11 ABM Questions Answered with Engagement Data

An account-based marketing (ABM) motion is characterized by personalized outreach to the contacts of a target account, and a key measurement in tracking your success and identifying continuous improvement opportunities is the engagement each account has with your go-to-market (GTM) campaigns.  

As you set your ABM motions in play, you’ll have questions on your campaigns’ effectiveness, to which you’ll need data, i.e., answers. Below, you’ll find 11 common ABM-related questions and how engagement analytics can help you not only measure your effectiveness, but provide insights on how to better improve.

But, before we get started with the ABM FAQs, let’s define several important terms. Metrics, analytics and insights are related terms, often mistakenly used interchangeably. In fact, they’re very much different.

• • Metrics are lagging indicators, raw data points that inform you of what happened.
  • Analytics compare metrics over time, and inform you on where to focus your ongoing efforts.
  • Insights are developed by combining metric and analytics together, advising you of strengths and opportunities, and how to take action. 

Ensure your team has the tools to measure, analyze and better action your ABM motion. And, to spur your ABM success and identify opportunities to improve, ask yourself – and answer – the following questions.

1. 1. How often is each target account being engaged? The lifeblood of your ABM motion is, of course, your list of target accounts, and measuring engagement provides a window into your progress. Identify which accounts are receiving the most attention and which accounts are threatened to be left behind. 
   2. Who is engaging with our ABM campaigns? Not all account engagement is created equal. Make certain you’re connecting and engaging with the right personas within an account’s buying committee and/or purchasing influencers. 
   3. How are accounts being touched by both Marketing and Sales? You want to guide and facilitate an account down the funnel – your sales funnel and their buying consideration funnel. However, doing so requires the right outreach from the right team at the right time. Your Marketing and Sales teams need to march forward in lock-step; Ensure each are pulling their weight at the right time.
   4. Which accounts are highly engaged by Marketing but lacking sufficient follow-up from Sales? Marketing can engage and generate buying interest, but they’re dependent on the Sales team to follow up and further progress the deal, eventually leading to closed/won. Identify the accounts that need follow-up from your team of sellers.
   5. Which accounts need more outreach from Marketing to better empower the Sales team? Very few prospects want to be sold. Rather, they’re more interested in acquiring solutions to their greatest challenges and opportunities. As a result, Sales teams shouldn’t interject themselves into the process too early. Use engagement data to inform Marketing which target accounts need more top-of-funnel engagement.
   6. What accounts are showing buying signals and progressing through the funnel? In addition to collaborating with Sales to further deals, also look into the common denominators among the accounts that are progressing and determine what might be best borrowed from one account campaign and implemented with another, lagging account campaign. 
   7. How does engagement differ between Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 accounts? Your target accounts should be tiered with respect to priority as it relates to your ABM goals. Determine how engagement might differ across tier groupings, providing insights on where to further reinvest to scale your ABM efforts. 
   8. What does engagement look like across funnel stages? Ascertain whether engagement differs at different stages of the account journey. Where you see engagement has declined, dig a little deeper into both your personalized content as well as your outreach activities. 
   9. How successful is our current ABM strategy? Your revenue teams should have the accessibility to, and visibility of, data to report on the effectiveness of your ABM strategy. Take engagement data and the progress of your various accounts and map them back to the goals of your ABM strategy. 
   10. How effective are we at optimizing our ABM investments? ABM motions are resource-intensive, with respect to both time and hard dollar investment. Conduct periodic reviews on both successes and failures. Use engagement analytics to determine which of your ABM tactics and activities are resulting in the things your CMO, CRO and CEO most care about – pipeline opportunities, sales revenue, increased average deal size and sales funnel velocity. 
   11. What immediate actions will improve our ABM results? You can’t afford to let your accounts grow stale or get cold. Identify the target accounts that have hit roadblocks and aren’t progressing. Action plan around the best content, media and activities that can re-engage and get the account(s) moving again!

By assessing your ABM motion with engagement analytics from the very onset, you will be able to identify both successes and opportunities for improvement fairly early and easily. As you’ll have specific goals for your target accounts, look for engagement patterns that have led, and are leading, to your desired outcomes. Establish benchmarks for your data, and look for opportunities to ideate and experiment to continually raise the bar higher and drive campaign return on investment (ROI).