Legacy ABM Platforms: 
‍Frequently Asked Questions

Traditional Account Based Marketing (ABM) is the act of taking a list of target accounts based on intent data and using omni-channel marketing to target the decision makers at each company. It's based on the notion that focusing on key accounts will reduce costs, increase deal velocity, and land bigger deals.

The idea of ABM is great. However, legacy account based marketing starts with company-level intent that is unverified from expensive platforms like 6Sense, Demandbase, etc. However, this doesn't work in practice. You end up targeting accounts that aren't in-market, and you don't know who at the company has intent if they even do. This leads you to spending budget on accounts that are a waste of time to begin with.

ABM 2.0 flips the script on account based marketing. It's the same concept, but the sequence of data collection is changed. The premise is starting with person-level intent. This is verifiable data collected by website visitor identification, social intent, off-site intent, and more. It starts with identifying the exact in-market decision makers and then expanding your omni-channel marketing efforts within that account.  

The typical ABM 2.0 campaign is going to see 3-5 higher ROI than legacy ABM. This might change as more companies take this approach; however, being a new strategy in go-to-market, ABM 2.0 sees faster deal velocity, higher deal value, and less spend.

The idea of account based marketing platforms is to provide company-level intent, identify company-level web visits, and retarget companies via digital advertising. These tools typically start at 6-figure annual price tags and also require 5 or 6-figure implementation costs to leverage their full capabilities.

A full comparison of 6Sense can be found here. However, a summary is that 6Sense is incredibly expensive and usually cost prohibitive for small and mid-market companies. In addition, it only provides company-level intent signals and does not provide any value at a person-level. Like described above, you're stuck wondering if the intent signal is real, who triggered it at the company, and how far down the sales cycle that given account is. The hard work is after these companies are identified.

A full comparison of Demandbase can be found here. Similar to 6Sense, Demandbase is a legacy account based marketing platform that costs multiple 6-figures. In addition, it's focused only on company-level intent. The platform does help with building segmented audiences for digital advertising, but is not help when it comes to knowing who, when, or how to contact in-market decision makers.

Terminus takes a slightly different approach to 6Sense and Demandbase. The platform is similar, but puts a large emphasis on their advertising capabilities, email marketing, and website chatbots. It's a more helpful version of ABM platforms, but still leaves you wondering who to contact and who is genuinely in-market. The cost is also multiple 6-figures to get started properly.

Rollworks is a great digital advertising platform. It helps you retarget your key prospects across every ad channel on the market. However, it does this solely based on your CRM data. It does not provide lead generation capabilities whatsoever. This is a recommended, cost-effective tool as an add-on, or point solution to ABM efforts.

Propensity is a SMB-friendly ABM platform. It's cost-effective for small and medium businesses. However, like the other platforms mentioned, it only provides company-level intent. Implementations are very quick (they claim 1 hour), and help with omni-channel targeting efforts. However, it's based solely on company-level intent data and does not help with when, who, or how to contact individual decision makers that have legitimate intent.

Account based marketing needs a change. We need deals faster, bigger, and with a higher close rate. A platform like Identity Matrix helps with this. It starts with website visitor identification (at a person level), social intent, upcoming off-site person-level intent, and more. The company is focused on helping identify high-intent, in-market decision makers that result in knowing who your target accounts should be. With AI analytics capabilities, you can also score leads better, see behavioral and attribution analysis of your ICP, etc. ABM platforms like Identity Matrix see a 3-5x higher ROI when it comes to account based marketing.