Scaling personalization
But here’s the thing.
So many Marketers are approaching personalization in the wrong way.
‘Token’ personalization is everywhere - particularly with all the fancy ‘personalization on the fly’ technology.
When you’re just getting started out with ABM, it can feel like you have a mountain to climb - especially if you work in a small team, or even as a solo ABMer, trying to build out your first Account-based Marketing program.
This is only exacerbated by having multiple accounts to engage within your campaigns.
Effective personalization takes time.
When it comes to personalization in ABM, it’s not just about putting a company logo on an ad, or using someone’s name in an introductory email. It’s about deeply understanding the needs, challenges, and priorities of your target accounts, and translating that knowledge into meaningful content and engagement strategies.
In increasingly saturated markets, personalization is pivotal for building reputation, deepening relationships with target accounts, and helping you stand out from the crowd.
However, while personalization is vital for the success of your ABM program, it’s a delicate balancing act between the resources and time you have available, and the depth of personalization you can achieve.
In this latest ABM Laboratory feature, we’ll explore a content framework for scaling personalization, helping you to climb that mountain towards ABM success.
In our Account-based Marketing laboratory, we are developing a content framework designed to scale and repurpose personalized content assets, for dynamic delivery during campaigns.
This framework is based upon a centralized ABM Value Proposition, which serves as the cornerstone for all content and messaging.
The Value Proposition is your ABM program's North Star. It's the why you to each target account. It's the why you and not somebody else. It's the why you are relevant and it's how you deliver true personalization in your ABM program.
A Value Proposition is what makes you different to a discrete set of accounts. It's not what you tell the WHOLE market. It's what you tell a SPECIFIC set of accounts. It's the BRIDGE between your Insights research and your Account Experience.
The ABM Value Proposition puts your target account(s) at the heart of the story, echoes their problems and challenges, and shows the value your offer provides.
From this core, we aim to build a foundational baseline content asset that can be repeatedly repurposed at various stages, aligned with an account’s engagement level in terms of reputation and relationships.
The motivation behind this approach stems from a common challenge faced by many ABM practitioners:
How do you achieve a meaningful level of personalization, while managing limited time and resources?
Our strategy is to align effort, time and resources with accounts that demonstrate a higher level of engagement, awareness of reputation, and the beginnings of relationships.
By doing so, we can focus our resources more efficiently, and get more bang for our buck when it comes to content development and repurposing.
Our goal is to test a process where we 'layer on' personalization into baseline content, thereby streamlining the personalization process in content asset development.
Let’s take a deeper dive into how it works.
You've got to prescribe the amount of personalization to what the account needs. So our layer where the AEs are nominating accounts, very, very boutique one-off, that's all hand-curated. So the content is hand-curated one-by-one based off of the conversations that reps are having within the accounts"
1
As with all ABM content creation, the process is set up by first establishing the foundations for the ABM strategy.
Through discovery workshops, market insights gathering, and deep research, we develop an ABM Value Proposition (VP) that looks to distill the unique value the client offers to the market – into a succinct statement and supporting messaging matrix.
This ABM VP then forms the basis for the personalized content framework. The idea of the content framework is that it is flexible enough to accommodate different objectives at different levels of personalization.
If the campaign's goal is to raise awareness in a new market, the content will focus on education and thought leadership. Whereas, if there is a specific objective to build a relationship with a new line of business, the content may be more direct and focused on influencing stakeholders.
Here we’d discuss an ABM manifesto, a content asset that is the physical manifestation of a client’s ABM VP outlining the current landscape, constructing a narrative that identifies why now is the right time to consider a new solution, presenting a strong business case that outlines a ‘new era’ of working together, and plotting the route to future success.
An ABM account manifesto is a strategic, personalised content asset used to target a single account by translating a company's value proposition into a clear commitment to addressing the unique challenges and aspirations of a specific target account.
The Account Manifesto aims to show the present state narrative of a key topic for the target account, outlining why now is the right time to prioritise this topic.
It then aims to present a strong and bold vision for the future addressing how the solution offered can solve the specific challenges posed and deliver tangible value to the target account. Finally the manifesto presents a compelling call to action supported by case studies and social proof aligned to the target accounts needs.
2
Once we have developed the initial baseline ABM Manifesto, the next step is to begin promoting this content asset at the market level into a cluster of accounts.
This will mainly be promoted through relevant channels where we know our target accounts ‘hang out’, such as paid media, email campaigns, and organic social media. This initial sharing helps us to view which accounts are engaging with the content, and allows us to identify those accounts that justify more personalized engagement.For these ‘engaged’ accounts, we will then develop a tactical account insights report, which is made up of:
Insights from the account owner
Research into account’s current needs
Challenges and strategies
And any recent, relevant news.
The insights report is then used as a filter to overlay an account-specific lens to the cluster ABM value proposition.
This allows us to build specific tailored messaging at an account-level.
Once this has been established, it is then worked into a repurposed version of the ABM manifesto, this time directly addressing the account. This process typically involves co-branding the asset, introducing personalized modules, such as a note from the account owner, as well as adding account-relevant context, messaging, insights and bespoke CTAs for the account, in order to increase the level of personalization.
A great way to validate this asset, if you have a champion engaged within the account, is to run it by them.
You can position it as a content asset that can help raise awareness of the challenge they are trying to solve.
Through this process, you will usually get some feedback around how the asset can be tweaked, and this always helps to improve the content, and also to build buy-in with the champion, as the asset begins to feel co-created.
Because this asset is much more focused on the account, content is strategically distributed in two main ways:
Firstly, we use existing relationships within the account – such as the champion – to share the content with the right people.
Secondly, we promote the content outbound through social selling and email. But, depending on the value of the account, it’s also worth considering direct mail tactics, as well as how you can leverage the content asset at offline events, where you know the account is going to be present.
The beauty with ABM is really when you start to dig down and understand the particular situation of each account and design personalized content and an experiences that is really talking directly to them.”
3
With your ABM Account Manifesto now out there in the world, it’s important to track its performance.
Where possible, you can monitor the job titles which are showing engagement, and how long they're spending consuming the content.
These insights can be key in helping to unlock the account.
Let’s imagine your ABM program is targeting a major enterprise financial institution, which is evaluating a SaaS digital transformation product with a significant deal value.
You have an engaged champion who is able to distribute your ABM Account Manifesto, and you are also running outbound social selling.The identified DMUs include the CIO, Head of Digital Transformation, CFO, Senior Data Architect, and Head of Compliance, among others.
CIO: Engaged deeply with case studies, and downloaded the technical specification sheet – indicating a strong interest in technical capabilities.
Head of Digital Transformation: Watched a webinar on FinTech, and explored the implementation roadmap – showing an interest in practical deployment aspects.
CFO: Opened the email, but did not click any links – suggesting there’s a need for more compelling financial benefits, and ROI-focused content.
Senior Data Architect: Did not open the email – indicating a gap in addressing data integration and analytics features.
Head of Compliance: Also, did not engage – possibly due to an insufficient focus on compliance and security.
These insights help to build a picture of where the account is at, in terms of engagement with your product and brand within the DMU group.
This example shows that there is a level of engagement there with some of the key decision-makers, particularly the CIO and the Head of Digital transformation.
However, the challenge now is clearly bringing the rest of the DMUs on board, to avoid any risk of them blocking the deal further down the line.
The focus should be on multithreading the account, by building a content asset that can speak directly to the needs of each member of buying committee.
This provides you with an opportunity to once again repurpose your content asset and introduce DMU-level personalization.
To do so, firstly you will need to spend some time researching the roles and responsibilities of each of the DMU functions within the context of the account.
You want to try to build up a view of how each persona behaves, how much power they have in the buying process, what they care about, and what their challenges are.
Building up a picture of this information will allow you to tailor your specific ABM value proposition for each function of each DMU, allowing you to build customized versions of the asset.
This can be delivered by dialing up certain message pillars for different members of the buying committee, directly addressing different DMUs, and outlining how your solution will help them to succeed – or even through introducing an embedded value-based graphic, which helps to demonstrate how your product or solution will add value to each member of the committee.
It goes beyond account insights and what's publicly known about the company. It has to go down to that personal level. And I don't mean necessarily personalize it to one human being, but personalize to what's happening in that account.
For the CFO, dialing up the messaging around financial benefits and cost-efficiency of the SaaS solution, as well as including potential ROI and long-term savings, could pique their interest – while switching in different case study content with a focus on cost-effectiveness could help to build a business case.
Meanwhile, other tweaks to the content – such as bringing in a focus on data security, regulatory compliance, and seamless data integration – can help to build some trust with the Senior Data Architect and Head of Compliance, ensuring these stakeholders, too, see the product's value in their specific contexts.
We would also recommend tweaking the design of the asset where possible. This is to ensure any graphics used are relevant for the functional area of different members of the buying committee.
The DMU-personalized content is then shared with senior stakeholders, often through existing relationships or peer-to-peer engagement, to ensure that the message reaches the relevant stakeholders in the account.
4
Within your highest-value accounts, at advanced stages within your buying journey, it may be necessary to get as granular as One-on-one stakeholder-level engagement.
This is especially advisable if you are deep into the account, but you find that there is one stakeholder who has the potential to make or break the deal.
These individuals often hold critical decision-making power or influence within the account, and their buy-in can be pivotal to the success of the ABM campaign.
So, to ensure you are able to drive an effective narrative with them – and position your value proposition – you have to make sure the personalization is right.
Our approach here is to focus on delivering an in-depth stakeholder analysis and insights profile, to uncover their needs, their challenges, their primary focuses and how they typically behave – including how they present themselves, and how they typically engage with content, if at all.
All of this insight should be used to build a stakeholder-level personalization approach that can be integrated into your content framework.
Once you have developed your stakeholder insights report, work on adapting the ABM value proposition to ensure your messaging is strong, and is accurately addressing the needs of that stakeholder.
You can then use this to repurpose your account manifesto – introducing content sections that speak directly to the person, and which demonstrate how your solution can deliver tangible business value.
This content piece should focus on that stakeholder-specific messaging, but you should also consider the integration of some additional 1:1 content modules that can be embedded – such as:
Bespoke case studies
Personalized video messages
Or detailed ROI analyses.
These could not only capture the attention of the stakeholder, but align with their personal motivations and objectives within the organization.
With the stakeholder-level content developed, the aim should be to get the content in front of them in a way that suits their preferred communication method. This could be through an internal champion personally presenting the content, in partnership with your account owner, so leveraging their relationship to gain the stakeholder’s attention and trust.
Alternatively, you may use direct peer-to-peer interactions, especially if the stakeholder prefers a more personal touch.
For example, a senior executive from your team could reach out to the stakeholder, to discuss the content and address any concerns in a more conversational and informal setting.
This level of personalization can be the key to turning hesitant or disengaged individuals into advocates, ultimately facilitating a smoother decision-making process, and advancing the overall ABM initiative.
Our Global Client Partners really value how we are invested in their accounts; that we are taking the time to understand their client - sometimes as well as members of their team.”
Leveraging generative AI technology presents an opportunity to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of this scalable content framework.
Large language model (LLM) AI tools, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other dedicated applications, can help to power up this approach.
By taking these insights and working on developing specific prompt instructions and structure outputs, Gen AI can digest insights at each of the personalization stages, and support with mapping these insights to your ABM value proposition, highlighting key messages and outlining initial messaging.
This not only speeds up the content development process, but also allows teams to focus on more strategic aspects, such as deepening the personalization, or adjusting the tone to better match the audience.
The structured content generated by AI serves as a starting point, which can be further refined and adapted by human marketers.
Gen AI can be a powerful assistant for delivering content personalization, freeing up your valuable resources and time, enabling marketing teams to invest more in crafting high-quality, impactful messages.
As a result, this hybrid approach ensures that the content not only benefits from the efficiency of AI, but also retains the nuanced understanding and creative touch of a human to ensure the content is aligned to the needs of the audience.
So, when it comes to scaling content personalization it’s important to remember that you shouldn’t try to do it all at once!
Take it one step at a time, and build up your personalization efforts through layering insights and customized content modules, to balance your time, resource and effort against how engaged an account is.
Want to learn more about content personalization strategies? Whether you're looking to refine your approach, explore new solutions, or simply to learn more about the power of personalized content in ABM, we invite you to join us for an exclusive ABM Lunch & Learn workshop.
