It wasn’t even three months ago that I offered to drink the Kool-Aid about Account Based Marketing (ABM) and accept that it was the buzzphrase of the moment. Not that there wasn’t—isn’t—some juice behind it. Even though the idea of marketing to accounts rather than individuals has been around a long time, tech vendors were figuring out smart ways to make it easier, automate it and scale it.
Fine:But here comes Account Based Everything, by Engagio out of Topo.
Okay, don’t panic. Topo offers sales and marketing analysis and research services, and takes credit for coining the phrase: “We define account-based everything as the coordination of personalized marketing, sales development, sales, and customer success efforts to drive engagement and conversion at a targeted set of accounts. There are five defining attributes:
- Targeted, high-value accounts
- Intelligence-driven programs/campaigns
- Orchestration across marketing, sales development, sales, and customer success
- Value and personalized buyer experiences
- Coordinated high effort/frequency outreach.”
Engagio is the San Mateo-based ABM automation start-up which has grabbed the term and is running with it (with Topo’s hearty approval). Engagio is fronted by a familiar face, Marketo co-founder Jon Miller, and it today announced a $22 million round of Series B funding.
The principle behind ABE, as I suppose we’ll call it, is quite simple. Account-based success can’t begin and end with marketing. As Miller said in a press release, “to really reach out to a target account, you need a 1:1 human connection, which is key to success in sales. That’s why we’re so excited to focus not just on ABM but on Account Based Everything — a strategic go-to-market approach that orchestrates personalized marketing, sales, and success efforts to land and expand named accounts.”
Or to put it even more simply, Engagio has figured out a way to strategically automate the human touch across a number of B2B functions. Personalization on an impersonal scale—and why not? Or, here comes everything for everybody.
