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2018 ABMie Finalists

You’ve watched the Oscars and heard the Grammy’s. Now is time for the award show to rule all other award shows: the ABMies. The ABMies are a set of awards to honor the best and brightest teams and practitioners in account-based marketing and sales.

For the past month, we’ve been taking nominations. Our panel of judges has submitted their votes, and today we’re revealing our finalists!

 There are eight awards:

  • Best Demand Generation Campaign
  • Best Pipeline Acceleration Campaign
  • Best Account-Based Marketing Program
  • Best 1:1 Campaign
  • Best ABM Campaign at Scale
  • ABM Up and Comer
  • Best Sales Leader
  • Best Marketing Leader

The winners are going to be revealed at the VIP reception the night before the 2018 #FlipMyFunnel Conference. If you’re looking to go to the ABMies, grab your tickets here (must be a VIP ticket).

Check out our incredible finalists and their stories below!

Best Demand Generation Campaign

Daniel Englebretson at Phononic

Phononic is a growing start-up with a very innovative outlook on their demand generation strategy. They have a new product and a very niche market for their Opto-Electronic division which led them to implement a proactive, true ABM approach this year.

They know who they need to target and they recognize that they need their brand to stay in front of those accounts at all times to increase awareness, trust, and credibility. Phononic has created and adopted new processes, new KPIs, and surpassed goals by continuing to look forward and always aiming for improvement.

SafeTstep Marketing Team at Payless Shoes

The SafeTstep sales team has traditionally had an account-focused (ABS and ABSD) approach, but there was not a strategically aligned marketing capability. When they realigned the team over a year ago, the marketing team instituted an ABM approach, but also a way to invigorate the sales team with potential, new, incremental business they were not accustomed to having.

Their new demand gen platform yielded roughly $2.5MM of annualized opportunity revenue in about a year’s time.

Lillian Smith and Andrew Nguyen at Bizible

Lillian and Andrew have developed a clever, high ROI way to reach enterprise-level marketing leaders, an audience I would say is the hardest audience to reach, that’s scalable and personalized. I have never seen something work so effectively in 10 years of marketing.

Amber Bogie at Planview

In less than a year at Planview, Amber is killing it. She is responsible for creating engagement in Enterprise Tier 1-3 accounts in the central region. She had no small task in front of her with a goal of breaking into the C-Suite at a massive retailer.

Best Pipeline Acceleration Campaign

Marketing Team at Highspot

As a result of an Account-based Go-To-Market approach, Highspot has seen three remarkable outcomes. First, the company experienced a doubling of overall pipeline. Second, Highspot secured notable names as customers, including Amazon, Twitter, Workday, Aetna and more. Third, Highspot has increased sales velocity between the targeted stages by 48% from 47 days to 23 days, which would likely be even lower if shipping time was not taken into account for the direct mails.

Nakia Roberson at Shell Oil Corporation

As the Marketing Cloud Solution Architect, Nakia created a potential $18 million dollar pipeline from Shell’s introduction into the Polymers market at the NPE conference. This was their first introduction to the market at a conference with an attendee industry value of over a billion dollar which only happens every 3 years.

Marketing Team at Sigstr

Sigstr has become ninjas at associating content with the opportunity stage and automating it, so it feels like magic. Because it aligns their strategy and product so well, their prospects can experience it first hand in a way that relates to them, which has increased demand and velocity.

Best Account-Based Marketing Program

Marketing Programs Team at SalesLoft 

The SalesLoft Marketing Programs team has created multiple campaigns and processes that have accelerated pipeline, increased demand generation in target accounts, and provide a personalized and memorable buying experience for customers. The team’s alignment with the sales groups is unparalleled and has strengthened SalesLoft’s go-to-market with scalable and personalized campaigns. The team has refined the account-selection process and created campaigns to drive pipeline and close business.

Renny Fidlon and Sarah McGlinchey at Optymyze 

To encourage buy-in for ABM, they began their journey by sourcing the target account list from sales. Marketing asked each sales director for their top 50 targets. That became their target account list. They then set up account-based web analytics and started sending sales weekly reports showing account activity for target accounts + potential accounts that were not currently target but maybe should be. They also implemented industry-specific multi-touch ABM campaigns to speak directly to each industry’s pain points. Check out their nomination for more details!

Ken Evans at Fuze

Ken and his team have gone beyond buzzwords to create a program that truly aligns sales and marketing. They have transformed from an ad-hoc approach to account targeting to one that is very focused. And the results show. The company has experienced tremendous growth as a result.

Risa Peterson at ThoughtSpot

There are very few campaigns that combine: demand / targeting / personalization / customer marketing and creativity all into one. For this program, Risa partnered with one of ThoughtSpot’s favorite customers, Milwaukee Tool, to put together a special mailer to send to prospects. The direct mailer included a Milwaukee Toolkit and a creative mailer to how Milwaukee Tools and ThoughtSpot are alike. Not to mention actual programs that drive measurable pipeline from key target accounts.

Malachi Threadgill, Loretta Wagner, and Mollie Escajeda at Masergy Communications

The Masergy team recognized a gap in their process – though they were running a “very successful” lead generation program, they weren’t converting opportunities to revenue like they knew they could be. So they went all in on ABM. It wasn’t just Malachi – the whole marketing and sales organization rallied around an account-based approach. With the proper orchestration of tech and organizational resources, they’ve achieved phenomenal results.

Kate Albano at Anaqua

ABM at Anaqua has taken a lot of effort, coordination and cross-functional support. Having such a finite target market, ABM made sense for Anaqua. However, it wasn’t always easy. They had to get their sales team fully bought into operating with a strategic Account Based approach, while marketing ran programs alongside them such as (20+ 1:1s, competitive kill campaigns, vertical-specific campaigns, and events). However, they went all in on ABM, they knew it was the right for their business and fully adopted the mentality and strategy to be successful with ABM, and have done so at an incredibly fast rate.

Daniel Day at Snowflake

The Uberflip team made a video to nominate the Snowflake team. Words do not suffice. Check out the video here!

https://hub.uberflip.com/wistia-abmies-nomination/snowflakes-daniel-day-abmies-nomination

Colm Shalvey and Brooke Cline at DataStax

DataStax has been practicing ABM for quite a while now and recently implemented a great strategy of Fit + Intent + Engagement by utilizing both Bombora and Terminus. Furthermore, they are segmenting their ABM program through accounts that are surging, and accounts that are not surging so they can further determine and measure the success of Fit + Intent and Engagement.

MacKenzie Mercer and James McNamee at EnterpriseDB

MacKenzie and James have put in a lot of work to tiering their ABM accounts and segmenting appropriately in order to get a targeted relevant message in front of the appropriate industry/audience/persona. They are consistently working as a team to do ABM even better and are always driving towards best practices.

Will Pringle, Ken Evans, and Emily Ketchum at Fuze

Fuze has been on a 3-year quest to executing “Fire-Breathing” ABM, evolving in multiple phases over time. It started with a journey to sales and marketing alignment, moving to the launch of a target account strategy and establishing a highly functioning target account demand gen engine to being able to drive the orchestration of intent-based campaigns and enablement.

Best 1:1 Campaign

Amber Bogie at Planview

In less than a year at Planview, Amber is killing it. She is responsible for creating engagement in Enterprise Tier 1-3 accounts in the central region. She had no small task in front of her with a goal of breaking into the C-Suite at a massive retailer.

Entire Nanigans Team

This campaign exemplifies how a primarily direct campaign can take advantage of personalization to drive tangible ABM results for an organization, and how collaboration between departments can help it come to fruition. A direct mail campaign without a digital component can’t be as successful as one that’s integrated, and likewise, email blasts can’t always be expected to break through the constant marketing noise produced by today’s brands.

Sarah Brizendine, Anne Wave, and Chris Kampfe at GoSpotCheck

The GoSpotCheck team has made substantial improvements to their processes and strategy over the past year. They have always been innovative, but this year they took the leap to run hundreds of 1:1 (hyper-personalized) campaigns at scale for their named accounts.  Sales and marketing also made changes to become aligned and drive the awesome results you see below. The time and effort they have put into personalization are very clearly paying off.

Laura Partyka at Calabrio

Calabrio’s marketing and sales departments collaborated to set up customized
1:1 campaigns targeting their highest priority accounts. Check out their nomination to see some of their results!

Travis Atles and Aram Bazarian at Pivot3

The team launched a 1:1 campaign targeting a prospect account who was currently in the evaluation stage of the buying process. At this time they were not allowed to do any personalized, targeted advertising, so they utilized Terminus to put general messaging about their offerings in front of the entire company.

Jack Corrao at Corrao Group

Jack created a 6-month digital and print campaign targeted for potential ABM candidates to promote the awareness of ABM at your form. This campaign is centered on the concept of growing your unique Bonsai tree with unique tools and continued nurturing. He researched the individual(s) that were receiving the Bonsai, down to their hobbies, colleges, favorite sports team, etc. and picked a tree that reflected their personalities. One client loves purple. She wears everything purple, decorates in purple, etc. He sent her a Jacaranda Mimosifolia Bonsai to reflect her personality (this tree has a purple shade on its leaves).

Best ABM Campaign at Scale

Lillian Smith and Andrew Nguyen at Bizible

Lillian and Andrew have developed a clever, high ROI way to reach enterprise-level marketing leaders, an audience I would say is the hardest audience to reach, that’s scalable and personalized. I have never seen something work so effectively in 10 years of marketing.

Sarah Brizendine, Anne Wave, and Chris Kampfe at GoSpotCheck

The GoSpotCheck team has made substantial improvements to their processes and strategy over the past year. They have always been innovative, but this year they took the leap to run hundreds of 1:1 (hyper-personalized) campaigns at scale for their named accounts.  Sales and marketing also made changes to become aligned and drive the awesome results you see below. The time and effort they have put into personalization are very clearly paying off.

Marketing Team at Sigstr

Sigstr has nailed the personalization game from top to bottom. Through a combination of elegant technical integrations and coordinated manual effort from several different teams, Sigstr has created a full-funnel ABM program that tailors content across accounts, personas, and sales stage to move from “awareness” to “closed/won” quicker than ever.

Heidi Vandermeer at Uberflip

Uberflip is at it again with another video – it’s as good as gold. Check it out here!

https://hub.uberflip.com/wistia-abmies-nominations/uberflips-heidi-vandermeer-abmies-nomination

Marketing Team at DiscoverOrg

DiscoverOrg brought a new product to market. Not only were they selling a new product into a new market, but they had to educate an entirely new group of buyers. They saw amazing results, but to do it, they had to align their sales and marketing departments and limit themselves to select key accounts. They recorded a short video series documenting their “Account-Based Marketing Experiment” … without knowing how it would end! The whole experiment was a huge challenge and a huge success.

Marketing Team at Perficient

Traditionally, Perficient has been a very conversion-focused, lead-centric organization. Over the last year, they have come together (from the top down) to build out and launch a targeted ABM program (the “Growth 50” campaign), that has buy-in from all their leaders, across the organization – a significant accomplishment and demonstration of strong sales and marketing alignment.

Kevin Alansky and Auseh Britt at Logi Analytics

100% of the pipeline is generated by marketing efforts from developing the target accounts lists, executing programs, and running the Lead Generation team to qualify and managed demand. As a marketing operation group, they have developed a comprehensive tech stack that utilizes automation and personalization to communicate with over 1 million contacts a year.

ABM Up and Comer

The Go-to-Market Team at Zendrive

Zendrive came up with a world-class ABM process, installed a modern marketing tech stack and launched their 1st ABM campaigns within one month. Before launching ABM, Zendrive didn’t have much marketing beyond PR to speak of. No nurturing, demand gen, digital, tech stack or process. They got it done in a hurry, but the right way.

Andrea Alvarez and Bethany Black at EAB

EAB is new to ABM and has been very dedicated to doing ABM the right way. They have all of their ABM Campaigns set up to dynamically progress accounts based on the Funnel Stage. They also have very specific messaging for each part of the funnel (Ex: Bottom of Funnel campaigns have specific customer quotes leading users to a YouTube Customer testimonial video). They have very specific and targeted lists of accounts they use within their ABM Campaigns.

Jeremy Middleton and Caroline Japic at Pramata

The Pramata team brought ABM on strong – no tip toeing, no looking back. Within a very short time period, less than 6 months, they have successfully implemented internal processes for both marketing and sales to support an ABM strategy that has proven amazing results so far.

Deep Kakkad 

Deep Kakkad is a 21-year-old entrepreneur and marketer who has worked with 30+ startups as a marketing and growth consultant, and now working as a marketing and sales lead at a startup called Growffy. He has grown his LinkedIn from 500 to 20k in a matter of months.

Jenny Buckhouse and Kristin Mills at Workiva

Since 2017, Workiva has architected omnichannel ABM strategies across their pipeline and different channels, and has put a lot of work into nurturing and growing their relationship with the Sales organization to get buy-in and support for their ABM efforts – not an easy feat for a lot of organizations!

Marketing and Sales Teams at Xeeva

Xeeva switched from a traditional inbound marketing strategy to a fully built ABM strategy. While still being new to the ABM strategy, they were able to transition seamlessly and positively impact their pipeline. Their team is dedicated to making sure their ABM efforts are effective by monitoring the weekly reports and surge reports, creating eye-catching ads, updating tactics as necessary, and taking the appropriate steps to reach out to accounts with activity.

Limelight Platform

The Limelight team is dedicating time to report on their ABM efforts internally using their version of a benchmarking spreadsheet. Sales is also heavily involved as well as other marketing tactics such as e-mail and direct mail.

Srijan Technologies

Srijan has achieved significant alignment between their sales and marketing teams. And this is despite the fact that their marketing team consists of both in-house people and a marketing agency.

Best Sales Leader

Gaurav Mishra at Srijan Technologies

Gaurav has a keen understanding of the challenges and evolving technology trends across Srijan’s segments. He can seamlessly tie in Srijan’s solutions with enterprises’ strategic vision. That, and his ability to motivate his team, not just for his own geography, but also teams responsible for other geographies,  to deliver at the top of their game is what makes Gaurav the best sales leader.

Matt Lemke at Payless Shoes

Even though the Payless bankruptcy last year, and subsequent emergence from bankruptcy only four months later, Matt has been able to keep the team motivated and focused on revenue growth with a balance of existing account penetration and new lead generation.

Derek Grant at SalesLoft

Derek Grant goes above and beyond for the sales team and for SalesLoft as an organization. He is always willing to participate in company initiatives but doesn’t lose sight of filling pipeline and hitting numbers. But, Sales Leadership goes beyond a million dollar deal: the best sales leaders know how to coach their teams, elevate them to be the very best advocates for the buyer, and provide excellent experiences during the sales process.

Best Marketing Leader

Justin Keller at Sigstr

Justin is a bold, data-driven marketer with 13+ years of leadership experience in digital media and B2B marketing. He is a strategy driver and tactical project manager, executing plans with a sense of urgency. He thrives in rapidly changing environments and has experience in early-stage startups to established enterprises. Above all, Justin is a team player who intentionally places the interests of Sigstr customers, communities, and team members before his own.

Brian Kardon at Fuze

Brian’s nomination is a podcast interview! Check it out to hear about his dedication and leadership.

John Steinert at TechTarget

Not only does TechTarget practice account-based marketing, they have in fact developed an incredible tool for their clients to truly target effectively. Under John’s leadership, TechTarget has turned countless marketers into ABM leaders, by providing the missing element in targeting (propensity to purchase).

Eric Martin at SalesLoft

Eric Martin has led the development of the account-based marketing function at SalesLoft from the ground up, from account selection to orchestration of strategy and execution of programs. He leads a team of talented demand generators, program managers and field marketers with the goal of driving account-based engagement throughout the customer experience.