s e s s e c o r M p B III 7 A t e r a h A persona-based approach P T In Account Based Marketing, you’ll “W hen I’m talking to a VP of sales, my Data quality matters be targeting messages and content messaging has to be different than Data quality is too often neglected in marketing in to specific members of the buying when I’m talking to a manager of inside general. In ABM, it’s especially important. With such team by role and seniority (as well sales. Knowing those roles, and mapping high-value contacts, you don’t want to waste money sending expensive, ‘dimensional’ direct mail twice as other dimensions). messages to them, is critical for an to the same person — or, even worse, look stupid Account Based Marketing strategy.” by personalizing a letter with the wrong facts. That means building detailed personas that Maria Pergolino of Anaplan tells the story of a sales represent each key member of the buying team Henry Schuck, rep that kept notes about contacts in the ‘first — probably 3-5 personas. Co-Founder and CEO, DiscoverOrg name’ field in the CRM system. Imagine getting an You’ll also want personas that might not be as email addressed to “Dear Mike (hates us)”! detailed for the second and third tiers of influencers; Investing in data quality processes and tools could the people who may not be on the buying team save you time, money and embarrassment later, by but who may have a significant influence in the removing duplicates, validating address information buying process. and standardizing company names You don’t want to let a deal come undone at the last minute because you completely ignored a key constituency (e.g. nursing staff at a hospital). Pro tip Look at how many contacts you could have compared to the contacts you actually have. This ‘whitespace’ analysis tells you where you need to focus your list-building efforts. 52