ABM Vendor Guide: Differentiators for Result Analysis

...and we wrap up our review of sub-functions from the Raab Guide to ABM Vendors with a look at Result Analysis.

ABM Process	System Function	Sub-Function	Number of Vendors
Identify Target Accounts	Assemble Data	External Data	28
	Select Targets	Target Scoring	15
Plan Interactions	Assemble Messages	Customized Messages	6
	Select Messages	State-Based Flows	10
Execute Interactions	Deliver Messages	Execution	19
Analyze Results	Reporting	Result Analysis	16

As the Guide points out, this category focuses on measurements unique to account-based programs:

Nearly every system will have some form of result reporting. ABM specialists provide account-based result metrics such as percentage of target accounts reached, amount of time target accounts are spending with company messages, and distribution of messages by department within target accounts.

Not surprisingly, most of vendors who do ABM Result Analysis also do some sort of Execution (12 out of 16, to be exact). Another two (Everstring and ZenIQ) didn't fall into the Execution group but came close.  Of the final two, one supports measurement with advanced lead-to-account mapping (LeanData) and one attribution specialist (Bizible). It's important to recognize that many of the Execution vendors will report only results of their own messages.  This is certainly helpful but you'll want to see reports that combine data from all messages to get a meaningful picture of your ABM program results. 

Differenatiators for this group include:

• lead-to-account mapping to unify data
• corporate hierarchy mapping (headquarters/branch, parent/subsidiary, etc.) to unify data
• marketing campaign to opportunity mapping to support attribution
• combine data from marketing automation, Web analytics, and CRM
• track offline channels such as conferences, direct mail, outbound hone calls
• capture detailed interaction history for each Web visit (mouse clicks, scrolling, active time spent, etc.)
• capture mobile app behaviors with SDK as well as Web site behaviors with Javascript tag
• use device ID to link display ads, Web site visits, and form fills to revenue, even when visitors don’t click on ad or Web page
• report within Salesforce CRM on combined information about leads, contacts, accounts, opportunities, campaigns, and owners
• apply multiple attribution methods including first touch, last touch, fractional, etc.
• show account-level descriptive metrics including coverage, contact frequency, visitors, contacts by job title
• show account-level result metrics including reach, engagement, influence, velocity
• show reach, engagement, influence, velocity by campaign, content, persona, segment, etc.
• identify gaps in coverage, reach, or engagement by account and recommend corrective actions

One final reminder: the just-published Guide to ABM Vendors helps marketers understand what tools they need to complete their ABM stack.  It provides detailed profiles of 40 ABM vendors, with contents including:

• introduction to Account Based Marketing
• description of ABM functions
• key subfunctions that differentiate ABM vendors
• vendor summary chart that shows who does what
• explanations of information provided in the report
• vendor profiles including a summary description, list of key features, and detailed information covering  37 categories including data sources, data storage, data outputs, target selection, planning, execution, analytics, operations, pricing, and vendor background.

For more information or to order, click here.

ABM Vendor Guide: Features to Customize Messages

Moving along with our series on sub-functions described in the Raab Guide to ABM Vendors, let’s take a look at Customized Messages.

ABM Process	System Function	Sub-Function	Number of Vendors
Identify Target Accounts	Assemble Data	External Data	28
	Select Targets	Target Scoring	15
Plan Interactions	Assemble Messages	Customized Messages	6
	Select Messages	State-Based Flows	10
Execute Interactions	Deliver Messages	Execution	19
Analyze Results	Reporting	Result Analysis	16

According to the Guide:

Vendors in this category build messages that are tailored to the recipient. This tailoring may include insertion of data directly into a message, such as “Dear {first name}.” Or it may use data-driven rules to select contents within the message, such as “show a ‘see demonstration’ button to new prospects and a ‘customer service’ button to current customers”. Systems may also use predictive models rather than rules to select the right message. Customized messages can appear in any channel where the audience is known to some degree – as an identified individual, employee of a particular company, or member of a group sharing particular interests or behaviors.

The Guide lists just a half-dozen vendors in this category. That’s not because there are so few systems that do this: to the contrary, nearly any email, marketing automation, or Web personalization tool would fit the definition. What is rare is ABM specialists who provide this function. That’s because, ultimately, message customization for ABM is pretty much the same as message customization for any other purpose. So the customization vendors in the Guide either provide customization to support a different ABM function such as display advertising (Demandbase, Kwanzoo, Vendemore) or have a broadly-usable customization tool they have targeted at ABM applications (Evergage, SnapApp, Triblio).

Some differentiators to consider when assessing a customization system include:

• types of data made available to use in customization rules (behind the scenes) and in presentation (actually displayed).
• ability to work with individual and account level data for rules and presentation
• complexity of rules that can be used to create customized content
• use of machine learning or predictive models to create customized content (either to select content directly or to use scores within rules that select content)
• channels supported  (emails, Web site messages, display ads, etc.)
• effort and skills needed to set up customized content
• ability to use the same content definition in multiple locations or promotions (some systems tie the content definition directly to a single Web page location or email template; others store the content definitions separately and let any message call them).
• generation of messages in real time during interactions, using data gathered during the interaction
• customization level (are messages unique to each contact, same for all contacts in an account, same for all contacts in a segment such as account industry and/or contact role)
• complexity of created content (single page, multiple pages, interactive content, etc.)
• ability to coordinate messages received by different individuals within an account
• ability to recognize individuals, accounts, locations, etc.

Only a few of these differentiators apply specifically to ABM. Many marketers will be able to use an existing customization system to generate their ABM messages. But for marketers whose current messaging systems lack adequate customization features, a specialized ABM customization system may make sense.

Just Released: ABM Vendor Guide Gives Detailed Comparison of 40 ABM Vendors

It’s nearly a month since my last blog post, which I think is the longest gap in the ten years I've been blogging.  Some of pause was due to vacation, but mostly it was because I’ve been working feverishly to finish the Raab Guide to Account Based Marketing Vendors, which I’ve released today and you can purchase here. This was a huge project with the almost insanely ambitious goal of making sense of the ABM vendor landscape. What made it challenging wasn’t just gathering detailed information on 40 vendors but the variety of the vendors serving ABM needs. This meant I had to cover many different topics in my research, drilling into different sets of details for different kinds of products. I won’t whine-brag about the amount of work involved but rest assured it was substantial.*

Hopefully the result is worth the effort. You, Dear Reader and Potential Buyer at the Bargain Price of $495 Which You Can Order Here, will be the final judge of that. But if nothing else, the report helped to clarify my own thinking about ABM technologies.

The fundamental challenge was two-fold. First, I needed to define a reasonably complete set of ABM functions: this gives marketers a framework to identify gaps in their ABM stack. Second, I needed to identify differentiating features within each function: those are what buyers should consider when deciding which vendors to use. What made this tricky is that different vendors provide different combinations of functions, so I couldn’t just classify the vendors themselves.

After much pondering, I ended up with a three level approach. The first was to define an ABM process – and note that I wrote "an ABM process" not "the ABM process", since more than one process is possible. My process had four steps, which I think should be self-explanatory. (If you’re underwhelmed by the sophistication of this approach, bear in mind that many people have published detailed and rigorous descriptions of how ABM works. I didn’t see any point in duplicating their efforts.)

• Identify Target Accounts
• Plan Interactions
• Execute Interactions
• Analyze Results

The next step was to define the system functions that support each process step. This was still pretty high level because I didn’t want to be prescriptive. I ended up with six functions**:
 

ABM Process	System Function	Comment
Identify Target Accounts	Assemble Data	Data includes existing accounts and contacts from marketing automation and CRM, external information including events and interests, and information about net new accounts and contacts.  It may also include analysis of account data to identify gaps in contact lists and understand current engagement levels.
	Select Targets	This includes predictive model scores to rank potential targets ,  conventional account profiling, and behavior analysis.
Plan Interactions	Assemble Messages	This includes building marketing messages and importing messages built in external systems.  Message creation is largely generic but some vendors specialize in account-based messages.
	Select Messages	This includes both systems that automatically select messages and those where the user selects a specific message for each list.
Execute Interactions	Deliver Messages	This includes systems to deliver emails, personalized messages on the company Web site, display advertisements, and includes alerts and advice to sales reps.  Most delivery systems serve all kinds of marketing but a few are ABM specialists.
Analyze Results	Reporting	This includes systems that analyze behaviors and program results at the account level.

 

The final step was the trickiest because this was where I was actually classifying vendors. For the classification to be useful, I had to isolate collections of vendors that shared specialized features. To do this, I divided each system function into several subfunctions and discarded the sub-function that are widely available or not very important. I originally had about twenty of these but winnowed the set down to a more manageable six: one key sub-function for each system function. In the table below, the comments describe the differentiators that occur within each sub-function. These would be what marketers look at when searching for vendors who match their requirements.

ABM Process	System Function	Key Sub-Function	Comment
Identify Target Accounts	Assemble Data	External Data	Vendors gather data from the Internet, private, and government sources (“public” sources) and purchase it from other vendors (“commercial” sources).  This Guide also distinguishes between “enhancement” of account and contact records already in a client’s systems and sale of “net new” records that a client does not already possess.  Important data types include - companies (accounts), - contacts (people), - events (mergers, acquisitions, management changes, new products, etc.), - intent (based on content consumption) - technologies used (at the account)
	Select Targets	Target Scoring	Vendors in this category use statistical techniques to select target accounts.  The models most often predict whether an account will make a purchase, but they could also predict other events such as renewing a contract or becoming an opportunity in the sales pipeline.  Scores can be built for individuals as well as accounts, although account scores are most important in the ABM context.  Many scoring vendors also gather external data from public or commercial sources (or both), since this gives them more inputs for their models.  They may or may not share this data with their clients, and they may or may not provide net new records.
Plan Interactions	Assemble Messages	Customized Messages	Vendors in this category build messages that are tailored to the recipient.  This tailoring may include insertion of data directly into a message, such as “Dear {first name}.”  Or it may use data-driven rules to select contents within the message, such as “show a ‘see demonstration’ button to new prospects and a ‘customer service’ button to current customers”.  They may also use predictive models rather than rules to select the right message.  Customized messages can appear in any channel where the audience is known to some degree – as an identified individual, employee of a particular company, or member of a group sharing particular interests or behaviors.
	Select Messages	State Based Flows	Vendors in this category can automatically send different messages to the same contact in response to behaviors or data changes.  Messages often relate to buying stages but may also reflect interests or job function.  Messages may also be linked to a specific situation such as a flurry of Web site visits or a lack of contacts at a target account.  Flows may also trigger actions other messages, such as purchasing more contact names or alerting a sales person.  Actions are generally completed through a separate execution system. Movement may mean reaching different steps in a single campaign or entering a different campaign.  Either approach can be effective.  What really matters is that movement occurs automatically and that messages change as a result.
Execute Interactions	Deliver Messages	Execution	These are systems that actually deliver messages in channels such as email, display advertising, social media advertising, the company Web site, or CRM.  As used in this Guide, execution may include direct integration with a delivery system, such as adding a name to a marketing automation campaign, sending a list of cookies and instructions to an ad buying system, or pushing a personalized message to a company Web site.
Analyze Results	Reporting	Results Analysis	Nearly every system will have some form of result reporting.  ABM specialists provide account-based result metrics such as percentage of target accounts reached, amount of time target accounts are spending with company messages, and distribution of messages by department within target accounts.

The ABM Guide itself takes the next logical step and gives a table showing which vendors provide which sub-functions. Of course, the table is a horrible oversimplification: even though I tried to provide specific definitions, whether a system offers a particular sub-function isn’t a simple yes or no question. In fact, what’s really important is how they support the function, because that detail is what determines whether they do what you need. The table is useful in the context of the ABM Guide because readers can examine the detailed vendor entries to understand those nuances. Taken out of context, the table does more harm than good. That’s why I’m not showing it here.

What I will offer over the next few days is an overview of each sub-function, which will give a richer view of the ABM landscape. I think you’ll find that interesting – and I’m way behind quota on my blog posts for the year.

__________________________________________________
* A little more on the ABM Guide:


Contents:

• introduction to Account Based Marketing
• description of ABM functions
• key subfunctions that differentiate ABM vendors
• vendor summary chart that shows who does what
• explanations of information provided in the report
• vendor profiles (3 pages each)

Vendor Profiles include: 

• summary (what they do in 2-3 plain English sentences...worth the price by itself)
• key differentiators (2-5 bulleted statements highlighting what's special about them)
• detailed information (detailed information organized into 37 categories including data sources, data storage, data outputs, target selection, planning, execution, analytics, operations, pricing, and vendor background.)

Vendors included:
Avention, Azalead, Bizible, Bombora, Dun & Bradstreet, Data.com, Datanyze, DemandBase, DiscoverOrg, Engagio, Evergage, Everstring, GetSmartContent, Growth Intelligence, HGData, Infer, InsideView, Kwanzoo, Lattice Engines, Leadspace, LeanData, LinkedIn, LookBookHQ, Madison Logic, Mariana, Mintigo, MRP, Orb Intelligence, Radius, Reachforce, Terminus, The Big Willow, Triblio, TrueInfluence, Uberflip, Vendemore, YesPath, ZenIQ, ZoomInfo, SnapApp- 3 page entry on each vendor provides detailed information across 37 categories covering 

Data Source:
Independent research by Raab Associates, based primarily on vendor interviews and demonstrations.  Information is organized into a rigorous framework to ensure accurate, apples-to-apples comparisons.  Data was gathered in June and July 2016.

Format: PDF File

Price: $495

Order From:
www.raabguide.com/abmguide.  Pay by credit card and within a few minutes you'll receive an email with a download link to the report.

**Special thanks to https://word2cleanhtml.com/ for the free Word to HTML table conversion used in this post.  Awesome!