Personalising ABM at Scale: Here’s How to Do it!

Account-based marketing (ABM) – what does it mean for your organisation? For some, it’s solely focusing on their target accounts. For others, it’s utilising data to the maximum and executing things accordingly. The type of ABM you implement depends on the type of your organisation and the organisational goals.

But when it comes to ABM, one thing is always key- personalisation at scale. Personalisation is a huge part of ABM and it sets ABM apart from all the other different marketing strategies. In this blog, we’re going to dive deeper into the subject of personalisation at scale in ABM.

What is personalisation at scale?

56% of marketers agree that personalised content is the key to ABM success. [Source: Forrester]

Personalisation at scale in ABM is connecting with your target accounts on a personal level, launching campaigns that target their pain points, that speak to them, and basically creating an individual experience for them in the ABM journey. If done correctly, it is basically the balancing act of launching the right content at the right time for all your target accounts.

How do you achieve personalisation at scale?

42% of organisations struggle to personalise at scale for target accounts. [Source: Linkedin]

Achieving personalisation at scale can be tricky. While it might be easy to personalise your outreach efforts to a few of your target accounts, the challenge lies in scaling them, making your outreach efforts that can cater to many of your accounts but feel like they’re exclusively created for the few. So how do you do that? Here are some things you can do:

1.   Pay attention to your data

 To launch personalised campaigns toward your target accounts, it’s important to gather data, pay attention to them, and look at what they reveal. Start gathering information on your target accounts from your first-party data and then formulate your personalisation strategy accordingly. Ask questions like “What content are they engaging the most to?”, “What are their key challenges?” and “How are they similar or different from their competitors?”. FIrst-party data are an important source of information because they easily reveal more about the target accounts. As a starting point, you can use the best quality data sets you have gathered to form meaningful hypotheses to test and learn from. The data thus gathered can be easily used by the sales team to incorporate personalisation in their messaging.

2.   Insight matters

 While first-party data is a great source to start understanding your target accounts better, insight gathered from desk research can be extremely useful too. First-party data won’t provide a deep-dive insight into your target accounts and that’s why insight matters. To achieve personalisation at scale, Business Brainz provides brief insight reports on your target accounts that can help you understand them better and implement your outreach efforts accordingly. These aren’t full-fledged one-to-one account insight reports but a cluster insight on your similar target accounts.

3.   Ensure a good flow of relevant content

 After you gather a better understanding of your target accounts, you need to have relevant content that you can share with them. Create content that is related to the kind that they are consuming. These could be use cases, case studies, blogs, playbooks, etc., that can help the target accounts understand your solutions better and see if it aligns with what they are looking for. You can even go further than this by creating extremely personalised content for the account that is engaging with your content.

4.   Align your sales and marketing teams

 Personalisation at scale can’t always be achieved through marketing efforts alone. When it comes to ABM, an alignment between the sales and marketing teams is crucial. While marketing touchpoints offer a lot of opportunities for personalisation, it is the salespeople that have the most contact with the prospects. It is important for both teams to meet frequently and share whatever knowledge they have and the content they’ve created. Only then an alignment will be formed, and it will be easier to achieve personalisation at scale.

5.   Explore and personalise different channels

 You’ve done your research. You’ve got your content sorted. Your teams are aligned as well. Now what? Just as important as these factors are, exploring and personalising channels are equally important. There are multiple channels out there, from email to paid ads to direct mail. To achieve personalisation at scale, look into various channels, find where your target accounts are spending the most of their time, and promote the account experience you’re going to deliver through them.

Why do we need personalisation at scale?

 Personalisation, when done well, may instantly generate influence and revenue while improving consumer experiences. While immediate effects can be seen in a matter of months when adopting personalisation at scale, it can definitely have a long-term positive impact on the business and your target account’s satisfaction. According to Epsilon, 80% of consumers react positively to personalised experiences. ABM is anything but a one-fits-all approach. Personalisation at scale helps your outreach effort become more meaningful to your target accounts, creates a better engagement, and eventually expedites your selling process.

What are the different levels of personalisation in ABM?

 While ABM has been here for many years and evolved, it all started with the one-to-one ABM (strategic ABM). Then it evolved into one-to-few ABM (ABM Lite), and then one-to-many ABM (Programmatic ABM). When it comes to the level of personalisation in ABM, it all depends on the type of ABM. A high level of personalisation is required in one-to-one ABM, whereas the level decreases with one-to-few and one-to-many, respectively.

When it comes to Business Brainz’s offering, we offer bespoke, deep-dive, and highly detailed account and industry reports for one-to-one ABM and less detailed ones for one-to-few/ one-to-many (cluster) ABM. Our brief account insight profiles are extremely helpful in understanding your cluster target accounts and achieving personalisation at scale.

Conclusion:

To sum up, striking the personalisation chord in ABM is not as easy as it sounds. But with the right insight, it can be. To sum up, the level of personalisation at scale varies according to the type of ABM you’re implementing. However, be it one-to-one, one-to-few, or even one-to-many ABM, there are always certain things to be mindful of. Pay attention to your data, gather accurate and fact-based insight, ensure a good flow of relevant content, align your sales and marketing teams, and explore and personalise different channels.

Are you looking to personalise your ABM at scale? Feel free to have a quick look at our reports to know how our insight can help you scale your ABM programs.

About Business Brainz

Business Brainz delivers bespoke research & insight about industries, companies and executives to sales and marketing teams engaged in B2B selling and marketing. Our insight reports are a key enabler for ABM (Account-Based Marketing), Enterprise Sales and B2B Demand Generation. Contact Business Brainz