Building the ABM Stack

It's been a decade since Account Based Marketing entered mainstream marketing discourse. During that time, ABM has taken on many different meanings, encompassing many existing marketing techniques as well as some new innovations within B2B marketing. Vertical-specific and account-specific campaigns are now frequently considered to be ABM, even if both tactics pre-date the ABM revolution.

There is much more to ABM than mere campaign activation though. Instead, ABM is more focused on the broader methodology around how marketing collaborates with sales and goes to market. Over time, a set of core principles have emerged around account selection, sales enablement and funnel management that has transformed B2B marketing.

New Challenges

Now, the concept of target account lists is a very old one. Named accounts were just as commonplace ten years ago as they are today. The difference was in how those accounts are activated and targeted. In particular, ABM has led to a renewed focus on how account lists are selected and managed. A more data-driven approach has become the norm. That has inevitably led to a discussion about data and technology, as existing tools found themselves insufficient for the challenge. In turn, this has required the adoption of new processes and technical capabilities needed to manage and report on ABM effectively.

Many marketers have spent many years trying to run ABM using their existing martech stack and have become frustrated with the limitations of that technology as a result. ABM remains a checkbox feature for the traditional marketing automation platforms rather than core functionality. MA platforms are entirely contact-centric, with account relationships being little more than an afterthought. To fill the gap, an entire industry has grown up. The likes of 6sense and Demandbase evolved from being simple data tools into fully-fledged ABM platforms covering both account selection and account activation.

New Capabilities

Indeed, the most striking change to martech stacks of the past eighteen months has not been AI related. It's been the widespread adoption of 6sense among small and midsize enterprises. Dedicated ABM platforms are no longer restricted to large global corporations; smaller companies are adopting them too. The existing marketing automation platforms have noticed this trend as well, and are finally reacting to it. Hubspot purchased Clearbit last year, in large part to improve their ABM story.

One of the key drivers for the success of 6sense, has been the ability to collate both sales and marketing information about accounts into a unified view that can be used by both sides. In turn, that data can be used to identify the best targets and report on the status of accounts that are currently in market. The option to orchestrate campaigns from the platform or to overlay 6sense's proprietary intent data on top is simply an added bonus. Neither CRM nor marketing automation allows that to happen today.

The New Entrant

Adobe have finally reacted this gap in their portfolio, recently launching a new application for ABM management. Adobe Journey Optimizer (AJO) B2B Edition was first announced at Adobe Summit earlier this year, but was finally released a few weeks ago. Marketo has long had an ABM add-on, but that has limited adoption due to restricted functionality. The Marketo ABM module can be used to activate existing account lists within Marketo campaigns, which is fine if you already have the entire buying group added to each account in your marketing database. It's severely limiting for any ABM strategy based around targeting top-of-funnel accounts through digital channels in order to build engagement and collect that buying group.

The new Adobe Journey Optimizer introduces full buying group management into the Adobe platform, using Marketo and CDP data to identify targets and link leads to accounts. Once identified, target accounts can then be added to campaigns executed across the Adobe product portfolio, including through web or advertising channels that aren't well supported by Marketo. On top of that it provides reporting and funnel tracking capabilities found in competing platforms.

Whether the new Adobe provides sufficient functionality to replace the likes of 6sense or Demandbase is yet to be seen. Adobe have a history of introducing 'me-too' products to their portfolio. Some of these have developed into best-in-class options, others have not. It is clear, though, that dedicated ABM platforms have a clear place in the typical martech stack.