Data to Power Account Based Marketing: Your Specific Guide for Event Marketing

Account Based Marketing (ABM) is deemed the pinnacle of marketing for many. Targeted, effective and high returns.

Yet for many event marketers, ABM feels more like a pipedream than an effective marketing tool to grow your pipeline.

Constant pressure to ‘send another email’. Constant questions of ‘where are the leads’. Constant scrutiny of the ‘quality of the data’.

But with the right data, ABM can become a reality.

Tailoring your approach to an account’s needs, wants and the personalities of the decision makers can drive a 28% higher account engagement. And it’s not just about ‘the reply’ – these accounts are much more receptive to opening a sales conversation with overall conversion rate improving 17%. To top it off, the average order value could increase 13%.

Win. Win. Win.

But ABM in events is even more of a strategic priority. There aren’t many products out there which only really ‘exist’ when everyone turns up. The participants of the event are equally part of the product. That’s why it matters who’s in the room.

Delegates and visitors won’t return if the speakers don’t have a story to tell. Your sponsors and exhibitors won’t rebook if they don’t meet their prospects. Speakers won’t return if there’s a mis-match with the audience.

Event marketers are likely doing some ABM, or have campaigns which are trying to achieve something very similar. You’re doing One-to-One ABM if you’re running a VIP campaign to target strategically important individuals. If you’re targeting certain clients for cross-event or cross-product promotional campaigns, you’re doing One-to-Few ABM. You may be researching job roles or functions that you know are relevant for a particular sector for a One-to-Many approach.

And appetite for ABM is growing. 39% of marketers spent more on ABM in 2023 compared to 2022. And the rise of AI may be helping you to prioritise key accounts based on demographic and behavioural data to support hyper-personalised campaigns. It’s little wonder then that ABM is the top priority for many marketers in 2024.

And reliable marketing data is the foundation of ABM. Volume is often hard to get away from when you’re trying to grow your events – especially when you can find yourself grappling with a 2% conversion rate from your database-to-audience size. You need to think big, and fast. But that needn’t mean poor quality. Whether it’s the 1 billion people that are on LinkedIn or even those that aren’t (some industries and certain countries aren’t covered well by LinkedIn) a finely-tuned mix of automation, AI and human hands can yield high quality data that’s readily available for your marketing teams to harness.

Whether you’re still cautiously approaching ABM for events, or whether you’re proactively investing, here are the 3 ingredients you need:

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Data

• Continually scrutinise your ICPs – reflect on market movements, analyse their behaviours/ interactions with your product to date.
• Make it part of your regular database hygiene exercises to build, enhance and update profile and contact data on current and prospective customers that match your ICP.
• Organise your data to create lists of customer types for ABM and segment by profile and behaviour. Make these easily accessible to all of your team and constantly talk about these segments so it becomes embedded in your marketing approaches.

Hyper-Personalisation

• Take the time to deep-dive on specific customer needs, desires, pain points and personalities within the decision making units.
• Define specific value points of the event that will appeal to that specific customer and craft benefit driven messaging that will engage that customer – i.e. ‘what in it for them’ – how does your offer specifically address a business objective
• Create relevant customer journeys that guide your target accounts seamlessly through the whole marketing-to-sales process, all tailored to them.

Multi-Channel Marketing

Be everywhere, all the time for that account.

• Emails should use tailored messaging. Autoresponders can be segmented to have a specific message when a contact from your target account interacts with your website or content.
• Web journeys and landing pages should talk directly to your target accounts – without being creepy, of course. The use of logos, colours that reflect the account can help the message to land.
• Make the return on your PPC/ paid media more impactful with company-specific ads. Consider different ads to different job functions within your target accounts. Influence can be everything.
• Sales and marketing need to be consistently aligned on the data you have about the account. Share what messages the account is receiving and most importantly how they are responding, so sales can pick up the conversation seamlessly.
• Whereas direct mail may not be cost effective at scale, for ABM, it can have a personal touch which grabs attention.

Regardless of your company size, the nature of your events, or the maturity and sophistication of your database, Account Based Marketing most likely has a part to play in your go-to-market strategy. Targeting certain accounts with a tailored, coherent message across all stages of the buying journey will reap big rewards.

This blog post was inspired by a ABM-focused roundtable event, for senior event professionals, run in partnership with MPG.