Target Account Selection

©2015 EverString

Target Account SelectionJ.J. KardwellPresident & Co-founder, EverString

©2015 EverString

Agenda

Target account selection as the critical first step of account-based marketing (ABM)

Using predictive marketing to optimize target account selection

Tiered approach to targeting accounts

Creating sales and marketing alignment through target accounts

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The seven steps of ABM

1. Identify Target Accounts 2. Identify Decisions Makers3. Clean Account and Lead/Contact Data4. Create Personalized Content5. Select Channels or Combination of Channels6. Program Execution 7. Review results and optimize

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Who?

What?

How?

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The seven steps of ABM


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Who?

What?

How?

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The role of target account selection in ABM

Target account selection is the foundational step of ABM.

Without target account selection you can not do anything with ABM.

To optimize effectiveness, you need to first understand your total addressable market, and then identify the ideal target accounts to pursue.

Target account selection has historically been a laborious task, but technology has made it much easier and more accurate.

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The “old way” of target account selection

Manually select accounts Sales reps pick companies they’ve sold to and those they are

pursuing Selection based on basic firmographics (e.g., revenue,

geography, employee count and industry) Prioritized based on gut feel and subjective judgment Blind spots in new geographies and segments

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Predictive account selection – the new way

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ABMstarts with

Audience Selection

The process of using data to identify your

target accounts

Use data to compilean objective list

of target accounts

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How to build predictive target account lists

Key questions: Which companies

can use this approach?

What makes for a good target account?

What data does predictive use?

What signals matter?

EverString collects & curates terabytes of information

internet

commercial sources

crawl pixelsip traffic Data Science

Machine LearningNatural Language Processing

Artificial Intelligence20K Insights per Account

EverStringAccount Insights

11M Accounts

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INTE

NT

FIT

ENGA

GEM

ENT

Out of Funnelbrowsing behavior, crawling

Upper FunnelPixels and cookies

Mid FunnelMarketing Automation

Lower FunnelCRM

Accounts should be prioritized on three dimensions

FitDetermines how much an account or lead looks like your best customers (e.g., firmographics and tech stack)

EngagementQuantifies the degree of interaction that an account or lead has had with you (e.g., website visits, webinars, downloads)

IntentEngagement that is not with you (e.g., browsing activity, content consumption & behavior patterns by prospects)

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Output is an objective target account list

Your model is applied against full account database

Provides you with a point-of-view on every account in your addressable market

Result is objective target account list

MarketingAutomationCRM

Decision Platform

Your Data, Your Model

Audience Selection

Scores Net New Prospects

20K Insights per Account

EverStringAccount Insights

11M AccountsIntegration

Target Account

List

©2015 EverString

Ideal account profiles are different for each business

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Target account tiering

Tier accounts by account persona to promote alignment with sales

Involve sales team in tiering process. This is what they expect, and you will seed the discussion with an objective list of accounts.

ABM plays can be expensive, so tiering is critical to optimize dollar spend and resource allocation

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Tiers Accounts ACV Revenue Potential ABM Budget

Tier 1 10 $500,000

$1,500,000 $150,000

Tier 2 100 $100,000

$3,000,000 $300,000

Tier 3 1,000 $50,000 $5,000,000 $500,000

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Identifying your buying center

Once you have a reliable target account list, you can use old fashioned buyer personas and insights into the “sphere of influence”

InfluencersBuyer

Buyer personas remain mostly intact. You may need to refine language to speak of the buyer in the context of an account

Determining the “influencers” to your economic buyer enables deeper penetration into the account

With ABM, your SDRs can be directed to help map the entire sphere of influence

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ABM plays can then be run against two layers

Buyer Play

Influencer Play

Physical Mailer Email Nurturing Invite to Micro Event SDR Call w/ ALL

Targeted Display Postcard Email Nurturing SDR Call w/ ENGAGED

InfluencersBuyer

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Final Thoughts

Picking the right accounts is critically important for ABM, as ABM will not work unless it is focused on the correct targets

Predictive marketing software enables you to rapidly build an objective target account list, and to prioritize every prospect in your market

Optimizing target account selection creates alignment between marketing and sales

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Target Account Selection

Marketing

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