Picture the scene - your business is ready to roll with its first account-based marketing campaign, the board is bought in and budgets have been confirmed. But are your prospects as excited as you are?
If you want "WOW" referrals and meaningful client interactions, it's time to stop with the spam and move to an inherently more personal medium. Delight marketing needs to be part of your account based marketing mix to treat customers thoughtfully and create truly memorable moments.
Delight marketing is key to success
Attention is a scarce and precious commodity. We may live on our screens, but many of us actually pay very little attention to what's shown on them.
For an account-based marketing campaign to be successful, marketing and sales must therefore be aligned, using all your combined business intelligence to form account-driven, relevant campaigns that delight prospects with thoughtful interactions.
Below, we outline the three stages of a basic marketing funnel and how you can delight at each of them.
Connect
At this stage, you want to give a soft introduction to the target company. Don't go in all guns blazing and put your prospect off. A great account-based marketing campaign should be more of a marathon than a sprint, with interactions feeling natural and considerate.
We suggest sending a personalised message, such as a one-pager or a letter, which establishes contact without any obligation on their part, and introduces your business to the client.
Explore
At this stage, you have made contact and the prospect knows who you are. We suggest sending a thank you note following your initial meeting, showing your appreciation for their time and summarising the key challenges that the client faces. This continues to build trust and underline your understanding of their business needs.
Advise
At this point in your account-based marketing campaign, you have some sort of relationship with the prospect, so you can freely offer them value in the form of advice. We suggest sending out a personalised invite to your next business event, or share some actionable pointers that the client can use to solve their challenges.
Direct mailer success
We love using direct mail as a marketing medium, but there are dozens of variables that factor into a campaign. Trying to figure out which ones will have the most impact can be overwhelming.
Direct mail doesn't have to be complicated though. We've boiled direct mail down to four key components: the list, the offer, the creative and tracking methods.
Whether you're just starting out with direct mail or struggling to find success, concentrating on these four keys will put you on the right track.
CLEAN DATA
No, that's not a cap lock typo, it's that important! If you're not presenting your product or service to the people who want and need it most, your account-based marketing campaign isn't going to be successful. Building a mailing list of the addresses on your DMU map of well-qualified customers and prospects is therefore the single most important aspect of any direct mail campaign.
The Offer
You may have the most fine-tuned contact list ever, but all the time and money spent on your list will be a waste if nobody responds to your direct mail. We're talking about the offer, and you'd better have a good one.
Essentially, this should be something of value that you provide to an audience in exchange for their response, so it has to be attractive enough to compel recipients to get in touch. An offer so good, they can't refuse.
The Creative
While the list and offer are by far the most important components to focus on, the creative elements of your account based marketing campaign also matter. After all, the creative is what ultimately ends up in your audience's hands.
Ultimately, your mail should be simple, easy to read, and have a clear offer and call to action (i.e. "call now" or "visit a store today").
Tracking Methods
One component that's often overlooked but is extremely important is having a tracking method. If you don't track the response to your direct mail, it's impossible to measure your results. Plus, you'll never know how well your account-based marketing campaign is performing beyond obvious increases in sales or leads. If you don't have insight into the successes and failures of your direct mail, you won't be able to improve your results in a meaningful way.
Online tracking techniques can be brought into the offline world for this purpose. Direct prospects to visit personalised URLs or scan a printed QR code to benefit from UTM tagging efficiency.
Time to create a delightful account based marketing campaign
If you're all fired up but not sure what to do next, get in touch with Six & Flow. We've successfully implemented account-based marketing campaigns for clients across various sectors. For instance, we helped The Lead Agency to achieve 29% target customer acquisition within just three months! We're confident we can do great things for you too.
