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"ABM is really about personalization, and that's where I think events come in. Events are a great way to bring the human touch into your interactions. If you do that right, magic happens!"
Jon Miller, CEO & Co-founder of Engagio, recently joined us at Engagio’s ABM Central Lounge to discuss how marketers are activating account-based marketing strategies to drive more meaningful engagement with the right people.
A big part of our conversation centered around measuring the success of ABM strategies and programs. As Miller explained, the biggest mistake marketers make when embarking on ABM is not aligning on what will be measured and not setting expectations for how measurements are going to change.
That’s because traditional volume-based marketing metrics don’t work for ABM, which instead focuses on the quality of interactions and relationships. In other words, are the right people at the right companies actually engaging with your brand?
As B2B marketers become more focused on driving deeper account engagement, standard event marketing metrics like registrants and attendees become less useful indicators of success. Here are five key metrics to have in mind when developing your ABM strategy, and a few factors to consider when applying them to your events:
Have you built a comprehensive picture of the people who matter most at your target accounts? Knowing which accounts you’re targeting isn’t enough, you need to know who you’re targeting at those accounts. You’ll need identify and acquire contact information for everyone that could play a role in the buying decision before you ever craft an event invitation.
Are target accounts aware of your brand and your solutions? Event registration or attendance among target accounts, both of which are a proxy for awareness, can be early indicators that your ABM events strategy is working. If your current database coverage is low, using ancillary events around an industry trade show that you know will be well-attended by your target accounts can be a great way to build upfront awareness and drive initial engagement.
Traditional notions of marketing attribution, like first-touch or last-touch, become less meaningful in ABM because there are so many touches across so many people (across longer periods of time) at a target account.
Rather than trying to take one deal and split up attribution across hundreds of different touches, which is falsely precise, Miller recommends measuring the effectiveness of account-based programs by looking at the correlations between activities you do and the observable outcomes you achieve.
Ben Hindman is co-founder and CEO of Splash, the country's fastest-growing event marketing platform that helps businesses and brands more effectively market through their events. An event planner turned tech entrepreneur, events are in Ben’s DNA. Prior to starting Splash, Ben was the Director of Events at Thrillist, where he produced large-scale events from concerts to mystery fly-aways.
