Marketo ABM: How Will It Impact ABM Plans in 2017?

Marketo just announced an updated release of their Account-Based Marketing (ABM) offering. The new release builds on their ABM launch in September, with more details on key milestones achieved in the past three months and new features including:

  • Over 50 customers signed including Avanade, MuleSoft, NAVEX Global, Sovos, and more.
  • Support for Account Teams within ABM for better sales & marketing collaboration
  • Deeper ABM reporting on account-level engagement and it’s impact on sales pipeline
  • Launch of new Named Account APIs to enable strategic technology partners to integrate their ABM capabilities into Marketo’s core ABM platform functions.

Kwanzoo ABM Display for Marketo ABM

As part of the recent announcement, Kwanzoo was named as Marketo’s preferred ABM Technology partner for ABM display solutions. Along with LinkedIn, other technology partners featured in the Marketo ABM announcement are Facebook, Dun & Bradstreet, Everstring, Mintigo, Printingforless.com and Reachforce.

A growing number of Marketo customers are expanding their reach, increasing coverage into target accounts using our best-in-class ABM (programmatic) display capabilities. We are working closely with Marketo, so our mutual customers can leverage the full power of Marketo ABM in the coming months across digital channels and seamlessly leverage ABM display insights from Kwanzoo inside Marketo ABM.

Tweet This: Marketo names Kwanzoo key tech partner for ABM display and retargeting with #MarketoABM

Managing Master Account Lists in Marketo ABM vs Your CRM

As Marketo’s ABM solution continues to mature in the coming months, customers will need to decide if they want to maintain and manage their master account lists in Marketo ABM or continue to manage them in their CRM (Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, other).

There are several reasons why managing account lists in Marketo ABM will be quite appealing to Marketo customers:

Account-Level Email Nurture Streams: The ability to setup email and cross-channel nurture streams to specific sets of target accounts. As we know CRM systems today are not designed for nurturing accounts and leads; it remains primarily a marketing function.

Account Level Scoring – capture all of the activities and events for both known contacts and anonymous users specific to each named account. Use this data to score an account, and rank order that account vs other accounts to help prioritize sales activity. We believe account-level scoring will be more robust and rich in Marketo ABM, given the broad range of marketing touch points that will act as “feeders” for account-level scoring.

Full 2-Way Sync between Marketo ABM and CRM – the ability to sync account lists easily between Marketo ABM and CRM makes it easier for enterprise marketing & sales teams to plan and move their master account lists into Marketo ABM. We believe this will eliminate a major point of concern for sales teams, who need real-time and timely access to account-level information in CRM.

More Robust ABM Reporting – Marketo is working to enrich Marketo RCA capabilities for ABM. This will drive increased adoption of Marketo ABM, as Customers want their existing investment in Marketo RCA both protected and enhanced to enable an ABM approach to all of their marketing.

Tweet This: Where will you manage master account lists for ABM in 2017? Marketing automation or CRM? #MarketoABM

How Will Marketo ABM Impact ABM Plans in 2017?

Marketo customers today are turning to third party ABM providers to meet several of their ABM requirements. These providers address the following capabilities:

ABM Data: Sourcing of account and contact data. Identifying gaps in marketing data in Marketo or CRM, in order to enrich existing data to maximize reach and coverage from ABM programs. Many customers are using providers of installed technologies as well as firmographic data, to build out account lists. Contact data providers fill in gaps in email + phone contacts for key buyers and influencers based on their job functions/titles/levels/interests. We believe Marketo will continue to work with a broad range of complementary data providers.

Lead-to-Account Matching: Traditional demand generation approaches are now being re-examined to apply an ABM approach. A key capability that many customers seek is lead-to-account matching, so that Leads in Marketo get mapped into target accounts in the CRM. As Marketo ABM continues to evolve, we believe lead-to-account mapping will become an earlier stage activity inside Marketo ABM and Marketo Lead Management. While Marketo customers use third party tools (e.g. LeanData, Engagio) to fill this need today, we believe this is a strategic area for Marketo ABM, where they will move quickly to address this capability.

Account-Level Engagement Insights: Customers seek a broad range of insights on account-level engagement, in terms of channels, user activities and depth of engagement from prospects at target accounts. Engagio has been an early mover in this area, as a specialized provider of cross-channel engagement insights and analytics. At Kwanzoo, we address account-level engagement insights specific to ABM display and retargeting. Some key insights we deliver natively is around ad clicks and website visits from target accounts.

We do believe Marketo ABM is serious about being the “hub” or core platform where Marketo customers capture and analyze their cross-channel ABM insights. This is exactly why Kwanzoo is committed to delivering our ABM display insights to Marketo customers via Kwanzoo’s native dashboards, Excel exports as well as API-based delivery directly inside Marketo ABM’s own dashboards and account-specific reports and screens.

Image Courtesy of Marketo

Account-Level Program Spend Attribution: As Marketo continues to work on Marketo RCA support for ABM, we see Customers turn to third party B2B attribution players (Bizible, others) to address their attribution needs. This area also begins to overlap with ABM cross-channel analytics from other providers (such as Engagio). It will be interesting to see what choices Customers make as Marketo expands their native ABM reporting capabilities within Marketo RCA, and Marketo customers and service providers begin implementing ABM spend attribution and develop best practices using native Marketo ABM and Marketo RCA capabilities. Kwanzoo is actively exploring this area with Marketo, our mutual Customers as well as services partners.

Tweet This: Marketo ABM done right requires quality data, Lead-to-Account, ABM insights and clear process for ROI

Marketo is investing significant resources in scaling their platform, as they reach into larger enterprise accounts. All of our discussions suggest a strong focus on expanding the range of touchpoints and data that Marketo is seeking to capture and process – as they position as the “go-to” platform for CMOs at a range of companies. As their new CEO, Steve Lucas has said in a recent interview, Marketo wants to be for CMOs what Salesforce is today for CROs.

Besides building out their platform for greater scale, there is a big push around a new universal dashboard for sales and marketing teams to quickly analyze key insights on target accounts and the buying centers, contacts and leads from those accounts. As they expand the breadth and depth of their APIs, under their new leadership, Marketo seems to be pursuing a strategy of more tightly integrating “best-of-breed” point capabilities in complementary areas. That’s a clear recognition of the real challenges for CMOs and marketing teams today, with their ever growing enterprise marketing and ABM tech stacks.

Planning your ABM initiatives for 2017? Have you investigated Marketo ABM? Have specific questions for us around ABM Display Programs and deploying them with Marketo Lead Management and Marketo ABM? We’d welcome your questions, comments and feedback either here below, or privately via email to us at Kwanzoo here.

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