In today’s B2B landscape, first impressions are everything. So how can you make sure you stand out? Personalization.
In fact, research shows that stakeholders presented with personalized content were 40% more likely to purchase from a supplier than those served with generic content.
B2B buyers have slowly been conditioned to expect the same personalized treatment they get while shopping online. They want to be approached with relevant information at the right moments, not when it’s convenient for a sales rep. This self-serving model means B2B buyers have little to no patience for generic sales pitches that flood their inboxes, InMails, and voicemails daily.
Today’s top-performing sales teams deliver top-notch account-based B2B personalization and messaging that is on point from the first touch to closed-won. Below we’ll offer insight into how B2B sellers can strategically provide personalization at scale.
Personalization & New B2B Buyer Journey
Before jumping into how to personalize, it’s essential to understand why successful organizations are shifting their approach.
The B2B buyer journey and the buying committees’ demographics have changed significantly over the past ten years. We’ve all seen and experienced it, but most companies haven’t adapted their sales efforts and pipeline goals to meet the new buyer’s needs.
According to TrustRadius, the modern B2B buyer is skeptical and digital – preferring to research independently and relying on vetted customer proof for any sales and marketing claims a company may make. This digital-first mindset is different from buying generations of the past that relied heavily on gated information from sales teams and fits well within an account-based marketing strategy approach. Driven by alignment and personalization, ABM ensures that the account and the buying committee are served relevant information at the right time to increase relevancy and drive pipeline velocity.
By finding the sweet spot of market fit and messaging, Gartner found that companies that use personalization correctly can experience up to a 30% uplift in sales. This is why it isn’t surprising that the top focus for many ABM teams is personalized content.
How B2B Personalization Impacts Your ABM Strategy
Personalization is fundamental to a successful ABM campaign, especially regarding sales outreach. Sales organizations that take a “show me you know me” approach to B2B personalization experience a more significant lift than those focusing on generalized messaging and blanket statements. By showing you completely understanding your ideal customer profile and the individual personas you are prospecting, you can see a positive impact on your revenue by up to 15%.
When you implement a personalized ABM approach, you engage individuals by developing a strategy to communicate effectively and efficiently, identify account and buyer pain points, and provide proof of value to them. This personalized approach should start from the first touch point, which is likely a digital marketing asset, through sales efforts making it a seamless experience for potential B2B buyers to move down the funnel.
The 3 Tiers of ABM: How much personalization is enough?
Personalization is vital when it comes to achieving lasting B2B connections. Modern B2B buyers want to feel they matter; they want to see personalized outreach and that the person reaching out has put thought and effort into their approach.
At this point, we often get asked, how much personalization is effort? The more personalization, the better. However, personalization takes time, and if there’s one thing we all don’t have enough of is time – it’s the same for the individuals you are prospecting.
Outlined below are our recommended levels of personalization based on the ABM strategy you are implementing. These are a good baseline for understanding the time and effort needed to make an impact and help your sales org evolve its performance metrics to reflect what’s required to make your ABM strategy successful.
One-to-One ABM Personalization
One-to-One ABM Strategy: A small number of high-value, strategic accounts (typically 1-10).
Level of Personalization: Full
What to Include: Personalized insights on the account and individual level (gathered from LinkedIn, Company’s Website, etc.), internal competitor battlecards, unique content and visual assets, or specific messaging that resonates with the buying committee.
One-to-Few ABM Personalization
One-to-Few ABM Strategy: A highly segmented group of accounts (typically 5-50).
Level of Personalization: Medium
What to Include: Industry or vertical insights with some light personalization efforts at the account level.
One-to-Many ABM Personalization
One-to-Many ABM Strategy: Most common strategy, which looks at an extensive list of best-fit target accounts (typically 50-500).
Level of Personalization: Light
What to Include: Persona level personalization + Industry pain/challenges, goals.
How to Use Personalization to Unlock Your Target Accounts
1. Cut through the digital noise.
Over 300 billion emails are sent daily, and that number is growing. That means B2B buyers receive thousands of emails monthly and are often inclined to ignore them if their spam filter hasn’t already blocked them. Personalization not only helps you push through spam filters, but it is the key to cutting through all that digital noise by providing an emotional connection on the contact level.
By engaging the account with an informed approach, you can build trust and create a connection by delivering the information they can use and need but in a way that stands out from the rest. Top SDRs use contextual conversations to provide a more personalized experience for their prospects and leads by gathering data from various sources and aligning that with their company’s value propositions.
Start with a creative, personalized, yet short subject line. This is your chance to stand out – ~35% of recipients open emails solely based on the subject line. Align that with a concise email to create awareness with your prospect and start your warm-up process.
2. Optimize personalization at scale with actionable intent-driven insights.
Data is behind the most successful ABM strategies. And utilizing intent-driven insights can help paint the picture of what to include in your personalized customer experience. Understanding the data that’s creating pain points for an account or persona can better position your product as a solution to their problem.
Intent insights to personalize on:
- Where they are within the buyer journey based on the account engagement level.
- The topics that they’re interested in based on the content they’re consuming from your website.
- The types of challenges they’re facing based on keywords they’re researching and insights from 3rd party sources.
3. Utilize blended, multichannel personalization.
To make your sales outbound more impactful, alignment with marketing is critical. Studies continue to show that organizations whose sales and marketing teams are aligned are almost 3x more likely to exceed net new logo expectations.
By distributing personalization efforts and messaging based on personas or industry across sales and marketing collateral, you can positively impact the buyers’ Journey before they even get to a sales rep. This alignment creates an environment that is more beneficial to sales teams and provides multiple 1st party data resources for individual sales reps to understand the account’s needs and how to personalize their outreach efforts best.
4. Deliver a Creative Account Experience
Even when you cannot provide a 1:1 ABM experience, you can still work to mimic this approach by remembering to put your target account’s needs before your pipeline’s. You cannot bring an account in-market with one email, but you can establish yourself as a trusted advisor and support them through their buying journey until they’re ready.
Diving deeper into a B2B buyer’s challenges and providing a more tailored experience creates real opportunity. While most B2B buyers want the ability to take the self-service approach, 65.2% of buyers noted that they still found value in talking with salespeople when the conversation was focused on their unique situation.
That’s a hopeful number and is something to align on as a team as you discuss how to impact your go-to-market strategy more.
Align your ABM Sales Outbound Strategy
Ready to see how this all comes together? RenderTribe offers personalized strategy consultation and ABM program execution for leading B2B software companies. Reach out to our team today to learn how to maximize your personalization efforts as part of a winning go-to-market strategy.
