ABM in B2B: insights from NetApp, Octave and Acronis

Speaker A: Today we are talking about account based marketing. How companies implement this approach, who is involved and what kind of challenges people face implementing ABM and how automation and AI are transforming the process as well.

Speaker B: ABM is not about athletes, it's about working together on specific list of accounts.

Speaker C: Account based marketing, it's not marketing, uh, it's a customer experience.

Speaker D: The abm, it's to bring the human aspect, person to person behind business to business.

Speaker A: Hello, welcome to the B2B Marketing Leaders Podcast. And today we are talking about a very interesting and insightful topic, Account based marketing. How companies implement this approach and these strategies, who is involved and what kind of challenges people face implementing abm and how automation and AI are transforming the process as well. So, and we have some great experts here today with me. So let's start with the introductions please. Vivian.

Speaker D: Hi, I can start. Hi, I'm Vivian Ross. I'm a senior campaign manager for uh, North America at Octave. Octave, it's formerly known as Hexagon. We changed the name and spinoff. We rebranded about three weeks ago. So bear with me, maybe say Hexagon a few times, but we're talking about Octave today. So I've been working with marketing pretty much my whole career since I graduated from college. Uh, and I'm originally from Brazil where I worked mostly business to consumers and then when I moved to the US starting working with uh, business to business and specifically on IT industry. So there at Octave I am uh, supporting the public sector vertical. When I started there, uh, we had a very uh, limited market awareness in the North America. So I'm talking about United States and Canada and then working on activities to build the brand awareness and credibility across the sub industries and public sector and developing multichannel campaigns specifically um, towards uh, ABM programs that are tailored to the vertical specific buying dynamics. So I'm very excited to be here with you today and talk about the uh, ABM strategies.

Speaker A: Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. Vivian, we are excited to have you here today. Yeah, Irina, please.

Speaker C: Hi everyone, my name is Irina Chernova and thank you very much for having me here for this discussion. So I've been working in marketing almost 20 years and during this time I covered uh, really really uh, different areas. So currently I am targeted demand, uh, marketing manager in me at NetApp. But before that I covered field marketing and for a few years I was really dedicated to account based marketing which is still my passion and I'm deep into that big fun and I will be really happy to share with you some my insights and my Experience because I was working with a different country that including Russia and CS country, Middle east, uh, Sweden and uk. So have very diverse experience in terms of their environments, I would say. Yeah. So happy to be here and happy like look forward for the conversation.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. Happy to have you. Irina and Elena, please.

Speaker B: Well, hi, I'm uh, Elena. I'm a uh, demand generation director in Acronis. Acronis is a global leader in cyber protection delivering only natively integrated platform to protect, manage and automate all small and medium IT deployments. So I'm responsible for many areas of digital marketing starting from uh, website and SEO to ABM and community. And also I'm responsible for campaigns and uh, partner marketing. For campaigns and digital marketing, ABM is the cherry on top delivering the results for largest accounts. For me, the same is for Irina. ABM is a passion project. I'm involved in almost every ABM project despite quite a big team involved in there. And happy to be here too.

Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you so much Lena.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah, happy to have you as well. And uh, yeah, everyone is excited about abm. Yeah. And I'm glad because I also love the approach and my first question would be for you to uh. Could you please share a specific example of how ABM has worked at your company. So it's kind of like a case study.

Speaker C: Um, let me start maybe. Yeah, it depends because account based marketing is working and for the case study we can talk about the big projects. Like we had a customer once in the Middle east, uh, big oil and gas, uh company and we had no uh, connections, no lead from the company. We together with the sales team, we didn't know where to start this and yeah we literally seated on a zoom calls uh creating idea and thinking how to get those contact and how to get engaged in them. So but uh, that time the data was not so comprehensive. But anyway uh, we managed to find the topic of interest that would resonate with the company and it was AI. It was pretty long time ago when AI was in a kind of a pilot stage but we knew for oil and gas AI is going to be a big so very soon. So we started like kind of exploring this topic and uh, building our conversation with the customer. And most interesting that that's what time it was Covid we were not allow to have a live meetings. Zoom calls were tricky and there was uh, we were not allowed to send any giveaways. And still since we really, really invested into research invested to company inside we managed to send there the first, I would say delegation Of AI specialists from our company. And as far as I know for today so they're still our customers that it's really success story. There were another so and I think that the smaller because if we talk about the cases the smaller would be good because you know it's everyday life. Sometimes you need. I wouldn't say it's fast win but sometimes we need to win in small and that I would like. We had several cases that we could use the existing big events. They already exist and they were huge. Yes. To uh. To build uh account based marketing campaign around strategic accounts. And we just leveraged this big event creating a special VIP uh space creating a special sessions for their uh spec specific customer to create very very personalized experience for the whole event. And that included pre event activities and event itself and post event follow up. And I would say we had numerous. And then in different countries like including UK and uh Russia and Germany. And this is really worked. Didn't need much investment. But you can't create your case, you can't create your success story out of that.

Speaker A: Thank you. Yeah it's great. Especially connection to events. I think some specific industry related events. Yeah it looks great. And would like to continue or maybe comment on Irina's uh case studies.

Speaker D: I can continue. Uh interesting is another point Irina was talking about like specific accounts. So it's a one to three, one to one. I have. My experience is more on uh. One too many and one to few accounts. Because the main goal here was a hybrid approach that I had on ABM and demand generation. So when we started to working on that the most important thing to find was the uh list the target list that we had aligned with sales. But they just need to know not just to be moved forward because they already know the company. They knew, they knew nothing about us as a company. Like who is this company wants to sell for me? Public sector. We're talking about two countries, United States and Canada. Similarities but also differences. But uh. If you think about public sector each state can be considered their own environment, their own country quote unquote. Because they have differences on compliance on laws and budget on a uh ah. Sales cycle. So working on ABM campaign was to select the accounts that would be one too many and one to fill and decide the approach on the personalization, the level of personalization and how to fill these accounts touched on their own uh pain points. They are common many times and when they're specific and how to build the awareness that you need and build the credibility with these accounts. So marketing would make them warm for sales to approach them in a very specific uh, personalized approach. So when we started working on these accounts was about three years ago when I started the company and working there to promote the activities that we have, the solutions that we had, but not so much about the company but about what are their challenges, what are these accounts challenges. And when I group them on the pain points they had in common and how our solutions could solve that and then move them to a more personalized approach as they move to through the funnel. So it's an overall example that I would like to bring here.

Speaker A: Yeah, thank you so much. It's a great example. And yeah, it's important that you've covered that there are different, different approaches. One to few, one to many and so on in account based marketing. So it's not just about very um, very depersonalization with some specific accounts. Yeah, it can be different. Uh, so thank you. And Elena, would you like to share your case study? Ah yeah.

Speaker B: Like in Acronis we came through all stages of company approach to abm. Like we started from purchasing big, big possibilities with six sense and couple of other tools. And like initially everybody's understanding was like we will have like uh 5000 that we want to have and we will target like general advertising to them through the tools and that is called abm. Uh, it turned out no it doesn't work this way. And like our maturity like uh, grew and grew. We came to combination of approaches, approaches between 1 to 1, 1 to 3, 1 to many and like some additional combination. And I would say in a chronic like ABM majority is used for recruit. We are just starting to approach how we can work um, with like cross sell upsell and, and like churn prevention. It's like just starting for us. We were majorly focused on, on, on recruit and our approach is uh, mostly around industry specific uh target list. We found out that, that it's the best way for us to build ICP lists and understand how we can personalize our messaging around the specifics in particular country and particular industry. Because all of them are a little bit different like in compliance and data sovereignty and maybe tech stack. And this uh, gives us possibility to have the list not too small, not too big, but also very very close to their pain points and triggers that they need to start the conversation.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And uh, that's a great topic of being relevant to your audience. Yeah. Build this very relevant specific list. Thank you Elena. And the next question for you all is about uh, something that went wrong. So have you ever had an ABM initiative or a campaign or an activity, they didn't go as planned. And what happened and what did you learn from it?

Speaker B: Well, I can just, just continue. The, the idea started like because initially again uh. We found out there are three things. First of all like everybody, everybody in one company in different company understands ABM and results and how to track them in very very different way. And I see everybody like no, it's because it's pain points. And first of all the first challenge that we have is actually to agree with everybody what we count as IBM, what we expect, how we expect results and how we should work together. Like honestly, first couple of years in the company were a little bit painful because expectations from sales team were like bring me hot leads. And it took about like a year maybe m more to just to agree that it's ABM is not about athletes, it's about working together on specific list of accounts. And that was like something that went wrong initially. But we understood and like we work together and develop uh, developed a new approach. I would say I think it's a common thing that everybody goes through. But when you are uh. On the level, when you have this understanding between you and sales and C4 or like and other executives then, then the project starts.

Speaker A: Yeah, alignment. Yeah.

Speaker C: And I think this alignment has a different sides because for example Elena mentioned that they mostly do let' ABM Lite enable em m programmatic for the big number of customers. I mostly was engaged into the strategic ABM in. In strategic abm. Yes. This problem has another dimension because usually uh we targeted at the very beginning we targeted the customer for acquire customer we need to penetrate, we need to get to. So and uh. What we found out. So yes, uh, yes it was of course they need to understand what we can do and uh here we need to set the expect expectations right. So that's a custom like that account based marketing can do and I think that we gonna gonna discuss it moving forward. So but also they need to understand that in account based marketing it's not marketing, it's uh, it's a customer experience. It's a customer experience and it really required uh big engagement and big time and efforts investing from all of the stakeholders. Uh, marketing is only for orchestrating marketing and do some technical stuff. But it's still sales, it's still sales, it's not marketing. And I think it's a little bit of confusion because it's because of the, because of the ABM um you know name because it's called Marketing. And it was for me, it was in strategic marketing. Their most common reason why with some customers we failed. But for some customers, maybe they are not our customers here. Sometimes it's really. It's life we can't do and we can't acquire each and every customer due to different reasons. Yeah, some. Sometimes things happen or sometimes we didn't have enough, uh, resources for that so far just yet. So many. But mostly this is engagement and commitment from the sales teams.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker D: Um, I would echo to uh, Irina and Elena said it's about the expectations and it's a continuing education. It's not say just one time, it's to remind, uh, they say it's Tim about the commitment. It's uh, working together. We needed to remind them time to time what we expected from that. It's a long journey, you know, not just a sales cycle, but a marketing cycle. And how. What are they expecting from that? And it's all about the customer experience. So we're not going to be so easy so fast. I would say that it's pretty much the big, biggest challenge we have.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah. To set up these expectations. Yeah, that's true. And uh, Vivian mentioned that you worked with um, mostly with the to many approach. Irina probably one. One to one. Right. M. And Elena, what is your uh, main focus in ABM where you're doing all of it?

Speaker B: We have combination of one too few and one too many. I think we will talk a little bit more about that later. But like we consider them as a one target group but we have prioritization based on the intent signals and like the engagement. And overall a combination of approach is a little bit more for one few, a little bit less for one to.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And my question to everybody is about prioritization. How do you choose, for example, what kind of approach would be the most relevant for each segment? Um, how do you choose these segments? Please share. Would you like to.

Speaker D: I guess I just want too many. So uh, it's interesting because if you say one too many, so how many? It's too many. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: Should you be in that list? The first kickoff, it's to a line of sales. Which accounts you believe they should. They are important to which accounts should you be in this list and then the come to you for at least of a thousand accounts like, okay, we can work with that, but we're talking about what is the highest intent. Uh, what are the accounts that we need to prioritize. The keyword is prioritization. So which accounts should we work better and move them to be like one to feel like we have a biggest intent. What are the accounts that you see the best opportunities uh for this geo size or they are not so important right now but they can become in the future. And then we go to approach to have the time, the resources to dedicate it to a one on one campaign to this account. So you want them to be big, not just in numbers and the deal they're going to bring it to the company right in the end of the day you want to sign those deals and go on that journey. I would say it's about the least define who should be there and should not be and be like a more broad programmatic experience with the company.

Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you Vivian. Yeah. And uh, what do you think Elena, you would like to continue?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Like for us we have have many different uh, types of target audiences and different regions, different approaches. But overall like what we we understand, like we need to start from understanding which use case gives us the best uh fit to us because like what is ABM is finding accounts that are great fit to what, how we can help them and based on that develop that ICP list. So like it starts from understanding which use case we want to develop has biggest priorities from perspective of giving us biggest error where well very much based on financial decisions. So like what is the best fit that can drive best error for us Based on that building this use case we understand which, which tech stack we should have, which geographical and size and types of accounts we should have. And then it's a lot about data analysis and then we are having scorecard because it's not only about fit but also like presence in the market, readiness to talk, engagement. So based on all these core uh card elements we build like a little bit larger list that are have potential to work with us but may have different engagements right now. And out of that we choose one to few list which is a core for us where we see as Irina said, low hanging fruits that we can start to develop right now. And then we balance for larger list. We uh optimize personalized messaging that works for the whole group to the core. We develop a little bit more deep insights, more personalized approach, how we work with events, how we work with messaging, how we work uh with outreach and then we combine. So when we have some successes in the core we add more engaged list counts from the bigger list and it works like some project that we have with abm uh are working successfully for two, three years by now because of this approach like gradual Enlargement of this core list.

Speaker A: List sounds great. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. Yep. Rene, you wanted to add something? Yeah.

Speaker C: So I think that we just move on. Yeah, I think that ladies said almost everything. And of course, uh, for maybe for strategic. It's a little bit different at NetApp. Besides strategic ABM, we are doing verticals that we're segmenting our customer and personalize it by the vertical like uh, public sector or manufacturer, healthcare or education. So this is uh, this is the biggest. And of course we see, we look at the wallet size and we look at our competitive position in this, uh, customer. So there are many, I would say many things that might be considered. But of course as Elena said, this is what is our customer the best fit, what is ideal SAP. So it's nothing new here. Same, same things.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. And uh, how do you balance personalization with scalability in abm? Uh, of. We've already touched this question a little bit because for example, uh, Elena and uh, Vivian and Tyrina actually you've explained that how you prioritize the accounts and how you choose, for example accounts for one to few approach and one to many. But how, how personal is enough and how personal, for example, is too personal. How do you use personalization? Yeah. And um, and balance it with uh, scalability make it too um, difficult to personalize to every account. What do you think about all of that?

Speaker C: For us for NetApp, it's important that considering the various, like you know, the job roles within the buying committee because we are producing storage solutions and which includes hardware and software and of course there is decision maker which is uh, cto, CIO and the other job role. But they also technical people and our success depend on that. So we usually personalize by two things, like first the job role itself. So the job role challenges the job role goals, what they need to achieve, what pain points they, they have to achieve, uh, to experience to achieve their goal. Of course this is the major stuff. And the second, uh, on the pain points and uh, challenges of the company, like in whole, in general, of course there might be personalization by the geographical, like thermographic and all this demographic personalization. But we move mostly start with personalization by a job role. Because in any country, you know, we have engineers and we have decision makers and of course they are taking care of the different aspects of the same big project like on an IT infrastructure.

Speaker A: And uh, follow up question to you, Irina. What do you think about the very, very deep level of personalization when we personalize by a specific person their interests, their I don't know, hobbies or something like that.

Speaker C: So uh, we HM. Can do this? Yes, of course. Mostly on the strategic and mostly on. There are very low levels on the funnel. Of course we have a funnel, we have marketing journey and we have communication with central polar. But as soon as we capture the lead and leads and the Totten company and certain personalities like they yeah uh you start engaging with us. Of course we personalized even more. Of course we involve the sales guys. Of course we know the people, people's names, you know and uh communicate and connect with them like on a different media like LinkedIn or in events. Of course. So I think it also depends on the stage of the customer journey or of the funnel.

Speaker A: Yeah, makes a lot of sense. And uh. So personalization and scalability. Elena, would you like to continue?

Speaker B: Well, ITCMA says like personalization increases uh engagement like three times. So like definitely we are going into personalization. But of course it's like a balance between like when we talk as I said uh one, two, one too many. It's personalization based on the pain point or use case that we chose to work. When we talk about like one to few we go a little bit deeper and anyway there should be some, some limitations because you can have super personalized. But does it make sense? Does it help like for some project and like getting back to like challenges which way we built 20 different landing pages and we personalized even each uh messaging, each banner and like each outreach. Did it work that way? Wouldn't say. What helped actually is uh moving to roles as Irina said personalization based on roles and specific main committee uh expectations from the solution that we suggest works really really well. It should be still landed on specific pain points or like the industry but it gives us possibility to balance between hyper personalization and very time consuming approach and still being relevant to what the specific uh type uh of the the target audience is expecting from us. So we are trying to balance not to have too overwhelming approach and we are finding how to make this uh communication most engaging. When we come to the level where we have sales outreach it should be hyper personalized and it really helps to finding this insight and gems and data analysis that actually helps to have this conversation when sales is ready to talk about something which is really really important for this specific account. So like if like to sum up on the marketing side it should be personalized maybe not to over link but we as a marketing are getting ready our sales team to be hyper personalized. When they have the conversation happening.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you so much for summing it up. And Vivian, would you like to continue?

Speaker D: Yes, I agree with everything that the other two ladies said and my point is exactly what Elena finished now about to enable sales to continue with that. So we have levels of. We scale the level of personalization based on which segment. One to many, one to feel one to one. So when you go in a higher level personalization you want that customer, that prospect to know we know them specifically them, the Personas, the job roles that you are talking to. But at this point it's marketing making the work easier for sales and sales goal take the lead to take the face of the company and go on that personalization. So we are also in the enable the sales team to do that again make clear the boundaries that you set for that kind of personalization to keep in a uh, professional level. And also make a good use of our resources. Right in our time.

Speaker C: Yeah. And the good balance. So it should be good enough personalization but it shouldn't look like stalking.

Speaker A: Exactly. Shouldn't be very creepy.

Speaker C: Yeah, not creepy. Not very creepy.

Speaker A: That's true. That's a great point. And uh, I would like to talk about how you do account research for ABM approaches. Maybe use some tools or so what kind of approach? Maybe AI or something I can start,

Speaker D: I can touch because I have approach from a regional perspective. Right.

Speaker A: So interesting.

Speaker D: Uh yes, uh, when we're talking about the personalization among the regional marketing team. So you have a global marketing team that has ownership on the uh operations and tools that we use today. We use it done and brand Bradstreet for uh the intent data research. But I would say that we have a G2 that has a good job doing a good job as well. And we have power bi we have different tools that help with that. So use of the tools AI is here to help. I think like anything that can help us to improve the process would help. But also there is a human aspect on that. I would say that abm, it's to bring the human aspect person to person behind business to business. So when we have our list of accounts and you have the information brought by the high intent tools and all the softwares that I can use, what else we can know about these accounts and how develop the relationship. So I think it's important to bring the conversation for the sales team as well. Again the sales enablement for that.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I agree with you completely. Uh, would you like to continue on the account research?

Speaker B: Well we we are trying to use every opportunity so we have sophisticated tech stack to use everything that we have in CRM and like use like whatever open sources we can have LinkedIn any reports and of course AI helps enormously here possibility to gather a lot of information without um spending hours on that and analyzing that information and like drawing conclusion how we can use this or that specific pain point. And of course like echoing Vivian the information that is coming from sales is very important. Uh, they sometimes uh do not understand that they have important information that could be used further to develop message personalization and so on and so forth. So like one of the first things that we use to research is actually talking to sales and understanding what actually we can add to that scorecard and what we can use to do develop further. Uh, well tech stack obviously is one of the major things to get like information about engagement and growing of that engagement. Yeah, well I would say for us like it's mostly understanding the account and the second question how we can get it. Sometimes we just call there. It's also works, you know like all the, all the guerrilla marketing works here.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Sometimes you, you can just ask. Yeah, it's a great, great way of

Speaker C: Irina and I think I can relate here of course because when uh we start talking about where you get your information. Of course so the big platform is there and of course we like witness and really spiraling, you know the big explosion of different kinds of a big data platform and all AI tools. Now it's easier on one side but it's not really because I agree with Elena, it's how you use this information because you can, you might have lots of data, but so what for example. And I also agree that since account based marketing and not only personalization but the part of the personalization is surrounding uh, the customer and getting into the customer from the different levels of your company. For example we have our sales reps or client executive, you name them. Uh, or for example we have our VP and on different level on company like customer company hire hierarchy. We might uh use the different people as a different vehicles and the different means of getting some insights. Like for example I'm uh mentoring the lady, she's from professional services and professional services, you know they already work with a customer when already some. So they have installation and they use our uh, solutions already. But it's always uh opportunity to, to grow within uh, within the customer. And we discuss with her how she could be a source, how she could be a vehicle to deliver some information and what she would deliver to the customer and what she can get from the customer without being invasive or creepy and what she could bring back to her uh sales team and the sales team would listen to her because she wanted to get more into account based marketing. And uh, that was very interesting conversation and it's really very insightful conversation on how the job roles within your team, you know, might be the same vehicle of like a channel of delivery, your marketing messaging. Uh and uh, uh they can get inside. They can be like surface intelligence and uh, of course it's very good if you can so that if you not uh limit yourself to this. Yes. You know this is a sales guy and this is me like as a marketing actually it's, it's a you universe. You know it's a kind of a solar system. We all in the business.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And it's a great example of how a person from services.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Can be helpful in abm.

Speaker C: Yeah And I think it's like social media of course LinkedIn or UH conferences, you know, like being curious what is your potential customer talking about? So what they would like to you know to speak about on the big conferences, you know, know what's what it's engaging them, what is making them excited.

Speaker A: M. Yeah, that's true. And uh, it's interesting how to assess the efficiency of uh account based marketing. What kind of metrics are the most important to you? What do you think?

Speaker C: Maybe let me start. So from my experience there are a few KPIs that you could measure and uh, this is a part of let's say setting expectations. Right. Because first for example the customer is acquired customer. What we we uh try to do, we try to acquire the leads that we try to account as many relevant contacts within a customer as we can through their like across the all buying committee functions. This is first one and we can measure that it's number of people. So the second is engagement. So as soon as we start driving the marketing campaigns targeting uh, with the different kinds of a messaging and these different kinds of the media I would say this is the engagement score, engagement index which we can measure again so we can show to the sales team that this is, that we are doing for the customer. And I remember recently I was uh, speaking in front of the uh, one of the German sales team. I don't remember. M. Maybe it was uh, I think it was public sector or something. I sell them. Then you see the customer on the NetApp event and you approach and start your conversation. You should understand, understand before that there were many engagements that we made it's not a new customer like it's already went through the journey. Otherwise you can go to the you know, to the airport, start talking to the strangers maybe with the same effect. And this is a big commitment of course very uh significant. KPI is marketing source pipeline. So uh, what campaigns, what activities help to sort or trigger the contact triggered opportunities. So worth converting and bring the money. And of course the goal is to grow inside of the customer because ABM is not only for uh winning the new customer is about the growing inside of the existing ones. Uh with the big potential of course is uh influence pipeline because account based marketing can not only bring the new leads but they can significantly, significantly accelerate the deals and make them be signed and wonderful faster.

Speaker A: M. Yeah, yeah that's true.

Speaker C: I think that those four, those four KPIs for me it's the most significant ones.

Speaker A: Thank you. And I love the example of the uh leads uh at the event. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Vivian, would you like to continue?

Speaker D: Perfectly said Rina. I love it. Uh, I would just add just as a compliment I would say KPS is not one size. If it's all we could divide guide uh the success measurement and like engagement KPIs that we have that services as a marketing to know which path we are in the right path. Oh no, let's change a little bit. Let's adjust our campaigns and then we go to something that will talk more on sales language. So the average deal size, the customer acquisition cost, uh you know when you talk about the conversion rate, how much we needed to spend to have that deal, how long that takes. And we're trying to put a numbers on something that is very not so straight line. So I, I think like it's a fair job for us but we have to do that we work in a company we needed to bring the ROI and like justify what you're doing. So just a complimentary and put it like the perfect way. And I'm sure Elena gonna say other amazing things about it as well.

Speaker A: Thank you Vivian.

Speaker B: Yeah, well the same like uh we have something that is like why how our uh projects are remain successful. It's like by achieving close one error. This is like the one which is final KPI how we measure it. And we have as Rina and Vivian said something intermediate to understand is if we are going into right direction. If we like our campaign makes sense, if our messaging makes sense. It's like do we see engagement uh engagement in growth. Is this engagement growth the same way in U.S.A. uh, in Germany. Maybe we need to tweak something in Germany. Do we have enough, enough context uh, in the database or we should add some enrichment projects. And do we see like from media perspective, do we see right ctr? Do we see increased ctr, how it compares with less personalized. Maybe again we should change something so set of final KPIs and intermediate ones, for example.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Uh, it's a complicated approach. Yeah. And um. Yeah, this is how it works. It's not easy to close deals and to drive pipeline with ABM and M cases in related to abm. Maybe content creation or something else. Please share some examples of how you use AI. Maybe some tools, specific tools.

Speaker C: I think it's content creation, of course for analysis. We use it for building campaigns. So we use it for analyzing the campaigns. So what uh, went well. What's not so to see the results. Of course for localization, but it's about the content as well. Yeah, but for localization it's a big help. Of course, of course. We always the last mile, the last touch is by the human always. Because still it's not perfect. But it helps a lot. And uh, it's really accelerate the process. Process. But when we. I would say when we speak about the uh, role of the marketer or the marketing manager, that this is orchestration. And you know, for me it. It's not a big change because before that I was dealing with different kinds of suppliers, internal and external, like copywriters or uh, translation, you know, agency or something like. Like that. Now just. I just asked us to do the same all this. Yeah Agents so to do it. And then I really. So orchestrate it and integrate it and so. So really drive all together. And uh, of course responsibility is on our side still.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Human in the loop always.

Speaker D: I agree, I agree. Is a. Is a supporter tool, is not a replacement. So we used to speed up the research, draft ideas, automate the repetitive parts. But it's always like we needed to review, to refine, to make sure the output will be what we desire. Not never trust 100%. So I agree with you guys.

Speaker A: That's true. Yeah. Thank you so much for your examples about uh, using AI. And my final question for today will be about the alignment with sales and maybe other departments, top managers. Could you share some of your tips and tricks, personal tips and tricks and how to make it more productive to just grow the ABM initiative to make them um, more efficient together with other departments.

Speaker B: Well, I would say uh, for us like best approach for alignment Is to, to have the project with cell teams that actually agree with the approach because not every team is actually have capacity to work on this way, have intention on work on, work this way. So that would be something that again like getting back to the beginning where we have challenges is understanding how this project works, how we should build our data science, how we build uh, scorecards. Giving all this information to the sales team and having all the rules before the beginning discussion like how it go, what are the expectations and uh, when we should expect some growth Engagement and what we expect from their side. This is the best tip for engagement. I uh would say like any, any podcast that I listened about abm it has this recommendation about FL like start from alignment. And I would say from whatever I hear from people in conference, it's the stone that everybody drops at first. So I would, I would reiterate like start from alignment and setting the expectations first because the EBM project is like very valuable because it gives this significant results. But it as Irina said, it's not only marketing for sure. It's uh, it's a combination of sales and marketing work together.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker C: And that's why account based marketing is about targeting the companies of uh, the customers with the biggest potential. And of course it's expensive, it takes much investment and of course it's something you can't uh do just you know we have targeted demand, we can big you know, scalability a big scalable campaigns. We have account based marketing approach in our company. We are just in the same team because first we help each other. You know some things we can do in scale but some things we can go back to the uh, deep personalization and to deep targeting. But of course they are together they both account based marketing and big scale. You know that's uh, targeted demand part is important and they have their own niche and they have their own purpose. But of course account based marketing is not for each and every purpose prospect. It's about the biggest one, the biggest for your business of course, uh, with the, with the biggest potential where you can really focus and you can really invest without, you know, without regret.

Speaker A: Mhm. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Thank you so much. And Vivian, would you like to say something about the alignments?

Speaker D: So the same uh, it's communication, clear communication, ask questions, answer questions, understand uh, that we have this common goal but you're speaking on different languages. So it's say translate what are the marketing terms to a language that sales will you understand and be open to have uh, like educational sessions. To the team to explain to them what you're doing, how you're doing, how they can collaborate with that.

Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you so much. And, yeah, thank you for your time and, uh, for sharing really interesting things and practical experience. Thank you.

Speaker B: That was insightful. Thank you, ladies.

Speaker D: Thank you.

Speaker A: Enjoyed that.

Speaker C: Thanks a lot. Thank you.

Speaker A: M.