Following up our debate about Accounts Based Everything (ABE) earlier this week, Andy MacMillan, CEO of email and marketing automation platform Act-On, wanted to make the point that ABM is really just another way of referring to B2B Marketing. “At Act-On,” he sad, “we’ve been talking about putting the B back in B2B marketing, as that is what ABM accomplishes, so when folks reference ABM it’s another way of speaking to B2B marketing.”
MacMillan also had an intriguing insight into the validity of the ABE nomenclature. It’s origins, he suggested, lay in the conflicting terminology used by sales and marketing in contrast to other front- and back-office functions. “Account-based everything makes sense since B2B companies target accounts not people, and always have, though the marketing organization has chosen to adopt nomenclature like leads, while their Finance, Support, and Sales counterparts have always used the term accounts. So, to ensure that sales, marketing, finance, and customer support are all on the same page, an account-based everything model would align well.”
He’s certainly right to say that there seems to be a current “resurgence around the idea of ABM.” In a report released this week, B2B attribution specialists BrightFunnel observed that:
- Organizations which adopt ABM had a 10 percent higher “win rate”
- ABM target accounts have a 15 percent higher “win rate”
- A focus on a single contact overlooks the importance of other influencers attached to an account
More findings from BrightFunnel here.
If MacMillan is right, while ABE does make sense, both ABE and ABM are just ways of talking about an approach to B2B Marketing which makes sense. But this isn’t to say that ABM is a “misnomer.” ““I think the vendors stewarding the ABM conversation need to do more awareness and education around the concept, but once it becomes mainstream we will all be referring to it as B2B marketing–what it really is!”
