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Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has firmly secured it’s place as staple for B2B brands, focusing on high-value accounts and personalised marketing efforts. Post covid and as customer expectations continue to evolve, it’s crucial to transition these strategies to Account-Based Experience (ABX). ABX takes the principles of ABM and extends them to create a more holistic, customer-centric at every stage of the customer lifecycle long after you win that whale account.
Now is the time for B2B marketers to start the shift from Account-Based Marketing (ABM) to Account-Based Experience (ABX). While ABM focuses on targeting specific accounts with personalized marketing tactics, ABX takes this a step further by integrating marketing, sales, and customer success efforts to create a cohesive and seamless customer journey. ABX prioritises the overall experience of the account, ensuring consistent and relevant interactions at every touchpoint that are helpful to the entire decision-making unit and users.
The good news is that transitioning to ABX is simpler than it seems. Start by building on your existing ABM frameworks, enhancing them with data-driven insights. Leverage your CRM and customer success tools to gather and analyse customer data, and ensure your marketing, sales, and customer success teams are aligned. This cross-functional collaboration creates a unified, engaging experience for your accounts, driving deeper relationships and higher conversion rates. By focusing on delivering a consistent and relevant customer journey, you not only meet but exceed expectations, fostering loyalty and long-term success with your customers.
Here’s how to transition three successful ABM campaigns into impactful ABX strategies.
Campaign: ‘Lighter Deliveries’ for Royal Mail, by The Creative Consultancy
This picked up a Bronze award for Best use of ABM in the 2023 B2B Marketing awards.
ABM Approach:
Royal Mail is the UK’s greenest delivery partner due to mostly on-foot deliveries. They wanted to share this message to open doors with C-Suite/Director-level decision makers in 10 large retail businesses that had been previously unresponsive to their sales team.
To get cut-through with the senior audience, The Creative Consultancy created an ABM direct mail piece, bespoke to each brand. The company developed a box within a box, hand-delivered by dancing posties. The larger box was 60cm3: the equivalent volume of CO2 produced in a delivery with another carrier, and suspended inside was a box half the size to showcase the 50% less CO2 produced by a Royal Mail delivery.
Each box was designed using each brands’ look and feel and written with their own tone of voice, focusing on the commonality between the brands’ ethos and sustainability, and Royal Mail’s. QR codes directed to landing pages featuring interviews with each brands’ own shoppers, talking about the importance of sustainability and green delivery. Royal Mail have now had contact with nine of the 10 brands and booked meetings with several.
Transition to ABX:
To evolve this into an ABX strategy, they could:
Integrate Multi-Channel Touchpoints: Incorporate personalized experiences across various channels. Such as social media, the website and in-person events specifically for the 10 retail accounts. For example, creating 1-to-1 account website experiences on the Royal Mail website when any of the retail accounts visit. Tailoring the key pages to address the needs and goals of the key accounts and referencing the direct mail piece. With the personalisation being on the website instead of bespoke landing pages, Royal Mail can ensure all visitors see the experience even if their sales team haven’t engaged with them directly.
Another key aspect of ABX is engagement across the customer journey. This means focusing on the entire customer journey, not just the initial acquisition. This approach provides ongoing value through consistent, personalized interactions with sales, customer success, and support teams that address customer needs. It reinforces long-term relationships with potential for growth.
Campaign: Targeted Email Outreach
ABM Lite Approach:
We work with a well-known B2B consulting firm that executes targeted email campaigns to engage decision-makers across key target industries. Emails are highly customised, with insights and solutions relevant to each recipient’s industry and role.
Transition to ABX:
The firm could leverage Behavioral Triggers from their MAP (marketing automation platform) to send emails based on specific actions and behaviours, such as website visits, content downloads, or previous interactions. This ensures relevant communication that reflects the stage the buyer is at.
On the website, showing relevant content recommendations and CTA’s specific to the visitors industry and role will create a helpful, consistent experience in line with other channels such as email. The experiences should focus on value creation and providing valuable insights. Plus practical advice that genuinely help buyers solve problems and achieve their goals.
Campaign: Account-Specific Advertising
ABM Approach:
Pulsant, an IT infrastructure provider, runs targets account-specific ad campaigns targeting high-value prospects. Ads are customized to address the unique challenges and opportunities of each account.
Transition to ABX:
To upgrade this to an ABX strategy they’ve implemented personalised website experiences that run across multiple pages. The personalisation is contextually relevant based on recent ad interactions and previous site visit behaviours. This keeps the messaging aligned with the current stage of the buyer’s journey.
In addition to this they are introducing more interactive elements such as polls and content recommendation through pop-ups. This not only engages prospects it also provides additional insights into the needs and preferences of individual buyers within the buying unit.
Integration between Webeo & Hubspot enables Pulsant/the client to align marketing with sales and Support sharing insight from ad campaign engagement and website visits. This enables their sales teams to deliver a unified and responsive experience during F2F interactions with buyers.
Transitioning from ABM to ABX is about expanding the scope of personalization. To create consistent, valuable experiences throughout the customer journey. By leveraging data and integrating multi-channel touchpoints. Plus focusing on continuous value creation, B2B brands can strengthen their marketing efforts and build stronger, longer relationships with their key accounts.
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