engagement is coming from using an engagement heatmap. Target accounts can be in the rows, and job level in the columns. Then, you can visualize engagement with a heat map to see where you have coverage and where you need to work.
Heatmaps show accounts with executive engagement — and those without. This is a standard view from Engagio’s Engage product.
Advanced Engagement Analytics
The next level of measuring engagement is segmenting your data further with filters. Filtering engagement data can answer interesting questions about target accounts. For example, your filters could tell you if Tier 1 CXOs and VPs actually attend webinars.
Other filters let you answer questions such as:
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- Which of a specific rep’s accounts had someone visit the pricing page?
- With which target accounts did we meet with last month?
- Which executives at target accounts in New York have engaged with us for at least 30 minutes, but the account lacks an opportunity?
The possibilities are endless with the right ABM foundation.
Delivering Engagement Data You Can Act On
Data are useless unless you act on it. That’s why it’s important to get it in front of your team. We find that Sales and SDRs love engagement data as much as Marketing!
When you make engagement data available to Sales and Sales Development, they will be able to use it to:
- Identify engaged accounts
- Find the best people to contact next
- Understand how effectively Marketing is supporting their efforts
- Prepare QBRs and other account reviews
If you want your team to be effective, you must expose data about existing rep activity and effectiveness. Give it to them in multiple ways, and to it consistently. At Engagio, we deliver engagement data via email, CRM, sales tools, and your analytics platform.
In Email
Most reps appreciate weekly (or even daily) emails about engagement with the accounts they care about. Imagine coming into the office first thing in the morning and having an email summarizing activities and changes in engagement of your key accounts. They can use that data to drill down and determine the next action to take on that account.
Here is some other key information that reps can use in these emails:
- Most engaged accounts
- Accounts visiting the website
- Newly engaged executives
Here’s an example of a weekly email highlighting target account insights for a particular rep.
In CRM
Reps also want to see engagement data where they spend another significant portion of their day: the company’s CRM. Include online and offline activities for leads and contacts as well as insights across Marketing and Sales activities. Tracking web activity is not enough.
In your CRM, display:
- Calculated fields. Show total minutes by account and individual for engagement types across time periods.
- Visual timelines. Map account engagement activities in a visual timeline. (These are essentially electrocardiogram, or EKG, charts for account health.)
Here’s a visual timeline view of engagement data over time.
In Other Tools that Sales Uses
Engagement data is useful anywhere customer-facing employees work: corporate email, calendars, LinkedIn, and so on. Engagio’s Scout product is a Chrome extension that lets reps quickly see engagement information about accounts and the people at the accounts, as well as all the emails and meetings with the account (a “unified account inbox”) — anywhere reps are already working on the web.
These essential account insights coordinate relevant, human interactions — which is what ABM is all about.
Engagio’s Scout product is a sidebar for Salesforce, LinkedIn and Gmail accounts, etc.
In analytics platforms
Directly logging into analytics platforms like Engagio’s Engage product is the most sophisticated option. Salespeople mine for nuggets of opportunity by drilling into territories and seeing account data. About ~30% of Engagio customers encourage their AEs and SDRs to log in to the platform directly.
Engagement analytics answer a fundamental question that all ABM practitioners are trying to answer: Are we creating and deepening relationships with the right people at target accounts?
To learn more about how fits into the broader topic of account analytics and ABM measurement, check out Engagio’s Clear and Complete Guide to ABM Analytics.
