Email marketing and account-based marketing (ABM) are a match made in heaven, enabling you to target your dream prospects with personalized communications straight to their inbox.
Statistics show that email marketing boasts an ROI of $42 for every $1 spent. But that’s only if an email campaign is comprised of the right components, such as automation and personalization.
However, there are a handful of nuances to consider when incorporating email marketing into ABM.
A good example is the need for complete and reliable intent data, which dictates the outcome of email marketing initiatives in ABM campaigns.
Intent data sheds light on insights about customer behavior, their driving factors, and how close they are to a purchase decision.
Are leads looking to research an industry or searching specifically for your products? Are they waiting for the best time to buy, patiently looking for discount promotions or tailored sales pitches?
Catering for intent is the gold standard in ABM, ensuring you target the most ideal accounts, with content relevant to their position in the sales process.
How to Use Email Marketing to Boost ABM Results
A word of advice: before launching an email campaign, omit any leads that haven’t given their express permission to receive marketing emails.
Sending unsolicited emails to high-value prospects goes against everything ABM stands for.
Not only could it ruin your company’s relationship with leads, but it can also tarnish your “sender reputation”—a rating that internet services use to identify spam. This risks a potential sale, along with any future lead generation efforts, as your emails will be diverted to your prospects’ junk folders.
There can be greater consequences too. Europe’s GDPR law penalizes companies that send unsolicited emails with hefty fines—it’s essential that as a B2B business you can demonstrate that there’s a ‘legitimate interest’ reason why you’re emailing a person or business. Be aware of the laws in your own country and those you’re sending emails within before you proceed.
Once you’ve mastered the law, here are four ways to effectively integrate email marketing with ABM:
1. Identify the Perfect Target Accounts
Use advanced intent signals to identify the perfect campaign audience and add them to your lists.
There’s a whole array of data you can use to pick accounts to target for email outreach. This includes technology installs, previous interactions, and predictive buyer behavior.
Businesses should also pay attention to the account’s firmographics, such as organization size, financial performance, and ownership. These differentiators impact what information contacts prefer to receive via email, when they prefer to receive emails, and how offers must be structured.
2. Implement a Lead Qualification Process
B2B leads don’t stay in the same segment forever.
Leads previously seeking informational content will eventually transition to the evaluation stage. And those who are inches away from a purchase aren’t willing to hang around forever for your sales pitch. Therefore, your emails need to be timed perfectly.
To identify which prospects should progress through the pipeline, you need to implement a streamlined lead qualification process.
First, choose the lead qualification framework that fits your business. This can be any of the following:
- MEDDIC (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, and Champion)
- CHAMP (Challenges, Authority, Money, and Prioritization)
- BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline)
Lead qualification frameworks guide you toward the ripest prospects. For this to work, you must collect data from both first-party and third-party services.
3. Use Emails for Data Collection
Purchasing accurate B2B customer data fast-tracks your ABM campaign—assuming you find vendors with access to real-time data to pinpoint in-market buyers.
If you’d prefer to go solo rather than using an external vendor, invest in first-party data acquisition using data collection strategies, such as:
- Website visits and resource downloads
- Webinar attendance
- Previous purchases
- Discovery calls
Emails also help you collect first-party data by tracking metrics such as click-throughs, open rate, and forwarding rate. Modern email marketing platforms automatically collect these metrics to help gauge a lead’s level of interest.
Furthermore, you can use emails to send surveys and content offers—from eBooks to free webinars—to nurture and qualify leads.
4. Deliver Handmade Emails
There’s no room for one-size-fits-all content strategies within ABM.
Every communication should be tailor-made to each lead’s needs. Use data such as company position, interests, and technology products they currently use to deliver personalized experiences via email.
According to research, nearly 60% of successful email marketers stated that targeted and personalized emails boost engagement rates. They also generate up to 6 times higher transactional rates.
How do you launch personalized email campaigns for ABM?
Here are a few ideas:
- Pre-activate leads with targeted display ads: Working on customer relationships early and building familiarity increases the efficiency of other ABM initiatives. Presenting contact-level, high-volume targeted ads to increase brand awareness makes leads more likely to respond to email outreach.
- Revive cold leads: If you have contacts who haven’t responded in a while, remove them from their current segment and put them into campaign specifically for “cold” leads. Renew their interest with strategies like customer feedback surveys, premium content offers, and live virtual event invitations.
- Use email content syndication: The goal of email content syndication is to promote valuable content to leads who frequently miss other distribution channels. Send content that matches user intent for the best results.
Activate Your ABM Cheat Code
Marketing emails are among an ABM team’s most trusted tools—not just for lead generation, but for nurturing too.
While undoubtedly effective, email marketing initiatives are time-consuming and costly to maintain.
With DemandScience, you can streamline ABM by getting high-quality leads delivered to you. Contact us today or schedule a free demo to learn how we can help.
