TWO OF THE common challenges for companies embarking on an ABM journey are defining a list of accounts to target and then building out the data and intelligence on that segmented group.
Offerpop started out with a conventional approach to addressing these challenges, and then realized a more sophisticated method was required.
“We started out our ABM journey in Q3 of last year by doing some gap analysis on which contacts we were missing at the key accounts we had identified,” said Jeff Soriano, Senior Director of Demand Generation at Offerpop, a user-generated content marketing platform used by top brands, such as as Disney, Pepsi and Unilever.
“Focusing on our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) has helped us prioritize the brands we want to be having conversations with.” Jeff Soriano, Senior Director of Demand Generation
“We worked with a vendor to supplement the contacts we were missing and then started cold emailing those,” Soriano said. “That was our first attempt at ABM, and it was a big swing and a miss to be honest.”
In 2016, Offerpop built its strategy around an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), which factored in the following criteria:
- Historical data on industries that had performed well;
- Their adoption of user-generated content in their business;
- Firmographics, such as company size and geography; and
- Key titles and roles.
Soriano said the ICP initiative refined the company’s focus on core industries such as consumer packaged goods, retail and media and entertainment, as well as key roles in brand management and digital marketing.
“Focusing on our ICP has helped us prioritize the brands we want to be having conversations with, based on the size of the opportunity and the potential lifetime value,” he said. “Our marketing and sales are more efficient because we are able to put higher-touch programs behind higher potential accounts.”
IDENTIFYING AND ENGAGING MORE IDEAL CUSTOMERS
After Offerpop had the parameters of its ICP in place, the company began to work with advertising and demand gen vendors to identify and engage executives at accounts that fit the criteria. “Rather than simply cold calling or cold emailing these executives, we wanted to have them self select to engage with us through account-based advertising,” Soriano pointed out.
Soriano credited Madison Logic and its Activate ABM solution for successfully identifying and engaging executives who were a good fit for Offerpop’s ICP. “We were able to leverage their network of publishing partners to get in front of the right people and start off with a warmer conversation,” he said.
Soriano said Madison Logic was able to provide 10x deeper penetration than other vendors. He also credited, the success of account-based advertising and partnering with Madison Logic to improving ABM pipeline impact. “In the past, the percentage of opportunities in the pipeline from companies that fit our ICP were around 40%; that is now hovering around 65%.”
Soriano said Offerpop also tapped into Madison Logic’s Surging Account Targeting solution to identify new accounts that fit the criteria and add those to their outreach. “The predictive tools are a nice additional to expand our reach to accounts that we might not have prioritized, but we can now identify that they are in actively in searching or discovery mode for a solution like ours.”
