In today’s digital era, with the advent of modern engagement technologies, we are now at a stage where account-based marketing (ABM) and personalization have become practical and scalable as never before. With automation and Cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) tools working in tandem, even a small company can run a comprehensive ABM operation serving the largest possible clients.
But it wasn’t always this way.
Back in 2006, I began my marketing automation adventure as an Eloqua customer. Then, in 2007, my company switched to Marketo, and I became a proud member of the Champion community. I believed in the vision and product so much that I decided to join the company in 2011. It was an exciting time: We were in the midst of creating a new software category, and our mantra was to enable our customers and prospects to effectively build a large top-of-funnel demand-gen machine. Ah, yes, the good-old days of marketing.
Fast-forward nine years or so, I’m now leading Marketing at Folloze, and the proverbial pendulum has practically swung back in the other direction. The techniques of continuously flooding prospects with generic content or calls no longer work today. Buyers have become fatigued by all the marketing noise, and they therefore tune out. They are much less willing to engage, thereby diminishing the effectiveness of campaigns and an organizations’ ability to convert leads into sales opportunities. At the same time, B2C platforms such as Netflix and Amazon have led buyers to value and expect hyper-personalized and curated experiences in all their interactions, including B2B.
So, what is a modern B2B marketer to do?
“Organizations that have fully invested in all types of online personalization will outsell companies that have not by more than 30%,” according to Gartner. It’s no secret that lightweight Web personalization tools for ad retargeting and merge fields for email introductions have been effective—today, those are merely marketing table stakes. In order to remain competitive in the disruptive markets of 2019 and beyond, organizations need to think bigger. They need to think hyper-personalization—at scale.
Hyper-personalization, or full-funnel personalization, is the act of incorporating unique visitor, account, predictive, and intent data to deliver extremely customized, interactive, and curated experiences throughout their entire journey that customers value—and now expect.
By harnessing the growing amount of historical and firmographic data that we have about our prospects, organizations can customize and elevate any marketing effort, across any channel, whether inbound or outbound. That leads to higher engagement across your entire account lifecycle, from top funnel to opportunity development, closure and post-sale, and allows you to give every single customer the engagement experience they want—even before they know they want it.
In short, the power of hyper-personalization provides increased relevancy, trust, and engagement:
- Relevancy. We know you want to be there with the right message at the right time for your customers. By designing hyper-personalized experiences that are based on rich behavioral and intent data, you can proactively reach target contacts and deliver relevant content to address specific customer pain points and needs.
The result is a win-win: more informed prospects who are confident in their buying decisions, and sustainable relationships with much shorter sales cycles for sellers. Your future customers will benefit significantly if you teach them about possible solutions to their complex business problems through a hyper-personalized and relevant experience.
- Trust. In today’s fast-paced marketplace, it’s never been more important for salespeople to act as educators and maintain consultative relationships to build trust. True sales success must entail a prescriptive and educational approach that’s highly personalized and delivered “in-context.”
Via access to intent, location, and other data on prospects, coupled with AI, salespeople who can consistently provide high-value content journeys in order to create personal interactions, will in time develop strong, meaningful relationships and customer trust. And, as we well know, trust, in the end, is what drives business.
- Engagement. According to recent findings by the Epsilon Group, 80% of consumers claim they are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences. The results speak for themselves; One of our customers has reported that their hyper-personalized campaigns are driving 3-4 times more engagement, and another has said full-funnel personalization has doubled event registrations.
Those kinds of numbers are possible because each customer interacts with messaging, imagery, and content that have been dynamically hyper-personalized for them based on a wide variety of criteria from a variety of sources, including marketing automation, intent data, and reverse IP.
Whether it’s a personalized email with dynamic tags and footers, or a content site with account specific messaging, or a customized SDR contact card, hyper-personalization ensures any visitor gets the same level of customization, dramatically increasing the likelihood of prospects’ engagement.
Without question, delivering data-powered hyper-personalized account experiences across every touchpoint allows companies to engage customers in much deeper and more meaningful ways. And with higher account engagement, businesses are better enabled to increase pipeline, win their top target accounts, and expand revenue with existing customers.
So, what are you waiting for? Is your organization ready to “get personal?”
To learn more and to get started, visit folloze.com/demandbase.
—Carlyn Manly, Head of Marketing, Folloze