Introduction
Account-Based Marketing is still an aspirational goal for most companies. The idea of customizing your marketing at the account level (or even by department in an enterprise) is obviously attractive, but requires a lot of effort and investment to really pull off.
However, many of the core principles of ABM can be successfully applied to event marketing, and in doing so, event marketing in turn can become a powerful tool for accelerating ABM.
Done well, you’ll not only engage key prospects - you’ll gain insights well beyond what a tool alone can give you, leveraging events to actually build personalized relationships, uncover and address immediate pain points, and ultimately enhance the overall effectiveness of your account-based strategies. In the end, isn’t that what we all really want?
Pre-Event
The first step to these events involves understanding your objective. How do you answer the question “Why are you putting this event together?”
The answer can be a simple, “I want to get facetime with my priority accounts”, or it can be more precise. Just ensure you have an objective to work towards, because from that understanding, you’ll be able to action the following:
1️⃣ Determine who needs to be involved in identifying the priority accounts you want there, and ensure the rationale is indeed defensible.
Realistically, Sales and Marketing should be working on these events together. Looping Sales in early is mission critical to ensure you get their buy-in and active support.
The best way to do this is to involve them in Account Selection. Either Marketing or Sales can be the one to identify the priority accounts you want to target for the event, but in terms of best practices – you need to finalize the list together. All parties should look at the result with a critical eye and feel confident in the choices made.
Say you’ve determined that Sales will be identifying the priority accounts getting an invite to the event. Can they rationally defend their choices in the context of the event?
For example, pointing to a pre-existing national Priority Accounts list for an event in NYC won’t make sense if only a fraction of those accounts actually sit within the tri-state area.
Similarly, focusing only on big brand names and potential deal sizes and not current understanding of the account priorities is also something to avoid.
And finally, if you’re dead set on hosting an event in a particular metro, but only 10 of your top 100 accounts are there, don’t cut off your nose to spite your face; discuss together the possibility of adding accounts to your event list who might not have made the cut for your larger ABM strategy, but who are made of the same ilk who did.
TL;DR Work together to create a system of checks and balances to solidify the best TAL for your event specifically.
2️⃣ Decide the format and content that will get your targets over the threshold.
Here’s where the client insight principle (first) truly shines.
Event Format:
A large point of ABM is to understand your target audience. You’re not going to be able to do that if your event is open to a thousand people. It’s difficult to do even with 100 people.
This approach tends to fare better with:
- Invitation-only lunch or dinner roundtable approach (8-12 attendees)
- Small conference (30-50 participants)
Why’s that? Because smaller groups allow for more conversation. More on this later, but when you’re able to have a conversation with your prospects, you’re going to gain a much better understanding of their pain points and priorities.
Content:
What do your prospects want to learn about? Unless they’re truly the holy grail prospect and are seconds away from purchasing you as a solution, I can tell you what they don’t want: a sales pitch disguised as a networking opportunity.
One-way presentations and demos of your product and will not get you the insights you need for meaningful engagement, and the second a TV screen comes out and a sales rep stands up to speak, you’ve lost the room.
Instead, consider a Thought Leadership topic that addresses a pain point you solve. That’s the sort of content that they’ll want to spend their personal time listening to, and will drive attention and attendance. And, as a bonus, if they’re interested in that pain point-oriented topic, odds are they’re currently facing that problem (and guess who can solve it?).
To share some examples, some of the popular topics our clients have settled on include the following:
- (Telesign) Facilitated Friction: Balancing Risk and Customer Experience
- (Kissflow) Citizen Development is Here: Are You Prepared?
- (Protegrity) Enabling Business with a Borderless Data Strategy
- (Algolia) Embracing AI to Win in eCommerce
- (Contentsquare) Using Digital Experience Analytics to Boost Performance
- (Filtered.ai) Automating the Technical Interview Process
3️⃣ Chart your outreach tactics and necessary supporting assets.
If your targeting is spot on and you’re reaching out with a topic that resonates, you likely won’t need much more than a well-timed invitation with pertinent information.
Here are some best practices for what to highlight in your invitations:
Beyond the obvious (date, time, venue), make sure you highlight the topic. You chose it for a reason, and that’s because you believe it’s going to resonate. Lead with a question about the pain point your roundtable plans to discuss, then get into the “You’re invited” language.
If the topic alone doesn’t secure the ‘yes’, don’t underestimate the power of FOMO and the desire execs have for networking. It works wonders. Think about it, if you heard that the CMO of Microsoft was attending a roundtable, wouldn’t that make you at least think about attending, too? Follow up messages with current RSVP lists is the way to go.
Here’s an invite message cadence I used for a BuyerForesight event that secured 14 RSVPs (and a 78% attendance rate) for a regular, no-experience-added, 1-hour Virtual Roundtable. For context, my ideal attendee count for this format is 8 to ensure everyone has a chance to share during the time allotted.
Example Email Outreach Cadence that Yielded a 78% Attendance Rate (14 RSVPs):
**Company names on sample RSVP list removed for anonymity**
First Message:
Follow Up Message #1:
Follow Up Message #2:
Follow Up Message #3:
What about channels?
We all know that email inboxes are flooded, especially for decision makers. How can you compensate?
First, don’t give up on email altogether - if anything is going to get through, an invitation to a networking event will do it (A moment of gratitude for the saving grace of a “You’re Invited” email subject line….). Prospects who have ignored every other attempt to connect you’ve ever tried will suddenly be responding.
But, you should consider avenues like LinkedIn as well to circumvent the noisy inbox. And I don’t mean through ads, I mean through personalized invitations. Offering an invite in a connection request or to current connections can be extremely helpful in increasing response rates and times. This is also where ongoing support from Sales is extremely important - they’re most likely to have already built up a network of contacts you’re trying to reach, so let them get their hands dirty and support the recruitment process. Another reason to get their buy-in early!
💡Tip:
It’s important to remember that the planning stages here aren’t necessarily “1-2-3” steps; they’ll likely affect each other at various points, so don’t feel like you have to force aspects based on previous determinations. Consider my example in point 1 regarding the target list and NYC. Just because you initially settled on NYC doesn’t mean that’s the best location for an event if the accounts you want to reach are more largely situated in the west coast. Use all of the information you have in hand to influence the overarching strategy, and then, once you have a full picture, lock in details and send out your invitations.
During the Event
The reason a smaller group, conversational format on a topic driven by a particular pain point (not product) is so important for this is because it sets the stage for you to learn so much more about your prospects. It also allows them to learn more about you, without feeling pressured into a sales conversation, and gives them the chance to actually network with their peers in the process.
The more you can get your attendees to talk and the less you talk, the better... but when you do speak:
DO share real use cases that pertain to what’s being discussed.
DON’T fall into the comfort zone of your sales pitch.
DO ask open ended questions and let it flow in potentially unexpected directions.
DON’T force the conversation into any one direction with your questioning (you can always bring it back to the discussion theme if the group gets too far off topic).
DO probe further. Ask what they mean by their answers and get the rest of the group’s POV on points raised.
DON’T just say “Hmm good point, interesting. Anyone else?”
The more engaged you are, the more your guests will want to share, and the more intel you’ll have for ongoing personalized communications. Truly take note of what’s being said (if your memory isn’t the strongest, don’t be afraid to briefly jot things down in a notebook to help you remember who said what).
Post-Event
Rapport-building doesn’t stop when you leave the venue.
Content
If you properly spent your time at the event interacting with your prospects, getting them to open up and share insights around their pain points, goals, and priorities, then you now have valuable intel for personalized post-event outreach.
This is where you’re going to be able to further stand out from the crowd of other vendors you’re constantly battling with. Not only will you have given them a valuable networking and learning experience the day before, but you’ll be providing them with further value *that they truly care about* in your follow ups.
Your offering will undoubtedly answer the problem that was positioned as part of the topic, but what about problems you uncovered during the session itself? That’s what you’ll want to hone in on - tailor your follow ups to what was actually discussed, personalizing as much as possible to what each individual mentioned.
And of course, add in any other fun info you learned about them as well, such as favorite sports teams you have in common, alumni connections, pet types, or other pieces of more personal information that inevitably get brought up when groups of people get together and cocktails are offered.
Approach
Best practice here is to have whoever actually met the contacts at the event to be in charge of the follow ups. They established the relationship, and should continue it.
Sometimes 1 follow up message isn’t enough to secure a response to your CTA, be it a request for a follow up conversation, and invitation to another event, a request to stay in touch and connect on LinkedIn, etc. So don’t just send 1 follow up. Plan a relevant sequence of messages that provides value with the aforementioned content.
And don’t forget to add them on LinkedIn as another touchpoint - a ‘Thank You for joining us’ message is now all you need here to secure that acceptance.
Final Thoughts
To wrap this up succinctly, when using events for ABM, you have to look at each standard event aspect from an ABM viewpoint. Be critical about your targeting, make sure you’re developing content and messaging that will resonate with that exclusive audience you’ve put together, and actually learn more about them and their companies to fuel further conversations and campaigns.
It’s a lot of work, so don’t be afraid to ask for help.