In our previous post, we outlined a maturity curve for measurement.

Today we dive more deeply into ABM Measurement.

Stage 1 “Undergraduate”

• Account Based Basic Measurement – sometimes done in conjunction with Stage 1, this is where the SiriusDecisions 3.0 Account based measurement model begins to come into play with account level attribution.  

• The most common measurement value we are hearing that Marketers are reporting up to their boards or CEO level on in this stage is that of Account Engagement within certain tiered accounts (Marketing Engaged Accounts).
  • An alternative to this measurement are ‘meetings within target accounts.’

• The advantage of displaying this stage is one of unifying a view from both sales and marketing vs. the earlier models of celebrating marketing attribution on what could be low overall closing performance.   It also has the benefit of being a leading indicator of pipeline creation and actual revenue produced from ABM initiatives.

• Other funnel measurements can be installed based on account status values leading to/through an opportunity stage.   Rather than snapshots of engagement, it’s also more valuable to show the trend of engagement over a period of time (from the last board meeting) to show progress. 

Stage 2 “Masters”

• Advanced Account Based Measurement where sales and marketing channel effectiveness can be tested more deeply than that of other stages referenced above – this approach could leverage Engagio’s DASH product where ALL of sales and marketing activities are rolled up against the account with ‘fractional’ influence measurement models that can vary depending on how the user configures the attribution across all sales and marketing activities.   Why this approach may be helpful:

• This measurement includes digital aspects that are commonly measured today, physical aspects (like face to face meetings) as well as velocity.
  • There is the ability to weight different elements of the buying process (persona, type of campaign and/or type of activity) such that an end user could test different models for the optimal weighting and scoring method.  We’ve seen other technologies get to a similar destination but through alot more business process change and engineering to get to the destination
  • A look back capability measuring any activity or campaign over a specified period, giving a client the ability to model different weighting structures and different minutes (although that ability would take some manual effort, it’s doable).
  • In most cases, all account activity is rolled to an account, including that of anonymous web traffic which is frequently missed by other measurement tools, valuable for those enterprises using Eloqua, Pardot, and Marketo.  This is valuable information to also aggregate in the overall activity of the account.
  • The ability to measure activities that precede a business outcome specified by the end user – for example:
    • Activities that precede an actual purchase
    • Activities that precede an opportunity creation
    • Activities that precede a meeting or MQA

It’s also easy to use.  We’ve been engaged with other measurement solutions that require either a massive process overhaul change impacting all users of a system (like Salesforce) and/or technical SQL programming that are robust yet resource intensive.  The ease of use of this native Salesforce deployment which works in either classic or lightning makes it appealing on several levels.

What are you finding valuable in your marketing measurement as it relates to ABM if you are in the mid-market?