ABM Tech Stack

ABM is short for account based marketing, which is an approach to marketing many teams are adopting today to meet their revenue goals. According to Terminus, ABM is a strategic approach to business-to-business (B2B) marketing in which both the sales and marketing teams work together to focus on best-fit accounts and execute plays to turn them into customers. Up to this point, the trend for the last twenty years has been to start with marketing channels in order to generate as many leads as possible. ABM begins with identifying and going after best-fit accounts that will make amazing customers and represent big revenue potential for your company.

There are a lot of layers to executing account based marketing, so marketing and sales teams need tools within their ABM tech stack to help them along the way. This includes software for account based advertising, account based analytics, and more. Since there are so many tools and platforms available in the ABM category, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. A nice rule of thumb is to follow the T.E.A.M. framework. Start with four tools that help your team achieve the following:

• Target: Sales and marketing efforts are aligned around a target account strategy.
• Engage: Finding creative ways to engage with ideal future customers.
• Activate: Working together to generate and win more customers using account level engagement data and artificial intelligence.
• Measure: Proving the success of your ABM efforts by tracking the impact on your pipeline and revenue goals.

Your ABM marketing stack doesn’t have to line up with this method exactly, but we do recommend it as a starting point. Before finalizing an ABM martech stack for your sales and marketing team, we also suggest taking the time to evaluate your strategy, budget, and the available options. In this resource we’ll focus on a few leaders in the account based marketing category and how their technology could benefit your strategy.

Engagio

Among all of the available tools, platforms, and software, Engagio has emerged as an ABM leader. Need a way to familiarize with Engagio? Crunchbase is the perfect place to start. In addition to providing the company’s background and value proposition, it will reveal who this technology benefits most on your team. Based on our research, we found that the platform is best suited for:

• Marketing executives
• Field or demand generation marketers
• Marketing operations
• Sales

You are unable to use the Engagio login without first seeing a demo and signing up for a plan. Engagio pricing is hard to find on their website, but the demo will provide an opportunity to learn more about how it might fit into your budget. Engagio Playmaker is an interesting component of the platform that helps with ABM orchestration across different teams. Engagio integrations is also another element to consider when evaluating this solution.

During your due diligence, also check out the Engagio blog to get a feel for their brand and available resources. Engagio Glassdoor is also worth looking up to get a sense for their culture, work environment, and people. Engagio is a prominent player in the ABM landscape for good reason. They have proven that they belong at the top, but they’re not the only ones. Engagio competitors should also be considered as each business is different and may have needs or challenges that line up best with certain platforms.

Triblio

Tribilio is also an account based marketing platform that might be a good fit for your sales and marketing team. The company launched in 2013 and much of their team originated from Eloqua. Their platform offers the following capabilities:

• Account Analytics
• Web Personalization
• Orchestration
• Sales Activation
• Audience Management
• Account Based Advertising
• Purchase Intent

Their website is well laid out to not only educate you on account based marketing, but also explain how their platform can help meet your needs. They also list out numerous case studies and have a helpful blog that can be a resource for your team’s education.

Triblio states that account based marketing goes beyond just sales and marketing teams. It can help customer success managers renew more customers and expand product usage. In general, it helps the entire organization reduce wasted efforts and maximize revenue.

Terminus ABM

The Terminus account based marketing platform is another platform to consider if you’re ready to invest in ABM technology. The Terminus ABM movement started when their co-founder, Sangram Vajre, emerged as a thought leader and authored the “Account Based Marketing for Dummies” book. This team is the driving force behind the FlipMyFunnel Roadshow and educational program. Curious about how Terminus works? Their platform is structured around the Terminus ABM framework that was mentioned earlier.

On the Terminus careers page, you’ll even find someone on their team with ABM in their job title. They strive to be the gold standard in executing ABM themselves as they continue to preach this new approach to other sales and marketing teams. The Sigstr team has witnessed firsthand how the Terminus account executive works with their marketing team to identify ideal future customers and effectively engage with key stakeholders. They are a team of wonderful people who are perfecting ABM with their own accounts. If you ever want to reach out to their team to pick their brains or get some pointers, check out the Terminus account based marketing LinkedIn page and send a message to someone on their sales or marketing team.

Check out any Terminus social media account to get a glimpse into their team, their many helpful resources, and how they think about ABM. You can also learn more about the Terminus tech stack or Terminus ABM scorecard. Curious about how Sigstr can fit into your ABM strategy? Terminus actually uses Sigstr themselves for email signature marketing and relationship data. Check out the Terminus integrations page to see how you can get relationship data flowing into the Terminus Account Hub. At Sigstr, we use Terminus reporting for our own ABM strategy. We went from asking ourselves, “what is Terminus ABM?” to becoming a customer in less than a year. Anyone can learn and start practicing ABM! Don’t be intimidated.

Demandbase ABM

The Demandbase ABM platform rounds out our lineup of recommended platforms. They are based in San Francisco and have offices in Manhattan, Seattle, London, Chicago, and Austin. As a side note, the Demandbase London office is beautiful! Check it out if you have a chance.

Demandbase ABM capabilities allow your team to centralize command and control, define your target audiences, and measure your progress with ABM analytics. It also provides real-time Demandbase data around buyer intent. “Demandbase ABM is a team sport,” is a phrase you’ll often hear from their team, and you’ll find that their platform is structured around this strategy.

The Demandbase ABM Summit is a great event to attend if you’d like to learn more about specific use cases or the Demandbase ABM strategy. At the conference and online they offer the Demandbase ABM certification to those who take the time to learn about account based marketing and prepare themselves to execute ABM for their own team. In addition to a great conference and educational courses, they have a credible lineup of customer logos. Demandbase has a library of customer stories available for you to read and see firsthand the true impact of their platform.

ABM Platform

By now you may be familiar with the different options available as you think about using an ABM platform. However, let’s take this opportunity to take a step back and clearly explain the ABM platform definition. When a sales and marketing team begin their account based marketing journey, they will need ABM technology that allows them to do certain things efficiently. The reality is, ABM is hard. It’s sometimes very time-consuming and overwhelming in the beginning stages. Account based marketing technology will help with this, and can serve as a central “command center” to manage processes, data, and analytics. The more you can do with one platform, the better! No one wants to log into ten different tools to gain a holistic view of their ABM efforts.

However, if you look into an ABM platform pro version, you’ll find that it has the capability to integrate with many other tools and platforms. We use the word “pro” here because it usually is a high-end or more expensive offering. That being said, the benefits are awesome. The more you can integrate, the more data you have at your fingertips in one spot. Teams should understand what an ABM platform is, its purpose, and how it can impact revenue goals first before choosing which platform to use.

Generally speaking, individual tools are great but only get one part of the job done. Or in this case, only one component of a team’s ABM strategy. A platform combines all solutions and tools into one single source. This will create efficiency for your team and allow you to work faster. Think of a house when comparing these two terms. A hammer is a great tool for specific jobs, yet construction workers need a whole toolshed to build a house.

ABM Manufacturing

Account based marketing isn’t limited to just one specific vertical or industry. Among the ABM clients you will find today, a good percentage of them are ABM manufacturing companies. Manufacturing represents long deal cycles with highly valued products and services. The sale involves a highly complex solution with several stakeholders within the buying committee. Think of ABM as a way to speed up this process as it can help earn each of the stakeholders’ trust early on during the buying process.

ABM technology and manufacturing companies may seem like an unlikely pair, but teams today are seeing real success by adopting this new approach to marketing. Many ABM industrial and manufacturing case studies are emerging as go-to play books for other companies in this industry. The faster teams can speed up these longer deals, the more deals they can win in a given year. More wins, higher velocity, and efficient marketing spend are all ingredients for true revenue success for manufacturers. If you’re a marketer, this means stronger sales and marketing alignment and gratification that your marketing efforts are paying off! If you’re in sales, this means hitting your sales quota and increasing personal compensation. It’s a win-win for both teams within a manufacturing or industrial company.