Mini Mighty ABM

This article is part of the Mini Mighty ABM series where we ask top experts in ABM to share one actionable idea that you can use at work today. These tips are mini, but mighty.

As a buyer, evaluating a new technology for your company is a lot of work and stress. Having a person to help you who’s been through it matters. Buyers need that human-to-human connection. They need a concierge.

Yet all too often, companies subject their prospects to automated, impersonal messages because they’re more focused on “scaling” efforts than pleasing buyers. Buyers don’t get a feel for the company, and can’t develop an affinity for it. Yet more and more companies getting into ABM are realizing that scale and a personal connection don’t have to be at odds.

With video, you can create a sense of human connection at any scale, and it can be a lot easier than you think.

Make every email feel one-to-one

Account-based marketing should really be called people-based marketing. It’s a reaction against sending mass emails to great swaths of humanity hoping for a fixed number of conversions, because buyers have made it clear they are sick of it. Prospects want to feel understood, and it’s marketing’s job to create that alignment and provide content and messaging that supports their journey. Sales’ job is to take it to the next level.

Where marketing teams can personalize their outreach down to accounts, use cases, and verticals, sales teams can use one-to-one outreach to be the concierge prospects need. And with video in email, they can make that process feel more human.

Video is the next best thing to a face-to-face meeting. It allows the marketing team to introduce themselves as well as subject matter experts within the company to speak to each account. Sales can take those videos and add personalized introductions, or record their own videos from scratch.

The result is that in a sea of unpersonalized email from competitors, your outreach comes from people. Prospects grow accustomed to your team’s voices and faces. You come across as a lot more human and you earn more trust.

It sounds like a lot of work, but it doesn’t have to be. Videos make personalization easier, and you can reuse the best ones in nurture:

• Throw out the existing workflow. Challenge sales and marketing to reimagine things. What would an ideal journey look like from the customer’s view? Often, it’s a concierge-like experience where all outreach feels like it’s coming from one person. Instead of having outreach or nurture emails come from the company, make them come from the account’s rep.
• Maximize the humanity in your outreach. Rather than churning out ten versions of a white paper prospects may or may not read, record a video of your team explaining that same material. It doesn’t have to be expensive—you can use a whiteboard. Film some scenes several times, customizing them to each account, use case, or vertical. Or, if you really don’t have time, just have sales reps send that one asset along with a personal video explaining the top three points of interest to that prospect. (There are lots of free tools to help them do this, like Vidyard’s GoVideo.)
• Apply technology to automate what works. Are personal videos earning positive responses? Are some applicable to the whole account? (That is, they don’t mention the recipient by name.) Save and insert them into outreach and nurture cadences to make even automated messages feel one-off and custom.

Marketers who go through the above process often learn that they do indeed have elements to their outreach that feel impersonal, but which can be fixed with video. They also learn that simple video-based outreach from a consistent person builds a durable relationship that speeds up sales cycles.

My actionable takeaway:

Use video in your marketing to put a face to your company name, and have sales reps send one-to-one videos to prospects. Then, reuse those videos to make your automated outreach personal.