At its core, account-based marketing (ABM) hinges on the concept of tailoring both messaging and sales processes specifically to an entire targeted account, rather than to individual leads. This approach requires a nuanced understanding of the account's structure, encompassing the diverse concerns and interests of multiple stakeholders within the company. A comprehensive, top-down view of the account is necessary to implement ABM.
Effective ABM requires knowledge of any current deals in the pipeline as well as historical transactions. This understanding ensures that marketers and sales professionals can engage with the account in an informed manner. However, achieving this level of insight is not without its challenges. A typical account may be entwined with a complex web of associations, including affiliations with other companies, involvement in multiple deals, and interactions with dozens of stakeholders.
Given the complexity of these connections, managing and maintaining accurate records is crucial. A missing link in this intricate network can significantly undermine your efforts. Operating without a complete understanding of all associations and historical context compromises your ability to effectively communicate with all decision-makers and demonstrate genuine care and understanding of their needs.
In ABM, the absence of critical associations can significantly impede a company's ability to develop a holistic 360-degree view of its targeted accounts.
A complete perspective is vital for tailoring sales and marketing strategies effectively. However, missing associations within the account's network can lead to substantial gaps in understanding and, consequently, in strategy execution. Let's look at some specific examples illustrating the business implications of such oversights.
Consider a scenario where a key contact within a targeted account is overlooked. This contact could be a new influencer or decision-maker who has recently joined the company. Without recognizing and integrating this individual into the ABM strategy, your sales team may find themselves pitching to outdated or less relevant contacts. As a result, your messaging fails to resonate with the new dynamics of the decision-making team. This oversight not only diminishes the effectiveness of the pitch but also potentially alienates the new key player who could have been instrumental in influencing the account's decisions.
In another scenario, imagine an account that is part of a larger conglomerate, but the association with one of its influential child companies is not accounted for in the ABM strategy. This lapse can lead to a failure to recognize the broader needs and objectives of the account, as influenced by its subsidiary. Sales pitches might miss addressing key challenges or opportunities pertinent to the child company, leading to a lack of engagement or perceived irrelevance by the parent account. This not only hampers the current sales process but also overlooks potential cross-selling or upselling opportunities with the subsidiary.
Finally, consider the impact of missing historical deal information. Suppose a previous deal had unique challenges or successes that are not factored into the current sales approach. In this case, the sales team may unknowingly propose solutions that are similar to those that previously underperformed, or they might miss the opportunity to build upon past successes. This lack of historical context can lead to a repetition of past mistakes or a failure to capitalize on proven strategies, thereby undermining trust and the perceived competence of your team in the eyes of the account.
In each of these examples, the absence of crucial associations within the ABM framework limits the depth and relevance of the customer understanding. This limitation not only affects the immediate sales process but can also have long-term implications for customer relationships and overall business success.
HubSpot offers two primary methods for managing these crucial associations: manual management and automatic association.
The process of manually auditing and maintaining associations in ABM can be daunting. A key challenge lies in identifying missing associations without having to delve into each record in the database, a task that is both cumbersome and time-consuming. B2B sales processes are lengthy, but not so extended that they can accommodate weeks-long manual procedures, so this approach often proves impractical.
Typically, companies begin with an analysis of deals in the pipeline, using this as a starting point to hunt for high-impact missing associations. This involves a laborious process of sifting through records for related contacts, companies, or deals that are not already linked.
The process often entails numerous searches in the CRM, exporting data to Excel for further examination, and then manually navigating to record pages to create associations. This method is not only time-intensive but also unlikely to uncover all missing links.
HubSpot's automatic association feature, as detailed in its knowledge base, simplifies the association process significantly for contacts and companies. The feature works by matching the domain in a contact's email with the company's domain name. For example, a contact with an email "sandra@example.com" gets automatically linked to the company with the domain "example.com."
However, this system does not cover associations for deals, tickets, and custom objects, potentially leaving many records unassociated. Also, there are frequent scenarios where a person is associated with a company but does not have a matching email domain. This discrepancy can arise when there are multiple domains within a company, hierarchical company structures, or external stakeholders like consultants. As a result, automatic association misses many records, and users must fill the gaps manually.
Consequently, many organizations settle for the associations created by HubSpot's automatic feature, opting to tolerate the drawbacks of missing associations rather than invest extensive time in manual association. This compromise underscores a significant need in ABM—the capability for bulk association management.
Insycle revolutionizes the way associations are managed within HubSpot by leveraging existing associations in your database.
For example, imagine you have a contact that is correctly associated with the right company, but not linked to a corresponding deal. There is no simple way to detect that this common scenario has occurred—and create the relevant associations. Insycle steps in to address this gap.
Insycle enables you to create new associations based on the ones that already exist in your database. This rectifies overlooked connections and also ensures that your records are comprehensive and up to date.
In the example above, we are associating contacts to deals when the contact’s listed company and deal are associated. And this same triangular logic can be applied to contacts, companies, and deals.
For any associations that remain free-floating, unlinked to any relevant records, Insycle offers robust and flexible association-matching capabilities. What sets Insycle apart is its ability to associate records using any field in your database. This versatility means that associations are not limited to standard fields like email domains or company names. Instead, any relevant field within your database can be used as a criterion for establishing associations, offering a level of customization and depth that is invaluable in ABM.
This feature is particularly useful for identifying and rectifying missing links that are not immediately apparent.
Insycle empowers businesses using HubSpot for ABM by automating and refining the process of creating and maintaining associations. By leveraging existing associations and offering flexible matching features, Insycle ensures that your database is not just extensive, but also meticulously organized and aligned with your strategic ABM objectives.
Insycle is a powerful ABM tool for ensuring that contacts, companies, and deals are all accurately associated with one another. With Insycle, you can identify when one of those triangular associations is missing, and automatically associate the relevant records.
But Insycle extends far beyond just managing associations. It is a comprehensive data management solution tailored for HubSpot users. Insycle empowers organizations to audit their data meticulously, identify any underlying issues, and rectify them. By optimizing data management, Insycle enables businesses to leverage their HubSpot investment to its fullest potential, ensuring that both strategic and tactical decisions are data-driven and effective.
We invite you to delve deeper into the world of Insycle and uncover how it can transform your data management approach for ABM in HubSpot.