3 Best Practices for an Effective ABM Follow-Up Strategy

You’ve thought of the perfect account-based marketing campaign, with a killer call to action and futuristic graphics. And it’s paid off, too – leads are coming in hot in the pipeline!  But how do you find the ideal timing for your account based-marketing (ABM) follow-ups? At XANT, we’ve built the one model that aligns your Sales and Marketing organizations on account-based marketing campaigns. Watch our webinar to learn three best practices for an effective follow-up strategy.

Gabe Larsen, VP of InsideSales Lab, caught up with Philip Wensel, head of enterprise business development at XANT. They wanted to see how automation and technology play a role in an effective follow-up system.

The InsideSales Poker Play Case Study

The XANT team tracked results on one of their campaigns targeting VP, CEO’s and other C-levels. They tried to determine best practices on  follow-up for ABM campaigns. They targeted a select group of individuals that qualified for the sale and sent them a branded poker set as a gift.

“We took some time to identify some of these targeted accounts, many of which we had engaged with in the past. Perhaps we have some inbound leads, or met them at trade show, and there’s some other cases,” said Philip, during the InsideSales webinar.

According to the head of business development, “[…] When starting an ABM campaign, identifying specific decision makers is not an easy task. Thankfully, in Inside Sales, we do have a predictive platform that helps us hone in our efforts, and kind of makes our admin work more efficient,” recounts Philip.

Tracking results and responses from the Poker Play campaign showed some really interesting results, on follow-up best practices.

Align Marketing and Sales on Account-Based Activities

ABM campaigns are the type of activity that need to get Sales and Marketing work together closely. However, in most companies the collaboration is not effective. “Often one of the things lacking in Account-based marketing is a good follow up strategy, because marketing and sales don’t talk enough. In ABS, you typically have a little more of a defined follow up strategy,” shows Gabe Larsen, VP of XANT research division.

The follow-up for the Poker Play campaign would consist of emails, voicemails, SMS, even social media across a span of two weeks, to try and set up meetings with these accounts.

Automate to Drive Down Sales Reps Efforts

Making sure that follow-ups are timed perfectly after the gifts was not something that the sales team could do manually. InsideSales PlayBooks software helped here by automatically triggering the follow-ups.

“What impressed me the most: Marketing initiated and actually sent out the poker chips in this case. But as soon as that landed, as soon as that gift landed, a notification was triggered (for Sales). The contact was auto-enrolled, so that the play basically started,” showed Gabe Larsen.

Automating the follow-ups with the PlayBooks platform based on when the gift arrived has helped remove the disconnect between the marketing activity and the first point of touch for Sales.

“Mail takes a varied amount of time to get to different parts of the country. […] The auto enrollment feature was crucial in this respect, because it helped them automate their engagement. It really was a life saver when it came to that,” added Philip.

PlayBooks also helped the sales reps move from a high-volume sales activity, where they were just fielding marketing leads, to a proactive outbound model.

So instead of just spending time cold-calling, they managed to get in contact with C-level executives and Fortune 500 companies. They took the time to understand their needs and create more business opportunities.

Time the Follow Up Strategy for Personalization

Timing the ABM campaign follow-up via an automated process was a boon for sales reps. It significantly increased ROI, when measuring pipeline growth. InsideSales intelligent sales software tracked all of the interactions made on a time span of two business weeks.

So do you think that prospects were uneasy about the follow-up’s perfect timing? Not really. The results were incredibly positive.

”They really felt like they were special, that we knew about them. We often customize these emails. We maybe share something we had learned from their website about what was going on with their company, etc.. They really felt like they were the apple of our eyes,” recounts Philip.

 

 

Watch the webinar below if you want to learn:

• How the InsideSales team spaced out emails, calls and voicemails for the Poker Play campaign
• A review of the assets used on week 1 and 2 of the campaign
• Engagement notifications and communication alignment plan