Our previous post featured Udi Ledergor, VP Marketing at Panaya and Mike Telem, Co-founder at Insightera, who together have stressed the importance and proven the effectiveness of implementing account-based marketing (ABM) strategies. In the second half of our interview with them, Udi and Mike dive into the details of their joint efforts, success metrics, and what’s to come based on their current successes.
Udi, can you tell us how you and Mike’s team applied these strategies to Panaya’s pain points and ultimate end goals?
Udi: Panaya provides a SaaS solution for automating IT activities, such as testing and upgrades for ERP systems like SAP and Oracle. We have been selling to the SAP market since 2008 and recently started selling to the Oracle market. Our web site was very SAP-oriented, given the rich content we had years to create for this market. Oracle customers didn’t really feel at home on our web site and found it difficult to locate the materials they needed to support their buying decision.
Alongside Mike and his team, we were able to identify Oracle accounts from our CRM system and through their online behavior. When contacts from these accounts visit our web site, they are now presented with a different homepage, tailored to their interests, presenting them with a clear content path to the materials they need to learn more about Panaya’s solutions for the Oracle market (case studies, videos, and other materials).
The best part is that when SAP customers visit our web site, they still see the SAP, content-rich web site, just as it always was, without confusing them with Oracle materials.
Mike: Our customer success manager that works with Panaya implemented our ABM program to get Panaya up and running. It is also recommended to collaborate with sales in this process as their inputs and feedback are essential for optimization. ABM actually improves the coveted sales and marketing alignment since in a way, it requires marketers to start thinking like a sales hunter while using digital marketing technology.
What kind of changes have you seen since implementing this program? Has it sparked other change within your organization or marketing strategies?
Udi: In the first month of running this campaign, we identified 215 inbound prospects as Oracle accounts. Our Oracle content increased its exposure by 113%, which means that more than twice the previous number of people is reading our content!
To really make the most of the program, we now need to close the loop with our sales team, to make sure real-time alerts are being sent to them when a key account makes an important move on our web site, so they can react in time.
We now have future plans that include expanding work with Insightera for different industries, identifying relevant buying stages per target segment and matching them with appropriate calls-to-action on our web site, and focusing more on sales-oriented calls-to-action while closely tracking the accounts identified by the marketing team, to make sure to create the visibility and ROI-tracking we are looking for.
Mike: ABM is changing the way we market. It’s like a 1-to-1 mass marketing program leveraging the best that cutting-edge, real-time technology can offer. It also aligns marketing efforts more clearly to the organization’s strategic and revenue goals, placing the marketer in a more substantial role. It is very easy for sales teams to comprehend, as it speaks their language and increases the communication between marketing and sales
