Email Marketing and ABM: How to Use the Two Together

Email marketing and account-based marketing (ABM) are a match made in heaven, enabling you to target your dream prospects with personalized communications straight to their inbox. 

The synergy between email marketing and ABM marketing is undeniable. Studies have shown that companies that integrate email marketing into their ABM strategies see remarkable results:

• Personalized emails have proven to be a powerful tool in digital marketing, with research showing that they generate six times more transactions.
• While a whopping 90% of US consumers believe personalization is crucial for overall marketing.

With an integrated email marketing and ABM strategy, you can establish personalized connections with your target accounts, deliver highly relevant content, and nurture these relationships throughout the buyer’s journey. Email’s ability to reach decision-makers directly, combined with its versatility and measurability, makes it an indispensable tool in your ABM arsenal.

How to Start with Your ABM Email Marketing Campaigns? 

A word of advice: before launching an email campaign: emails must only be sent to individuals who have provided their prior, opt-in consent or when there is a legitimate interest in sending the marketing email (depending on the use case and jurisdiction).

Sending emails that do not meet the above criteria to high-value prospects goes against everything ABM stands for.                           

Not only could it ruin your company’s relationship with leads, but it can also tarnish your “sender reputation”—a rating that internet services use to identify spam. This risks a potential sale, along with any future lead generation efforts, as your emails will be diverted to your prospects’ junk folders.

There can be greater consequences, too. The EU’s GDPR penalizes companies that send unsolicited emails that do not follow the ePrivacy Directive (and specific EU country versions) with hefty fines.  

In the United States, email marketers must comply with the requirements of CAN-SPAM, which sets the national standard for sending electronic communications in the US.

It’s essential that as a B2B business, you can demonstrate that you are in compliance with applicable data privacy laws and regulations.

Email marketing is one of the many tools ABM teams use, but how can you be sure you’re getting the most out of it?

Once you’ve mastered the law, here are four ways to effectively integrate email marketing with ABM: 

Identify the Perfect Target Accounts

Use advanced intent signals to identify and add the perfect campaign audience to your lists. 

You can use a whole array of data to pick accounts to target for email outreach. This includes technology installs, previous interactions, and predictive buyer behavior. 

Businesses should also consider the account’s firmographics, such as organization size, financial performance, and ownership. These differentiators impact what information contacts prefer to receive via email when they prefer to receive emails, and how offers must be structured. 

Create a Targeted Email List for Your ABM Campaign

The foundation of a successful ABM email marketing strategy lies in building a targeted email list. 

• Identify Your Target Accounts: Start by clearly defining your ideal target accounts, considering factors such as industry, company size, location, and specific pain points.
• Research and Gather Contact Information: Utilize a combination of tools, databases, and industry connections to gather the email addresses and contact information of key decision-makers within your target accounts.
• Verify and Maintain Your Email List: Regularly validate and clean your email list to ensure the accuracy and deliverability of your messages, removing any outdated or invalid contacts.
• Segment and Personalize: Divide your email list into targeted segments based on the specific needs and characteristics of your target accounts, enabling you to deliver highly personalized and relevant content.

Implement a Lead Qualification Process

Which brings us to the next step. B2B leads don’t stay in the same segment forever. 

Leads previously seeking informational content will eventually transition to the evaluation stage. And those who are inches away from a purchase aren’t willing to hang around forever for your sales pitch. Therefore, your emails need to be timed perfectly. 

To identify which prospects should progress through the pipeline, you need to implement a streamlined lead qualification process. 

First, choose the lead qualification framework that fits your business. This can be any of the following: 

• MEDDIC (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, and Champion) 
• CHAMP (Challenges, Authority, Money, and Prioritization) 
• BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline) 

Lead qualification frameworks guide you toward the ripest prospects. For this to work, you must collect data from both first-party and third-party services. 

Use Emails for Data Collection

Purchasing accurate B2B customer data fast-tracks your ABM campaign—assuming you find vendors with access to real-time data to pinpoint in-market buyers. 

If you’d prefer to go solo rather than using an external vendor, invest in first-party data acquisition using data collection strategies, such as:  

• Website visits and resource downloads 
• Webinar attendance 
• Previous purchases 
• Discovery calls 

Emails also help you collect first-party data by tracking metrics such as click-throughs, open rate, and forwarding rate. Modern email marketing platforms automatically collect these metrics to help gauge a lead’s level of interest. 

Furthermore, you can use emails to send surveys and content offers—from eBooks to free webinars—to nurture and qualify leads. 

Lead scoring and personalization are two approaches to help you build engagement and customer loyalty with email marketing.

Craft Compelling Email Content for ABM Success

Developing engaging and relevant email content is crucial for driving results in your ABM campaign. With access to intent data, marketers need to have a thorough understanding of their pain points, challenges, and goals of their target accounts, and tailor their email content to address their specific needs. Offer target accounts valuable insights, industry-specific information, or solutions that align with their unique requirements. Lastly, include a clear and compelling call-to-action that encourages target accounts to take the desired next step, whether it’s scheduling a meeting, downloading a resource, or engaging with your brand further.

Deliver Handmade Emails 

There’s no room for one-size-fits-all content strategies within ABM. 

Every communication should be tailor-made to each lead’s needs. Use data such as company position, interests, and technology products they currently use to deliver personalized experiences via email. 

According to research, nearly 60% of successful email marketers stated that targeted and personalized emails boost engagement rates. They also generate up to 6 times higher transactional rates. 

How do you launch personalized email campaigns for ABM?

Here are a few ideas:  

• Leverage Account-Specific Insights: Gather detailed information about your target accounts, such as their industry, business challenges, recent news, and pain points, and use these insights to craft highly relevant and personalized email content.
• Pre-activate leads with targeted display ads: Working on customer relationships early and building familiarity increases the efficiency of other ABM initiatives. Presenting account-level, high-volume targeted ads to increase brand awareness makes leads more likely to respond to email outreach.  
• Revive cold leads: If you have contacts who haven’t responded in a while, remove them from their current segment and put them into a campaign specifically for “cold” leads. Renew their interest with strategies like customer feedback surveys, premium content offers, and live virtual event invitations.
• Use email content syndication: The goal of email content syndication is to promote valuable content to leads who frequently miss other distribution channels. Send content that matches user intent for the best results. 

Track and Analyze Email Campaign Performance in ABM

Measuring the success of your ABM email marketing efforts is crucial for optimizing your strategy and driving long-term results. Track the impact of your ABM email marketing on the sales pipeline, measuring metrics such as pipeline generated, deals won, and revenue attributed to your email campaigns.

Here’s how you can track and analyze the performance of your email campaigns:

• Define Key Metrics: Identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your ABM goals, such as open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and pipeline generated.
• Leverage Email Analytics: Utilize the robust analytics provided by your email marketing platform to track and analyze the performance of your ABM email campaigns, identifying trends and areas for improvement.
• Integrate with Your ABM Platform: Seamlessly integrate your email marketing data with your ABM platform, enabling you to gain a comprehensive view of your target accounts’ engagement and the overall impact of your email efforts.
• Conduct A/B Testing: Regularly test different elements of your email campaigns, such as subject lines, content, and calls-to-action, to identify the most effective approaches for your target accounts.
• Continuously Optimize: Use the insights gathered from your email performance data to continuously refine and optimize your ABM email marketing strategy, ensuring you’re delivering the most relevant and impactful content to your target accounts.

Stay in the influence sphere with display ads, here is how you can maximize them for your ABM campaigns. Read here.

Leveraging Email Distribution Solutions for Your ABM Strategy

ABM campaigns are all about targeting and engaging specific high-value accounts, and email distribution is a key component of this strategy.

Our Email Distribution Solutions help with ABM campaigns by enabling highly personalized and targeted email communications. These solutions provide the ability to segment and target specific accounts based on various criteria such as industry, company size, geographic location, or any other relevant data points. This level of segmentation ensures that the right message reaches the right audience, increasing the chances of engagement and conversion.

DemandScience’s Email Distribution Solutions have two models Email CPM and CPC.

Email CPM is a model that is often used when the goal is to increase brand awareness or reach a large number of potential customers. You have control over the targeting criteria, such as demographics, geographic location, and industry, to ensure that the emails reach the desired audience. On the other hand, Email CPC is particularly useful when the objective is to drive traffic to a specific landing page or encourage users to take a desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase. CPM is an effective option for reaching a wide audience and increasing brand exposure, while CPC is more focused on driving specific actions and measuring direct engagement. 

In addition to personalization and automation, DemandScience’s Email Distribution Solutions provide robust tracking and analytics capabilities. Marketers can track metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversions, giving them valuable insights into the success and effectiveness of their ABM campaigns. These insights can be used to refine and improve future campaigns, ensuring continuous optimization and better results.

Final Words

Marketing emails are among an ABM team’s most trusted tools—not just for lead generation, but for nurturing too. Email allows you to deliver highly personalized and relevant content to your target accounts, addressing their specific pain points and needs. It also provides opportunities for targeted outreach: reach key decision-makers within your target accounts while ensuring that your message reaches the right people at the best time gaining optimal engagement results and ultimately, fostering deeper bond that helps with nurturing.

While undoubtedly effective, email marketing initiatives are time-consuming and costly to maintain. 

With DemandScience, you can streamline ABM by getting high-quality leads delivered to you. We’ll work with you to develop a tailored strategy that leverages the full potential of email to engage your target accounts and drive meaningful results. 

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