Is Account Based Markting more than direct mail?

[Anonymous]

Hi guys,

I'm at the Marketo Summit 2017 in San Fransisco and I'm having a blast. However, I came here with the hope of getting more practical on ABM, but I'm beginning to suspect that ABM is almost only about Direct Mail and kicking in doors, and have yet to see a full blown ABM program.

Any thoughts on this?

[Darrell_Alfons2]

Boom: The Definitive Guide to Account-Based Marketing - Marketo

You've also got account-based advertising, nurturing, events, personalization, account-based sales and follow up strategies.

Each of these components you can really drill down in, and the guide helps.

I agree with you though I wish some of the sessions focused more on tactics. But maybe I have been attending the wrong ones.

[Josh_Hill13]

Nearly everything I've seen is about sending direct mail/email/ads to people at a Target Account or a specific person with a funny or unique catch. To me, that's an end point of the ABM work.

So I'm not surprised that Thomas Rode​ is disappointed. TOPO and Marketo had a couple of decent sessions on this. A lot of the real work is

• Named/Target Accounts
• Ranking Accounts in some way, such as fit for product or propensity to buy
• Knowing the Buying Team Personas (see Challenger Customer) and being able to identify them in a database.
• Understanding the Coverage within each Account
• Marketing must source those missing names
• Marketing must focus effort on the Account Buying teams (people)
• Marketing/Sales Ops must help attach those People to the Accounts (Lead 2 Account Matching)
• Define MQLs vs. MQAs - when should a rep get involved with a Person or Account?
• Which systems and people nurture at which Stage? (see my site about this - slideshare.net/jdavidhill)
• How should offline and online efforts work?
• STOP SPAMMING people with "From Rep" - whether it's from Marketo or another tool, STOP IT. SDR cold emails = Cold Calls. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's a good idea, most of the time it's annoying.
• Direct Mail's intention in this is to get the attention differently if Email/Phone isn't working or cannot be found. Stop using it as a bribe for a meeting. Saw some fun examples like Bobble Heads (Engagio) and some random, customized outreach, but this reminds me of the old fashioned gumption and hustle of salespeople. That's cool. You should do that sometimes. know how and when to do that.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Josh. Sometimes it's nice to hear that it's not me misunderstanding something. 🙂