Much of the marketing world today revolves around personalization.
Thanks to digital transformation, consumers now expect personalized experiences with any business they engage with. In fact, a recent study showed that 86% of B2B customers expect companies to be well-informed about their unique needs and wants in every service interaction.
But one of the biggest mistakes marketers make today is abandoning their personalization efforts after the purchase has closed.
Because prospects aren’t the only ones who want brands to provide personalized experiences. Your existing customers do, too. And that makes personalization crucial at every stage of the buying journey.
So, how can you apply personalization throughout the entire customer lifecycle and give your customers the experience they deserve?
With account-based marketing (ABM), you can treat your existing customers as individuals by creating a highly personalized experience that caters specifically to them. As a result, you can engage with customers in a more meaningful way which helps you build trust and credibility, create advocates for your brand, and ultimately drive more revenue for your business.
Here’s how it works 👇
What Is Account-Based Marketing for Customers?
Account-based marketing for customers is a strategy that is concentrated on engaging your top existing accounts with highly targeted personalized campaigns. By using your customer data and insights to craft tailored messaging, you’re able to resonate with your customers on an individual and personal level.
ABM for customers differs from ABM for new business, which focuses on marketing to potential buyers that are a strong fit with your ideal customer profile (ICP). This means that, when building out an ABM program for your customers, you can leverage a lot more data to create even more personalized marketing campaigns.
So, while you’re likely using firmographic data, like company size and industry, or your contact’s information to personalize your buyer experience, with customer ABM, you can draw on data like where the customer is in their journey with you, their existing plan level, and their use cases for your platform.
As a result, ABM for customers achieves two goals at once: improving customer sentiment and increasing customer lifetime value (CLV) through retention and expansion.
Your CLV is entirely dependent on the effort you put in to keep your customers around. So, by using data to create personalized ABM experiences for your customers, you will easily be able to build relationships with key decision-makers and further demonstrate how your brand can help solve their unique challenges.
3 Types of Customer ABM Plays You Can Run
ABM on the customer side is not only about looking for expansion opportunities — it’s also about making your customers feel valued. That’s why you’ll want to go above and beyond to create value for your customers at every touchpoint.
Here’s what it looks like in action 👇
1:1 ABM Strategy
A 1:1 ABM approach involves targeting a select few accounts with personalized messaging and campaigns. Digital tools, such as personalized videos and landing pages, as well as traditional strategies, like direct mail, can be used to deliver a one-of-a-kind experience that touches on your account’s unique needs and preferences.
For example, your account managers and customer success managers can use customized videos to introduce themselves to C-suite executives who may not have the time to hop on a video call. With this approach, you can help key decision-makers put a face to your name and build rapport by demonstrating your company’s ability to solve their unique challenges in a simple and dynamic way.
1:Few ABM Strategy
Though not as hyper-targeted as 1:1 ABM, a 1:Few ABM approach is still effective for scaling your personalization strategy.
In 1:Few ABM, you’re focusing on small groups of accounts that share similar characteristics, like account profiles, pain points, and industries. By segmenting your customers in this way, you can target them with messaging that speaks to the needs and interests they share.
At Drift, we launched an event called Conversation Corner where our sales teams were able to interact with our customers in a fun and intimate environment. Through this roundtable-like event, not only did our customers gain insight into modern sales best practices, but they also learned how Drift could be a better partner for them through a custom demo.
Through this venue, we were able to host a strategic conversation between Drift executives and sales decision-makers. The event allowed us to showcase Drift’s value to our specific audience in real time, while also allowing us to engage them before and after the event with personalized emails and resources.
1:Many ABM Strategy
At heart, the main goal of customer marketing is to surprise and delight your customers. And while you can’t pull out all the stops for every customer, there are still many ways to show your appreciation for them.
With a 1:Many ABM approach, you can engage with multiple accounts at scale through dedicated channels, like customer email campaigns and webinars. One great way to show your gratitude for customers is by sending personalized emails on special occasions, like when a customer hits a milestone or celebrates an anniversary with your brand.
In anniversary plays, we go as far as customizing gifts for accounts based on the type of anniversary we’re celebrating, as well as their length of tenure and seniority. With user-friendly conversational landing pages, we’re able to show our customers some love by allowing them to select their own anniversary gift.
By sending customers to these conversational landing pages and providing gift options, we’re able to recognize and celebrate our customers’ milestones while promoting a culture of appreciation within our organization.
Not only will such messages make your customers feel appreciated, but they will also help foster long-term brand loyalty. After all, it’s the small gestures that make a big difference 🥰
Final Thought
Personalization is not just about attracting prospects and making a sale. If you want to retain your customers and drive more customer lifetime value, it is just as important that you continue your personalization efforts after the purchase stage.
That’s why ABM is a powerful strategy for engaging your existing customers.
Whether you’re rolling out the red carpet at the one-to-one or one-to-many level, by continuing to tailor your messaging to each customer’s unique needs and pain points, you can demonstrate that you are committed to helping your customers succeed.
And that is how you will truly be able to deliver an experience that delights your customers and encourages them to grow with your business.