Get personal: Say hello to account-based marketing in Intercom

When you work in marketing or sales, you will always have a list of companies you aspire to have as customers. But how do you go about approaching those companies and cutting through the usual noise? That’s where account-based marketing (ABM) comes in.

ABM is an approach to marketing and sales where you focus on identifying, targeting and converting specific high-value accounts. As the founder of SalesHacker, Max Altschuler puts it,

“A common analogy applied to account-based marketing goes like this: in a traditional selling or marketing scenario, you cast a wide net. The market is broad and you catch lots of little fish. With account-based marketing, you use a spear. Marketing and sales teams are completely aligned on select company targets, typically high-value accounts, and work closely together to create a hyper-personalized experience.”

Typical ABM channels include targeted outbound emails, webinars or ad campaigns. All of these tactics work well to initially reach and attract accounts to your website, but what happens when they get there and are ready to speak to you?

These people don’t need to be qualified or scored, but if they’re left waiting and too much time passes, their hard-won interest might wane. This is a lost opportunity with any account but especially when these are accounts that you’ve actively spent time trying to attract.

Our business messenger is the best way to continue your personalized approach on your website

Your website is a critical piece of your account-based marketing approach. Today, we are announcing new ABM capabilities in Intercom, and with these features, our business messenger is the best way to both continue your personalized approach on your website and enable target accounts to connect with your sales reps in real-time. No more waiting and no more lost opportunities.

Furthermore, our new Accounts view will allow you to organize and manage these targeted accounts and their owners in Intercom.

ABM with Intercom

Now when your target accounts visit your website, you can choose to greet them with a personalized message from their dedicated account owner.

Making use of the 100+ apps in the Intercom App Store, you can use these targeted messages to make it easy for prospects to book time with your team, register for a webinar and more. The aim is always to enable your prospects to take action without leaving your website.

When they reply, the messages will be routed directly to the correct sales rep who can be notified via email, Slack, mobile and desktop notification to ensure they never miss out on an opportunity to connect with an account. And to help sales reps focus on the right accounts first, you can automatically mark conversations as high priority with optional internal response time goals.

Sales reps can then hop right into the conversation from Slack or via our mobile apps. And when these accounts revisit your website in the future, notifications can be set so your sales reps can follow up at the perfect time.

Measuring success with ABM

Measuring the impact of your account-based marketing approach with Intercom is easy. At a glance, you can see opportunities, pipeline and deals won at a team level, as well as on an individual basis for your sales reps.

If you’re interested in using Intercom for account-based marketing, read our guide on how to get started or check out this page to learn more.