Today, email is not just about promoting your brand offerings. It is about giving your subscribers and customers a personalized and relevant experience and creating accessible emails to reach out to each and everyone, including people with disabilities.
The email address is an asset that needs to be used thoughtfully. Gone are the days of batch-and-blast emailing; email marketing is about delivering value to the subscriber.
While email personalization is about sending the most relevant emails to your subscribers at the most suitable time, account-based marketing (ABM) focuses on targeting the most relevant audience to market your brand. Email is one of the most powerful marketing channels, and by combining personalized emails with ABM strategy, you will be able to boost engagement and get the desired results.
In this blog, we’ll take you through the ways to build a successful ABM strategy by incorporating personalization into your email campaigns and its benefits.
Why Should You Use ABM for Your Email Campaigns?
ABM focuses on creating and executing highly-targeted and customized campaigns to address the needs of each individual set of accounts and their decision makers. Email marketing, when aligned with ABM, can help garner better results. Using ABM in your email campaigns will help you to understand each target account’s priorities and needs, and add value to their business.
Here are the benefits of implementing an ABM strategy in your email campaigns:
Targeted Approach
ABM targets specific groups of accounts that share similar business needs, challenges, and firm demographics. Therefore, instead of marketing to a large group of people, it markets to a specific list of prospects. This helps in determining whom to address while creating email campaigns for a particular B2B business.
Relevant and Appealing Emails
Since the target group is fixed, marketers can create relevant content that appeals to each of them. This helps in creating specific and appealing emails that have higher chances of engagement than generic emails. Personalized and targeted email campaigns improve click-through rates and conversions of your email marketing campaigns.
Easy Tracking of Metrics
Since ABM campaigns help to send relevant content that focuses on the quality rather than quantity, there is less data that needs to be tracked. It is therefore much easier to measure metrics and performance for ABM campaigns as compared to regular campaigns.
Improved ROI
ABM targets the biggest and most superior groups of accounts with personalized content that is most likely to drive conversions. It is, therefore, the most popular campaign that delivers the highest return on investment for any B2B business.
Aligned Sales and Marketing
ABM involves an equal contribution from both marketing and sales. It includes targeting specific accounts, engaging them, and generating revenue from them. For this, the marketing team needs to work closely with the sales team to make the campaign successful.
Steps to Build Personalized Emails for a Successful ABM Campaign
Your marketing automation platform can help you in creating and executing your personalized email campaigns.
Here are the steps to build a successful ABM campaign with personalized emails:
Step #1: Identify Your Target Accounts
The first and most fundamental step to create an ABM strategy is to identify the target accounts, determine their relevance and importance, and link them to your organizational goals. You should have a clear idea of what type of customers you need for your business. Build a list out of your most relevant target accounts and study the anatomy of each of them. Find out the key decision makers in the organization and build a strategy to approach them.
Step #2: Collect All Necessary Data
The more data you have of your customers/target accounts, the more efficiently you will be able to personalize messages. Collect data such as their business needs, interests, their role in the organization, the type of products or services they are looking for, and other personal information to deploy personalization in the emails that you send them.
Step #3: Segment the List
Once you have identified your target accounts, it is time to segment them into various groups to send specific messages. Segmentation is a vital part to create personalized and targeted campaigns. Segment the accounts based on their role, gender, business needs, and interests. This will help you in crafting only relevant content and targeting them to the right audience.
After putting efforts to identify relevant prospects, the last thing you want is to provide them with the same email experience as everyone else on your list. Creating personalized emails will provide your target accounts a unique experience, engaging and converting them into leads and customers.
Step #4: Create Personalized Content for Specific Target Accounts
To craft personalized content for your emails, you need to determine the key pain points of your target accounts and address their problems and demands. Send newsletters, blog posts, infographics, whitepapers, or any other form of content that will help your prospects in addressing their specific business challenges and needs. Track their behavior on your website and send automated emails based on their actions.
Here’s How Email Personalization Is Set up in Marketo
1) Create a New Program
To do so, log in to Marketo’s Marketing Programs and click on New Program.
You will see the control panel with four areas of action: Audience, Email, Schedule, and Approval.
2) Define Your Target Audience
For this, you have two options in the Audience tile: either import a new list or edit a smart list to create the target audience.
For example, we choose from the smart list by clicking on Edit Smart List, which opens the following tab.
Next, from the list on the right pane, add filters by drag-and-drop and set the condition. Here we have set filters for State and Job Title.
You can add as many categories and filters as you need to target.
In the Audience tile, you will be able to see the number of people to whom the email will be sent and the number of people who have unsubscribed or been blacklisted.
3) Create an Email
By clicking on the New Email option in the Email tile, you’ll be able to choose from the different options of templates in the template picker window.
4) Add Personalization Tags
Once your template is ready, insert token tags to personalize. To do this, click on the insert token button for the From Name, Subject Line, and Email Content.
5) Set the Token Name and Default Value for Each
For example, for personalizing the subject line, set the token name as {{lead.First Name}} and the default value as Hello Friend! In case the token value is not available, it will fetch the default value and display it.
6) Personalize with Dynamic Content
For this, click on the desired section in the email content and select Make Dynamic in the Settings option.
Now, select the segments for which you want to show dynamic content and save the selection. You can add different segments for different content sections.
7) Save and Schedule
Next, you’ll need to save and schedule the email by selecting the send date and time at the Schedule tile. That’s it! You can activate a triggered campaign using a smart campaign and track the performance of your email. The goal of your emails is to present your business as the most suitable solution by sending them resources they are looking for. By sending personalized content to them, you will draw them to use your business’ services and products.
Step #5: Promote the Content on the Right Channels
Once you have created the right content, it is time to channelize and send it efficiently. Choose the right medium to send your message. All businesses are not active on all mediums. For example, social media and traditional advertising might not be suitable channels for the CEO of a company; an email would be the right medium to communicate with them. The distribution time is also an important factor to consider. You need to figure out what channels and time are best suited to get the desired results out of your ABM campaign.
Step #6: Analyze Data and Metrics
Analyzing the performance of your campaign is as important as running it. By studying the metrics, you will get insights into which content worked in engaging your target accounts and which one needs tweaking. As you begin to learn what content engages your target group, you will be able to refine your content to get better results. The data will help you in making the desired changes and guide you in improving the overall success of the campaign.
Benefits of Combining ABM and Email Personalization
Creating relevant and personalized content that addresses the specific needs and challenges of your target accounts is the most vital tactic of an ABM campaign. More so, combining personalization with ABM in emails yields the following benefits:
Deliver a Personalized Experience
When your business goals and target accounts are predetermined, it is easier to strike the right chord. By tracking the behavior and interest of the decision makers at each of your target accounts, you will be able to provide them a personalized experience. This will increase the chances of turning them into customers.
Accelerate the Buyer’s Journey
Personalized, contextual, and relevant email content increases the chances of conversion. When your target accounts receive content that speaks directly to them and addresses their challenges, they are more likely to use your products and services. When they receive suitable solutions for their problems, they will advance faster in the buyer’s journey.
Get Insights into Individual Customer Data
When you have a limited and more targeted set of people to address, the tracking is more accurate. You will be able to have a detailed analysis of your email campaign and insights into each individual customer/prospect’s data. This will help you in further making changes and optimizing your campaign strategy or content.
Wrapping Up
ABM is a powerful marketing method which when combined with email personalization will yield you great success in your business. Use this deadly combination in your email campaigns to stay focused on the right business goals and get maximum conversions.