The Big Book of ABM Campaigns

Take a behind-the-scenes peek of 5 ABM campaigns run by Bizible, Datanyze, LiveRamp, Radius, and RollWorks.

Show don’t tell—that’s the idea behind this guide. Rather than tell you why you need account-based marketing (ABM), we show you 5 ABM campaigns that we and our partners actually ran.

You’ll get to see:

• How each of us figured out our target account list

• Step-by-step campaign descriptions (with lots of pictures!)

• The results that made us rethink ABM

• Improvements we’d make and much more

  Why get started learning about how to run your ABM campaign?  

While a few years ago you could question the value of account-based marketing, these days it’s pretty hard to make a case against it. Reading statistic after statistic, ABM and ROI have become so closely related that they could be considered cousins or even siblings. And the number of creative ABM campaigns grow by the day. And that leads marketers on the search for ABM examples and case studies that guide them in the right direction.

As more and more B2B marketers experiment with ABM, they’re finding new strategies and new use cases to squeeze every last drop out of their returns in what could be considered a lengthy process. And yes, while account-based marketing definitely takes more work up front than more traditional B2B lead generation campaigns, the payoffs are well worth it. 

Here’s what marketers had to say about the efficacy of their programs:

• 80% of marketers say that ABM outperforms other marketing investments. 

—ITSMA

• ABM outperforms a traditional marketing approach across a number of categories, including sales and marketing alignment, overall customer lifetime value (LTV), contract value, close rate, and ROI.

—TOPO

• 92% of companies recognize the value of ABM and see the strategy as a “must-have” for B2B marketing.

—SiriusDecisions

What Experts Are Saying

Now that B2B marketers have stopped asking why they should be using ABM, they’re asking how they should be using ABM. And that’s where this guide comes in. We’ve compiled some of the best ABM campaigns and unique use cases. 

Most marketers know the components of an effective marketing campaign, so rather than taking you through every piece of an ABM campaign, we decided to teach through creative ABM campaign examples. 

We teamed up with four of the leading companies in account-based marketing to show you how each of us approached our creative ABM campaigns and give you ideas about how you could approach yours. Feel free to borrow any of the strategies below and let us know what works and what doesn’t.

Bizible

It never hurts to start small. Jellyvision started with a modest pilot campaign on purpose—it was big enough to show real results, but small enough that if they failed, they wouldn’t blow their whole budget on one blowout campaign. A small pilot gives you the flexibility to learn what works in your market so you can scale it up quickly when you prove you can be successful.

Datanyze

For anyone who is considering an ABM approach, creating a strong and targeted account (and lead) list is just as important as running the campaign itself. Know what makes a great customer for your business and use that to your advantage when introducing prospects to your products. When you have great data, almost all marketing campaigns can, by nature, turn into ABM campaigns.

RollWorks

One of the most common misconceptions about ABM is that it replaces your existing programs. In truth, ABM is something you layer on top of your existing marketing initiatives to target the large accounts that take a lot more effort to close. Everyone is trying to close those big accounts, so if you’re only using traditional demand-gen, you’ll just get lost in the noise with everyone else. These large accounts require a targeted and personalized approach, which is exactly what good ABM provides.

Radius

It’s helpful to familiarize yourself with the sales process and the overall account journey. ABM isn’t a short-term “one-and-done” initiative—it requires cross-functional buy-in and should be leveraged as a long-term strategy. Work with sales to co-create account pursuit plans and journeys that make sense. This will help define your ABM road map each quarter. It’s also important to focus on relevancy and timing. Often, great campaigns can be overlooked or dismissed if your prospects are not ready for you.

LiveRamp

Hyper-targeted ABM campaigns should never be “set-and-forget” campaigns. It's very important to maintain tight coordination between the teams so you can closely monitor, test, and optimize. We showed that we take sales and marketing alignment seriously by having the sales development representative (SDR) team sit on the marketing team. This way, sales could give constant input to marketing about what was working and what wasn’t. Target account lists from sales are usually evolving, so build your program and launch quickly once you finalize your target account list with sales so that your campaign doesn’t lose momentum.

Hint: You can unlock even more details,  snapshots, and success metrics by unlocking the entire guide.

What You Can Do 

As you can see, account-based marketing means very different things to different marketers. But, at its heart, ABM is about coordinating your marketing and sales efforts to increase the chances of closing those large accounts that can make or break your marketing goals. 

How you go about coordinating those efforts is really up to you and what your team believes will showcase your benefits to your prospects.

The three things that all ABM campaigns have in common, though, are:

• Clean data
• Precise targeting
• Accurate reporting

If you have these three ingredients, and if they are high quality, you’ll definitely set yourself up for ABM success. As you look into starting your first ABM campaign or updating your existing one, be sure to ask your ABM vendor the questions that matter. 

If you take anything from this guide, it should be:

• Not all ABM vendors are created equal.
• Start small and learn quickly.
• Make sure you have clear reporting to inform your decisions.

If you’d like to unlock more examples, tips, and tricks, simply enter your email in the form above to unlock the entire e-book!

About the Author

Caroline is a B2B marketer with a knack for building start-up content strategies from scratch. With a passion for crafting the right message at the right time (and a good pun), she leads content for real marketers by telling their real stories. In the rare case she's not busy writing, you can find her consuming true crime podcasts, stand-up specials, and copious amounts of cheese.

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