Set goals for your ABM efforts. It’s a numbers game. But diligence and persistence pay off as those numbers grow every month. When you start working on an outbound campaign, chances are it will take several months before people start clicking on those emails, before conversions lead to engaging with content.
Here are some sample outreach benchmarks for email and LinkedIn campaigns:
ABM outreach process via email
- 50 emails per day
- 1,250 emails per month
- 25 percent open rate = 313 opens
- 10 percent CTR = 31 clicks
ABM outreach process via LinkedIn
- 20 connection requests per day
- 400 requests per month
- 15 percent open rate = 60 connections
- 5 percent reply rate = 20 replies
Be prepared to optimize all the time. Take out the bounces. Your open rates will get better because you are learning. Keep in mind that anyone who does not opt out is worth cultivating. The timing may just not be right. But there will come a time when the timing is right, and all your hard work will pay off.
There is a general rule in marketing, that you should always be testing. This sentiment is particularly true with ABM messaging because it is much harder than your typical inbound messaging. With ABM messaging, you are reaching out to someone who may not even know that they have a problem yet, and then you are trying to convince them to spend someone else’s money on you.
As you can imagine, this process can be quite difficult, and while a typical messaging framework may give you the content to put in your messages, there is no one way to hook a reader and convince them of your product’s worth. As a result, you need to constantly be A/B testing so that you can make data-backed decisions on what messages are working and should be utilized more, and which ones are failing and need to be dropped from the cadence.
Keep your brand top-of-mind with retargeting
One other reason to create resources and share them with your prospects is slightly more self-serving: You can use these resources to retarget your prospects after they leave your site. You can do this by placing a “pixel” on the resources from 3rd party platforms such as Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. These pixels cookie your viewers and allow you to follow them around the internet, serving them ads across millions of different sites.
Once you set up accounts with the correct channels and place pixels on the resources you plan to push people to with your outreach, you can then create simple retargeting ads that guide them further through the customer journey. These ads will take a step down the funnel and have CTAs that offer case studies or white paper resources on your solution or industry, to give your prospects market insights, and real-world examples of how your solution can benefit companies like theirs. It also cannot hurt to throw in a bottom-of-the funnel facing ad here and there that guides viewers to schedule a demo or experience a free trial.
On top of just getting your logo and message in front of prospects again, retargeting ads generally perform very well, when compared to their traditional counterparts. In fact, a Marketing Land article explained that retargeting ads often have click-through-rates of “0.30–0.95 percent—which is 3–10x higher than the industry average.”
However, retargeting is also a bit of a double-edged sword, so you must be careful with how you use it. While it does boast great click-through rates, it also has the propensity to irritate prospects who feel that you have invaded their privacy or took advantage of their trust in you for personal gain. As a result, it is critical that you pay close attention to who your audience is that you are serving these ads to, as well as where and how often you are delivering them. Doing this will allow you to reap the large rewards that retargeting can bestow upon your ABM campaign.
Nurture your prospects down the funnel
A third way to cultivate your ABM relationships is to enroll them in an email nurturing campaign. You can set this up by ensuring that any form fills that you place in your ABM campaigns or resources a) capture an email address and b) acknowledge that by filling the form out, prospects are enrolling in an email nurture program.
This way, whenever someone downloads a resource or fills out one of your campaign forms, they are automatically enrolled in an automated email nurture sequence that explains the asset they just acquired, and then leads them further down the funnel toward a sale. The best part about email nurtures is that, while they do take time and effort to set up, once you have them established, they are a phenomenal way to gently lead prospects down the funnel with no additional work.
Here is an example email nurture:
- A prospect fills out a form to download a resource and is automatically enrolled in your email nurture program.
- They are sent a 4-email sequence that delivers the resource, explains how to use it, and reinforces the value propositions of the resource.
- They are then entered into a similar email sequence for a resource that is lower down the funnel.
- This process continues until the prospect reaches the bottom of the funnel with a “schedule a demo” call to action.
Cultivating your outbound relationships requires dedication, empathy, and constant tweaking to be successful. But if you can create a comprehensive repository of assets and are willing to spend the time to educate and add-value for your prospects, you will create a continuous pipeline of leads and resulting revenue for your business.