How To Alert Sales to the Most Engaged Accounts Using Marketo Engage

For sales and marketing alignment to work – and stick – the marketing team needs to perfect the hand-off process.

In fact, misalignment is one of the main reasons sales ignore up to 50% of leads from marketing.  

In a previous post, we introduced Marketo Engage as an essential enablement tool for account-based marketing (and therefore sales and marketing alignment). In this guide, we’re diving deeper into one tool that helps marketing alert sales to leads who are almost too hot to handle: Target Account Management.

Related: How To Use Marketo To Boost Your ABM Strategy

What is Target Account Management?

Marketo Engage Target Account Management, or TAM, is Adobe’s solution to bridge the gap between strategy, execution, and optimisation in account-based marketing.

Account-based marketing (ABM) relies on nurturing targeted accounts to generate the highest possible returns. Rather than scanning wide and shallow, ABM focuses the spotlight on markets of one.

So, naturally, you want to be sure you’re going after the one. Otherwise, it’s money and time wasted on poorly planned prospecting.

That’s precisely the problem that Marketo’s Target Account Management tool aims to solve.

TAM uses Adobe’s AI to:

• Discover key accounts
• Clean and match data
• Personalise communications
• Score leads
• Unearth account-level insights
• Analyse pipeline and revenue impact

In other words, Target Account Management is the intelligence behind targeted, successful ABM strategies.

Crucially, Target Account Management can help marketers prime salespeople with high-potential accounts, creating alignment and coordinating engagement.

How Marketo’s Target Account Management enables coordinated ABM in 3 steps

Step 1: Enrich

Adobe refers to this step as targeting. However, there’s a good chance your sales organisation already has a half-decent understanding of key accounts. The picture might be fuzzy, but the broad swathes are there.

In that case, Target Account Manager enriches existing data to focus the picture.

• Account discovery

If you are still in the early stages of account-based marketing, then Marketo’s Account Discovery feature can find new accounts based on your ideal customer profile (ICP). There are filters and adjustable criteria to hone the list.

Predictive analysis enables you to go further, categorising accounts as quick wins, strategically important, potential upsell or cross-sell opportunities, and best fit.

• Lead-to-account matching

TAM uses Adobe’s fuzzy logic to automatically match leads to named accounts in real time. Target Account Management standardises records from your CRM, inbound activity, or any other source, saving time and virtually eliminating human error.

• Named account lists

Rather than needing to search through separate lists, you can organise all the accounts you’re targeting in a single dashboard. Organising accounts with similar attributes into Named Account Lists – for example, by industry, size or market – makes it easier to get started with 1:1 ABM activity. 

Accounts can appear on multiple lists, and metrics stay updated in every appearance, so sales and marketing remain on the same page.

You can also establish programs that add accounts to the relevant lists so you never miss an opportunity to engage a potential customer.

Step 2: Engage

Here’s where the magic happens.

Even when a key account passes the MQL threshold, they may not be ready for a sales call. TAM ensures your target accounts receive timely, relevant, and personalised communications.

Internally, TAM streamlines workflows and listens for significant events that could trigger a handover.

• Personalised communication

Target Account Management uses account-centric filtering and account-level personas to tailor engagement. By creating a smart list, you can launch bespoke nurture programs that personalise communication at the account level, based on factors like buying stage and best-fit indicators. 

Marketo can personalise email and landing pages, web experiences, URLs, ads, and remarketing strategies.

That means reaching the right people, at the right time, on the right channel, and with the right content.

• Cross-channel engagement

Marketo Engage isn’t just an email tool. In fact, there is a dedicated cross-channel engagement workspace where you can create nurture campaigns that trigger 1:1 communication across native, online, and offline channels. 

• Dedicated workflows

Creating account-specific workflows allows you to tweak internal processes based on what you know about the account. TAM can be configured to listen for the events that matter to you (anything from new product launches to changing CEO to opening a new office) and adjusts the account’s score accordingly. 

For marketers, that means more control over the cadence of communication, and real-time insight into sales-readiness. For salespeople, it means keeping a closer eye on key accounts to act when the time is right. 

Step 3: Evaluate

Target Account Management provides value-added insight that enables you to make ABM decisions and assess the effectiveness of your activity. 

As you nurture accounts, Marketo’s intelligent scoring features closely monitor your key accounts. Because the measurement and engagement tools are both part of Marketo, you get a single source of truth that reduces costs and improves insights.

Insights at the list and account level provide feedback you can use to tweak the nurture program or alert sales to a hot lead. 

At any time, you have the latest information about key accounts and Named Account lists.

Bringing it all together with Marketo Target Account Management 

TAM is Adobe’s solution to streamline and simplify ABM. The built-in AI is powerful and flexible, so you can target the right accounts in a timely manner. And the ecosystem of features creates a holistic ABM platform that creates seamless cross-channel customer experiences.

That last point might be one of the most important outcomes that we haven’t talked about.

It’s all well and good to have AI, automations, and smart lists doing the heavy lifting. But without a united focus on customer experience management (CXM), not even Adobe or TAM can save you.

So, let’s start with strategy.

TAP CXM are customer experience management specialists helping brands and agencies get the most from their martech investment. Whether you need practical advice from our business consulting team, support for a Marketo implementation, or Marketo training from an experienced specialist, we can help.

Contact TAP CXM’s London or New York office to take the next step on your ABM journey.