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To Getting Your Data Ready for ABM
101 Guide
2T A B L E O F C O N T E N T
ContentsIntroduction 6
Chapter 1: Identify and Tier Target Accounts 7
Firmographic Information 8
Technographic Information 9
Intent Data 10
Engagement Data 11
Tiering Your Accounts to Prioritize Your Efforts 12
Chapter 2: Take Inventory of Your Contact Data 15
The Data Health Check 17
Improve Account Scoring and Predictive Analytics 17
Enhance Persona-Driven Marketing 17
Boost Dashboard Performance Metrics 18
Improve Account-Based Marketing 18
Optimize the Marketing Technology Stack 18
Measuring Coverage in ABM 19
Your People Map 20
Account Plan Coverage 20
Chapter 3: Cleanse & Enrich Your
Contact Records 21
Chapter 4: Size the Addressable
Market with a Contact Gap Analysis 24
Chapter 5: Design a Contact
Acquisition Strategy 26
Manual Lead Generation 27
Lists Buys and Technology Plays 29
Outsourcing 31
Chapter 6: Prioritize ABM-Ready Contact 33
The ABM-Ready Difference 34
Chapter 7: Implement a Continual
Data Quality and Discovery Strategy 35
Conclusion 37
About Engagio and Oceanos 38
3I N T R O D U C T I O N
B2B markets are evolving quicker than ever before. With the rise of technology and the democratization of data, we’re able to market and sell more products in less time. This has led to a fundamental shift in the way organizations go to market. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) – a product of this change – is one of the hottest new strategies that the fastest growing companies are leveraging to grow.
Lists of accounts and contacts were once a highly sought after prize – now lists have become a commodity. However, with these advancements, we face new challenges. Whether you already have an ABM program in place or are planning to start a pilot, you’ll realize that contact data issues are amplified with an account-based approach. With the spotlight on your data, there is nowhere to hide.
Since you have a lot riding on these high-profile accounts, and the last thing you need is inaccurate, incomplete, or missing
contacts holding you back, or worse, causing you to commit egregious errors in your ABM efforts. Think about the last time someone called you by the wrong name – it’s the same thing.
This ebook is a practitioner’s guide to setting the right foundation for your ABM program. It all starts here. It’s tempting to jump straight to sending direct mail or launching your account-based ads, but if you don’t have the right data in the first place, you might as well be lighting money on fire. It may be fun, but it’s a total waste.
Introduction
To ensure you’re ready for ABM, get your data ready by following this six-step process. This process is going to help you avoid costly mistakes and give you the best chances at winning your high-value accounts.
C H A P T E R 1 : I D E N T I F Y A N D T I E R T A R G E T A C C O U N T S
Identify and Tier Target Accounts
The most important step in Account-Based Marketing is choosing
which target accounts to focus your efforts on. To do this
correctly, we need the right data as your foundation. For the most
successful program, take advantage of four crucial types of data:
firmographic, technographic, intent and engagement data.
The kind of data inputs will vary for your organization depending
on many factors, but the process will likely include a mix.
C H A P T E R 1
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F I R M O G R A P H I C I N F O R M A T I O N
Chances are, you already have a pretty good idea about the kinds of companies most likely to deliver the big deals. Ask yourself which company characteristics best predict a successful sales process.
You can find this information from a variety of sources, including annual reports, LinkedIn, and third-party data vendors such as Dun & Bradstreet, Oceanos and Reachforce. This is an excellent starting point for your account selection process, but it’s only the beginning.
Firmographic
Information
The answer will likely take the form of:
• Revenue
• Number of employees
• Industry
• Growth
• Number of locations
And more
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T E C H N O G R A P H I C I N F O R M A T I O N
Here, you’re looking to define which technologies your target accounts currently use, or are looking to invest in.
Globally, companies spend
$3.54 trillion dollars in IT (according to 2016 numbers from Gartner)
Source this data from desk research looking at forums, job boards, social media, and other indications that an organization is utilizing certain technology. To bring efficiencies here, tap into the knowledge of competitive intelligence firms such as HG Data, or web scraping firms like Datanyze and BuiltWith.
Technographic
Information
Making it a key imperative to focus on only those organizations most likely to demonstrate a fit with your product.
Consider what complementary technologies pair well with your solution, and in contrast, which technologies make an investment less likely. For example, knowing that a company uses Marketo, Salesforce, or SAP might just make them a more attractive candidate for your solution.
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I N T E N T D A T A
Intent Data
One of the key elements of a Marketing Qualified Account is understanding intent. Firmographic and technographic data are both static descriptors that decrease the total size of your audience and thereby concentrate your efforts. But, intent data uses the behavior of contacts at these target accounts to indicate a more urgent qualification and fit.
This is where Lead-to-Account Matching is critical.
Seek signs that a target account is in the market right now for solutions like yours. This could include any behavioral data that indicates priority, including:
• Topics people at this company are researching on third-party sites
• Participation in forums
• Content downloads
• Ad clicks
This data is sourced from forums, job boards, and similar sources. In addition, intent vendors such as Bombora, MRP, and The Big Willow can deliver a layer of insight to maximize your findings.
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This information is found from a variety of sources, including:
• Your CRM data
• Web analytics
• Marketing automation reports
• Engagio
• Sales rep activity
• Executive input
After you’ve collected the necessary data to select your target accounts, the next steps are...well, select your target accounts!
Target account selection isn’t just a job for marketing – you must get buy-in and sign-off from your Sales and Customer Success counterparts. One person or department alone will not be able to decide which accounts your organization should target. It takes the collective wisdom of your entire customer-facing team to effectively select the right accounts
The next question that we inevitably get asked is “how many target accounts should I have?” The answer: it depends. In order to help you determine how many accounts is the right number, we recommend tiering and prioritizing accordingly.
E N G A G E M E N T D A T A
Engagement
DataWhile intent data can signify what buying activity an account is exhibiting elsewhere on the internet, engagement data seeks to identify how engaged your company is with this account right now.
When faced with a long list of potential target accounts, you’ve got to start somewhere, and your quickest path to traction with ABE will be with those companies where existing activity indicates strong opportunity.
Your current level of engagement will include:
Past sales into the company
Rep activity levels
Account engagement by persona
Current coverage of key decision-makers
Existing relationships and connections into the account
Executive entry points
C H A P T E R 1 : I D E N T I F Y A N D T I E R T A R G E T A C C O U N T S 9
E N G A G E M E N T D A T A
Tiering Your Accounts to Prioritize Your Efforts
Not all accounts are created equal. In fact, that’s the entire premise of ABM. What you also need to know is that not all target accounts are created equal. That’s why you must learn to tier your accounts into your Tier 1 (high priority), Tier 2 (medium priority) and Tier 3 (low priority) accounts. When you’re able to do this effectively, you can begin to scale ABM, which is where the real magic rests.
There’s a lot of debate about how scalable Account-Based Marketing can be. We’ve seen companies pilot ABM with one senior marketer working with five strategic accounts, and not surprisingly, it works great! So well, in fact, that the
company asks to scale the program to 50 or 100 accounts or more...but not surprisingly, they don’t want to hire an additional 10 or 20 marketers to make that happen...
This perceived lack of scalability is a big part of the reason that ABM took so long to take off as a concept. Companies would look at it and think “that’s not for me”.
In the last few years, though, different styles of ABM have emerged that can scale the benefits of Account Based- Marketing to many more accounts. Here is an overview of the traditional Classic style, as well as the two new styles.
Tier 1 10s of Accounts
Tier 2 100s of Accounts
Tier 3 1000s of Accounts
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E N G A G E M E N T D A T A
Tier 1: ABM “Classic”
In its purest form (as defined by the ITSMA), ABM is about treating each account as a market of one, with dedicated resources and everything customized to serve that account.
That takes time and effort – a lot of it. For the largest accounts, with revenue potential of up to $1 billion, a single ABM marketer can cover only a few accounts – perhaps as few as three or four. That might seem crazy, but it’s totally worth it for those big whale accounts.
These accounts get the “full” Account-Based Marketing treatment – meaning each one gets deep research, a customized plan, personalized content, bespoke campaigns, and lots of 1:1 attention. You map out each buying center, understand where there may be revenue potential, build out the organization chart and see which contacts you know and which you need to know, research key business priorities and individual motivations, and identify relationships and connections to the account. You publish detailed account dossiers, maintain them quarterly, and even have internal chat groups or forums dedicated to each account.
You put together marketing plays that are designed for that account specifically, and you involve your entire organization, from the CEO down, to land and expand these accounts. The whole idea is that the lack of scalability drives the relevance and resonance.
This style of ABM works great. When the ITSMA says that ABM has a better ROI than any other B2B marketing strategy, this is what they’re talking about. BUT...as discussed above, it’s hard to scale. You’ll probably only do this for a few of your largest accounts, perhaps five or 10. At best, you’ll have no more than a few dozen of these Tier 1 accounts – and even then, you may have just a handful that get 100% of the ABM effort described here. It’s really all about how much time and resource you can apply to this top tier (which should be directly proportional to how much revenue you expect to get out of it).
Regardless of how many accounts you have, the list will likely remain pretty stable over time since it can take years to develop these accounts.
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E N G A G E M E N T D A T A
Tier 2: ABM “Lite”
While you can probably count the accounts getting Style 1 on your fingers and toes, Style 2 lets you apply much of the focus and benefit of ABM to a broader list – usually measured in the low hundreds of accounts. Some folks call this “ABM Lite”.
Tier 2 accounts also get individual research, but perhaps it’s limited to a few key talking points for each account (e.g. spending three minutes to find three key selling points). Since these accounts are often smaller, mapping out individual buying centers may not be as challenging. But no matter what, you still want to spend time making sure you have quality data at the account level, as well as for each of the key
people in each persona in the organization – and you’ll want a process to keep those insights fresh, at least annually.
These accounts may not get completely customized marketing plays and content, but they should still get highly relevant touches based on their industry and persona.
Instead of 1:1 campaigns, these accounts get 1:Few campaigns. Instead of fully bespoke content, perhaps you take content written for their industry and customize it with their logo on the cover and a personalized first and last paragraph.
Tier 3: Programmatic
This style covers all the accounts that you want to target but don’t have the resources for personalization and customization. These will often be smaller accounts and can be counted in the thousands.
You may target these accounts with specific outbound tactics, sometimes customized by industry or solution, but the rest of the time you’ll simply use broad demand gen tactics but target specific accounts, including ABM advertising, content syndication, and events. ITSMA calls this Programmatic ABM.
Programmatic ABM is basically traditional marketing with account-level targeting. The key difference from demand gen is that instead of scoring leads, you track account-level engagement and wait until the account hits a sufficient threshold to label them a Marketing Qualified Account (MQA).
Now that you have selected and tiered your target accounts, it’s time to drill one level deeper and examine your contact data.
C H A P T E R 2 : T A K E I N V E N T O R Y O F Y O U R C O N T A C T D A T A
Take Inventory of Your Contact Data
Run a Data Health Check to analyze the status of your current data.
Clean, accurate and up-to-date contact data is the lifeblood of every
high-performing sales and marketing program. Quality data means
better alignment to the right audience, higher quality leads, greater
conversions and an overall positive impact in your ROI.
C H A P T E R 2
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T A K E I N V E N T O R Y O F Y O U R C O N T A C T D A T A
No matter the number of contacts you have, are you confident the information is accurate? How are you going to deal with fractional records, such as contacts that are missing job title, phone numbers, email addresses, etc.?
But bad data? Its economic impact is nothing to sneeze at.
With the accounts identified, it’s time to pull together and assess all of the contacts you have associated with these companies. Engagio calls this “coverage” and relies on it as one of the essential new metrics in ABM. It’s a measure of data quality and completeness, telling you whether or not your database has the right people in it.
$14.2MEstimated amount poor data quality is costing organizations per year
60% The number of companies that have an overall data health scale of “unreliable”
+50More than half of all records found in the average B2B contact database are misaligned
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T A K E I N V E N T O R Y O F Y O U R C O N T A C T D A T AT H E D A T A H E A LT H C H E C K
The Data
Health CheckTo get a handle on the state of your contact data, a Data Health Check is a good first step. This free report can provide insight into the accuracy and completeness of your contact data and generate a Data Quality Score, enabling marketers to understand where information gaps and trouble spots exist. The Data Quality Score results will be illustrated with an odometer-style rating system (see graphic below).
Here are the reasons you need to run a Data Health Check:
Improve Account Scoring and Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics help companies identify the right accounts and contacts that they should be targeting. But it’s not just about job titles anymore. The more data points they can look at and score – such as social and buyer intent – the more accurate the score indicator is going to be. End result: Quicker lead qualification.
Enhance Persona-Driven Marketing
When your data is accurate and enriched with intelligent attributes such as social and buyer intent, you can better segment, personalize and target. The end result is higher engagement, lower opt-outs, and a more personalized and relevant experience.
B2B marketers who say generating relevant, quality leads is the technique with the highest profit potential
6X Increased amount of revenue that personalized emails generate over non-personalized
80%
Overall Quality Rating
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T A K E I N V E N T O R Y O F Y O U R C O N T A C T D A T AT H E D A T A H E A LT H C H E C K
Optimize the Marketing Technology Stack
With continual data cleanse and append, your marketing automation runs more smoothly, the entire stack works more effectively and gives the user marketer or other stakeholders in the business more confidence in the reporting functionality.
Boost Dashboard Performance Metrics
Removing bad or inaccurate data, making incomplete records whole, and cutting out misaligned contacts ensures that communications reach the ideal audience, increasing engagement metrics.
Average database alignment to a client-provided target audience area
Optimal database alignment to a client-provided target audience area
Improve Account-Based Marketing
You want to go after prospects you’ve identified as high-value. How? Dig deep and find data that’s enriched with intelligent attributes such as buyer intent and social. With clean and complete contact data you can more easily access big gaps in your database and go after the key contacts missing in each account.
Percent of marketers that say ABM outperforms other marketing investments in ROI
80%
75%
25%
C H A P T E R 2 : T A K E I N V E N T O R Y O F Y O U R C O N T A C T D A T A 1 6
T A K E I N V E N T O R Y O F Y O U R C O N T A C T D A T AM E A S U R I N G C O V E R A G E I N A B M
Measuring
Coverage in ABMAs we mentioned earlier, Coverage is a critical metric that’s new to ABM. It answers the questions “How effectively is your team building contacts with the people who matter at your target accounts? How complete is your account data?”
Think about the organizational chart for your accounts:
• How complete is your information?
• How many boxes are filled in?
• Where do you have gaps in your data (e.g. you know email address but not a direct-dial phone)?
• For those with contact data, which ones do you have permission to email?
• Which ones are engaged?
A complex account may have dozens of divisions, each with its own separate org chart. Do you know what each of the divisions are, and how they relate to each other? Do you know the buying centers and key contacts in each division?
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T A K E I N V E N T O R Y O F Y O U R C O N T A C T D A T AM E A S U R I N G C O V E R A G E I N A B M
Account Plan Coverage
Coverage can extend to your ABM strategic planning as well. How many of your target accounts have complete account plans? How many have you researched to create account-level insights? Created account-specific custom content? And so on.
Improving data quality is critical to better performance and revenue. This analysis helps marketers quantity their current data condition and enables a path to improvement.
Your People Map
A nice way to visualize coverage is to use a two-dimensional People Map. Put Level on one axis and Department on the other, then plot out how many contacts you have for each cell. Do this for a single account, or a list of target accounts – it’s a great way to see where you have gaps so you can focus your list building efforts.
Imagine being able to share that your team built opt-in permission with 42% of the key names at your target accounts, when the company had only 8% coverage to begin with. That’s powerful. Use a People Map to identify whitespace in your coverage for an account.
C H A P T E R 3 : C L E A N S E & E N R I C H Y O U R C O N T A C T R E C O R D S
Cleanse & Enrich Your Contact Records
Based on the DHC, determine the best set of hygiene treatments
to identify bad and suspect data.
C H A P T E R 3
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C L E A N S E & E N R I C H Y O U R C O N T A C T R E C O R D S
You need to maintain a quality standard for your house data, while simultaneously seeking “greenfield” contacts within each target account.
Most companies have a huge blind spot when it comes to the accuracy of their contact data. The emergence of Account Based Marketing has only amplified the need for clean data.
To increase ABM success, it’s imperative that your contact data management strategy is ongoing. You need to maintain a quality standard for your house data, while simultaneously seeking “green eld” contacts within each target account.
This is one area where some marketers are falling short, according to the Database Marketing and Contact Acquisition Survey Report. Part of the challenge is that marketers are simply not performing data cleansing often enough to keep track of their B2B contacts. Twenty-nine percent of B2B marketer respondents said they only do so on a quarterly basis, and 27% said they don’t even know how often their data is cleansed. A smaller percentage (10%) conduct data cleansing on a monthly basis, and 6% do so weekly.
One-fifth (21%) of B2B marketers are ahead of the curve when it comes to data accuracy; this segment indicated they are updating/cleaning their data in real time.
With the data being a major pillar of ABM success, select a data partner that not only provides the contacts, but also delivers advisory services to ensure that you’re optimizing your contact data.
1
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C L E A N S E & E N R I C H Y O U R C O N T A C T R E C O R D S
It’s also important to recognize that the traditional contact record simply doesn’t measure up to the demands of Account-Based Marketing (ABM). This will become apparent when you start orchestrating multi-step “plays” and realize your contact records lack the required versatility. Let me illustrate with a couple examples.
Let’s start with the contact’s phone number. Phone outreach campaigns often require more direct dials and, in some cases, the person’s mobile phone as either an alternative number or to enable personalized text messaging. But, something as simple as a direct dial spiders into the need for additional information. For example, is the direct dial an ‘office line’ or a ‘mobile number’? If the latter, is it registered to the company or the person?
Another important attribute is accurate information on where the contact resides geographically. This is especially important when companies plan to run a ‘play’ that involves automated direct mail. For example, when reviewing the postal addresses of contact records you may notice most contacts contain the company’s headquarter address.
Target accounts are often large organizations with multiple offices and many contacts reside in regional offices. If a direct mail piece is sent to the wrong office location, it will end up in the mailroom recycle bin. A company could invest the time to call each contact prior to confirm their location, but that is both time consuming and costly. A more efficient approach is to append the contact’s location (city, state, country and time zone) to your house list, or when sourcing new contacts, have this information included where available.
Append ABM needed data points to cleanse records to increase their versatility.
C H A P T E R 2 : T Y P E S O F C O O R D I N A T E D P L A Y S
Size the Addressable Market with a Contact Gap AnalysisWith clean and complete data, it’s time to
count the inventory to understand what
you have and what is missing.
C H A P T E R 4 : S I Z E T H E A D D R E S S A B L E M A R K E T W I T H A C O N T A C T G A P A N A LY S I S
C H A P T E R 4
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S I Z E T H E A D D R E S S A B L E M A R K E T W I T H A C O N T A C T G A P A N A LY S I S
Best-in-class companies strive for more than 70% of their contacts to align to their audience definition.
With contact data in constant flux (i.e. inbound, outbound, and attrition), Gap Analysis reports are frequently refreshed
House
Client Contacts Oceanos Contacts Research Required
Greenfield
Now that your data is clean and complete,
you need to map the buying committee,
including decision-makers, influencers
and end-users, within each account. With
a Contact Gap Analysis, you will learn
the extent to which your house database
contacts align to your audience definition,
and you’ll gain insight into the ones that
you’re currently missing. The analysis
provides a clear lens into the state of your
contact data and the addressable market,
as the graphic to the left illustrates.
C H A P T E R 2 : T Y P E S O F C O O R D I N A T E D P L A Y SC H A P T E R 5 : D E S I G N A C O N T A C T A C Q U I S I T I O N S T R A T E G Y
Design a Contact Acquisition Strategy
Keeping a healthy Account-Based Sales Development
operation means providing a steady source of new contacts
for each account across all account tiers. We’ve talked at
length about selecting and tiering your accounts. Next, you’ll
need to fill these accounts and buying centers with specific
contacts based on your ideal buyer profiles. This is the fastest
way to grow your account-based strategy.
C H A P T E R 5
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D E S I G N A C O N T A C T A C Q U I S I T I O N S T R A T E G Y
C H A P T E R 5 : D E S I G N A C O N T A C T A C Q U I S I T I O N S T R A T E G Y
M A N U A L L E A D G E N E R A T I O N
There are many ways to get quality contacts, but in order to sustain a healthy pipeline, you need a predictable and reliable source. Finding a method that balances quantity, quality and price may sound impossible, but in this post we’ll lay out three ways you can strike that balance.
This skill is one that all SDRs and ADRs (Account Development Reps) should learn to develop. Reps can manually find contacts by looking through social networks (LinkedIn and Twitter at the very least), a company’s website, meetups or conferences, and blogs, forums or discussions boards to name a few.
The key is to get scrappy. Some of the hardest working reps get creative and learn to exploit tools and hacks to begin to automate some of this manual work.
Here are some more examples:
Manual Lead GenerationDeveloping One of the Most Important Sales Development Skill
You can also find top influencers by a given keyword and, again, collect the data.
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D E S I G N A C O N T A C T A C Q U I S I T I O N S T R A T E G Y
If you’re really ambitious and scrappy, get technical. Advancements in technology have enabled sales reps to execute highly technical tasks without requiring highly technical proficiencies. For example, one sales development hack I love to use is APIs and web scrapers to collect the names of everyone who has upvoted a competitive or complementary product on Product Hunt.
Another killer example is using BuzzSumo to find popular articles on a given topic or keyword and view all the people who have shared said content on social media. Then use a previously mentioned data scraping tool to collect the data. You can also find top influencers by a given keyword and, again, collect the data.
The last “hack” I want to leave you with is leveraging Mention.com (a social monitoring tool) to set up monitoring around your keywords. Then export the list (it only gives you Twitter handles) and use another tool or vendor to enrich the data.
1. Learn to use Boolean search queries, InMail
workarounds, LinkedIn groups, and other advanced
prospecting tactics on LinkedIn.
2. Learn to uncover and verify email conventions. If
you know a company uses “first.last@company.
com”, then you can figure out email addresses and
use a tool like Rapportive to verify.
3. Brush up on your technical skills and write a script
to scrape data from sites. If you are not technical,
there are tools and extensions to help you scrape.
4. Don’t forget about your existing data. There are
leads currently living in your CRM, Marketing
Automation, or ERP systems that can be mined.
M A N U A L L E A D G E N E R A T I O N
There are plenty of data firms that have developed their own methodologies for aggregating contact data. However, this approach comes with a caution: you often get what you pay for. In other words, if a list price is too good to be true, you may be purchasing stale data. If you take this approach, here are 5 steps to ensure you get data with the most accuracy and integrity.
1. Set the baseline data you need – This is the absolute
minimum criteria the data provider must supply, such as
name, email, company, title, social handles, etc.
2. Investigate the reputation of the provider – Find out what
other people are saying about the quality and integrity of
their data by talking with peers and reading reviews on
sites like G2 Crowd or TrustRadius.
You often get what you pay for. In other words, if a list price is too good to be true, you may be purchasing stale data.
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D E S I G N A C O N T A C T A C Q U I S I T I O N S T R A T E G Y
Lists Buys and Technology Plays
L I S T S B U Y S A N D T E C H N O L O G Y P L A Y S
Leveraging Data Vendors and Intelligence Providers
3. Get on the phone with a rep – You must determine the accuracy and integrity of the data first hand. Since data has a limited shelf life and roughly 10 million people change jobs each year, you need to ensure you’re getting your money’s worth. First, ask vendors if they will work with you to match the criteria you need and replace or refund bad contact records. Then, ask questions like: “How often do you test and maintain the quality of your database for accurate information?” “Do you filter out spam traps, honeypots, blacklisted domains, and anything else that would hurt my Sender Score?” and “What kind of QA program do you have in place?”
4. Diversify your vendors – You want
more than one. Never rely on a single
source, but for efficiencies consider
data management firms that serve as a
‘hub’ for contact data; meaning the data
management firm rolls-up and de-dupes
multiple vendor files. A mentor of mine
used to say, “The most dangerous number
in business is one.”
5. Consider companies like Oceanos who
offer free diagnostic (i.e. Data Health
Check and Contact Gap Analysis) to help
you monitor data quality and who you’re
missing in your addressable market.
Ask vendors if they will work with you to match the criteria you need and replace or refund bad contact records. Then, ask questions like: “How often do you test and maintain the quality of your database for accurate information?”
C H A P T E R 5 : D E S I G N A C O N T A C T A C Q U I S I T I O N S T R A T E G Y 2 7
D E S I G N A C O N T A C T A C Q U I S I T I O N S T R A T E G YL I S T S B U Y S A N D T E C H N O L O G Y P L A Y S
This is a great way to get quality leads at a fraction of the price. It involves working with freelancers (generally overseas) – which can take some resources to build and manage – but the results are worth the cost when you’re up and running. Here are 5 steps to setting up your outsourcing army.
1. Optimize and document your process for manual lead
generation – You have to start with your manual process
before you can train an outsourced team. Essentially,
you’re scaling yourself (or your best SDRs/ADRs). Find the
tools and methods for generating leads that work best for
your organization, then write it down, step-by-step. You
have to systemize before you automize.
2. Evaluate and hire freelance workers – After you’ve
documented your process down to every last keystroke
(yes, you need to get that detailed for freelanced/
outsourced workers), post a job listing on sites like
Upwork, Mechanical Turk, or Outsourcely.
Start off with a 10-hour contract to test the workers for accuracy, volume and ability to follow directions.
C H A P T E R 5 : D E S I G N A C O N T A C T A C Q U I S I T I O N S T R A T E G Y 2 8
D E S I G N A C O N T A C T A C Q U I S I T I O N S T R A T E G Y
Outsourcing
O U T S O U R C I N G
Building Your Own Lead Generation Army
Start off with a 10-hour contract to test the workers for accuracy, volume and ability to follow directions. It’s often useful to provide a template and a sample of the deliverables you’re expecting. If they pass the test, you can then extend the contract. You’ll likely receive a wide range of quotes for your job listing, but stick with people who are in the $5-$8 per hour range. In my experience, for every five to six people I accept for a test contract, one will really stand out worthy for a longer term contract.
Having good pipeline coverage can’t be emphasized enough. It’s one of the most predictive indicators of a sales development organization’s health. And to keep that pipeline full, you must develop a predictable and reliable process for discovering key contacts at your target accounts. In fact, this must remain a priority if you want to be successful with Account-Based Sales Development.
Only after you’ve figured this out can you move on to the next step in the Account-Based Everything framework: developing account insights.
3. Clean your data – I hope I’ve stressed enough the importance of clean data. Just because you’ve told your freelancers what you want, doesn’t mean they’ll always follow directions.
4. Review Worker Performance – If you’re getting 5%-6% bounce rates, it’s time to hire someone else. Make sure to mark your lead source and lead source detail correctly in your CRM, so you can do proper tracking and give more work to your best performers. This also helps with attribution, visibility, and performance management.
5. Rinse and Repeat – This isn’t a once and done thing, but rather an ongoing process. By regularly reviewing the work, you’ll ensure quality and know when to let workers go. Also, keep in mind that workers may move on or get busy with other projects. Account for that turnover.
C H A P T E R 5 : D E S I G N A C O N T A C T A C Q U I S I T I O N S T R A T E G Y 2 9
D E S I G N A C O N T A C T A C Q U I S I T I O N S T R A T E G YO U T S O U R C I N G
C H A P T E R 2 : T Y P E S O F C O O R D I N A T E D P L A Y S
Prioritize ABM-Ready ContactScore based on ABM Usability to prioritize contacts
that contain the needed data point to play well in
the ABM environment. Layer in the key data points
highlighted in the ABM Usability Score tearsheet.
C H A P T E R 6 : P R I O R I T I Z E A B M - R E A D Y C O N T A C T
C H A P T E R 6
C H A P T E R 6 : P R I O R I T I Z E A B M - R E A D Y C O N T A C T 3 1
P R I O R I T I Z E A B M - R E A D Y C O N T A C T
Within Account-Based Marketing (ABM) you’re tasked with orchestrating multi-step “plays” that span channels. As a result, you need to identify the right contacts and ensure their accuracy across channels – email, phone and postal. In addition, to effectively support these plays, you need attributes such as direct dials, social handles, and location.
The traditional contact record simply doesn’t measure up to the demands of ABM. As a company that constantly seeks to
reinvent, Oceanos is the first to establish an “ABM Usability Score” for contact data. This score builds upon our Data Quality Score (DQS) to rank contacts based on accuracy and completeness. Contacts with a high score are deemed better suited for ABM. With your contacts scored, you can establish benchmarks and chart your overall ABM Usability Score. And with better contact data, you’ll have the confidence to run ABM plays that increase engagement and accelerate returns.
The ABM-Ready Difference
Social Data
API Data Partners
Data Quality Score (DQS)
Contact Graveyard
Employment History
Campaign Data
Third-Party Data
ABM Usability Scoring Model
Contacts
ABM Usability
90
77
92
87
54
85
98
91
89
+ =
Phone
Postal
The data points in green will increase the ABM Usability Score
If the postal address aligns to the contacts’s site
location, it will increase the ABM score
companyPhone, contactPhone, contactDirectDialConfidence,
contactMobilePhone, contactMobilePhoneType
address1, address2, city, state, postalCode, country, location,
locationState, locationCountry, locationTimeZone
Traditional Contact Record
Traditional Contact Record
ABM Contact Record
ABM Contact Record
• Contact records with direct dials are 375% more efficient than those without (source DiscoverOrg)
• Mobile phones provide additional channel for calling or texting
• Direct mail is optimized when the postal address aligns to the person’s site location
C H A P T E R 2 : T Y P E S O F C O O R D I N A T E D P L A Y S
Implement a Continual Data Quality and Discovery StrategyQuarterly cleanses to stay on top of data quality and
modifications to job title. Discuss methods of sourcing net new
contacts (w/in Marketo/SFDC) or lock-in an audience definition
with Oceanos and source “net-new” contacts monthly or
quarterly. The idea is to set it and forget it.
C H A P T E R 7 : I M P L E M E N T A C O N T I N U A L D A T A Q U A L I T Y A N D D I S C O V E R Y S T R A T E G Y
C H A P T E R 7
In Account-Based Marketing, you need a system in place to ensure your systems are running at full capacity – which means making sure that the fuel that you pour into the engine is good, clean fuel. As we’ve been talking about, data is that fuel. However, the shelflife of data is only getting shorter and shorter. That’s why it’s imperative that you have a system to monitor and maintain your data.
The best way to stress-test your data is to use a reliable third-party source. That’s why Engagio relies in Oceanos to power their contact heatmaps. This all allows your ABM team to constantly check greenfield availability to make sure the right contacts for the title and department that you’re targeting are in your ABM campaigns.
Now, you can enrich your records with contacts you didn’t even know existed to fill in the white space.
Heatmap of People Coverage in Engagio
Heatmap of Whitespace with Oceanos Data
C H A P T E R 7 : I M P L E M E N T A C O N T I N U A L D A T A Q U A L I T Y A N D D I S C O V E R Y S T R A T E G Y 3 3
I M P L E M E N T A C O N T I N U A L D A T A Q U A L I T Y A N D D I S C O V E R Y S T R A T E G Y
Optimizing your contact data is a process that requires continual attention. If you want an advantage over your competition, you must spend the time and resources to set your ABM foundation and improve the accuracy and completeness of your data. You must identify your target accounts and key contacts within those accounts with confidence. You must have a data strategy in place.
If you do this, you’ll be able to orchestrate plays that will build brand equity, grow your revenue, and crush the competition.
--
Written by: Brandon Redlinger, Director of Growth at EngagioBrian Hession, Founder at Oceanos
C O N C L U S I O N 3 4
Conclusion
Drive new business and expand relationships with high value accounts.
Engagio’s marketing orchestration software enables B2B Marketers to create and measure engagement. Now, you have the scale benefits of automation with the personalization benefits of the human touch.
Executives, Field Marketers, Demand Gen, Marketing Operations, and Sales are leveraging Engagio to drive ongoing success in their ABM programs.
Learn more at www.engagio.com
Optimize your contact data for account-based marketing.
Oceanos will cleanse and enrich your contact data and help you find the key contacts missing within each account.
Learn more at www.oceanosinc.com
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C A T E G O R Y H E A D E R L O R E M I P S U M
A B O U T E N G A G I O
About Engagio About Oceanos
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