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What I Think - Drift’s ABM Release

After a few weeks of suspense with their teaser campaign, Drift announced the release of their latest addition to their conversational marketing product this morning, with Drift ABM.

Here’s what I think:

#1 - Thank you Drift, ABM should be embedded into all marketing software

The beauty of account-based marketing is, it’s just common sense.  It’s so obvious good marketers sometimes make fun of it, asking, “Is it really something new?”

That said, one of the opportunity drivers for ABM software is the fact that the preeminent sales & marketing software, Salesforce.com (what are they up to this week?), did a really bad job of enabling account-based marketing. Two huge flaws included:

  • No automated way to connect a “lead” to an existing account for its sales users

  • No automated way to track (like a lead is tracked with statuses & therefore built-in reporting) an incremental “lead” on an account - thus discouraging use of the account objects for managing prospect accounts

So it’s refreshing to have a company like Drift build account-based marketing right into their conversational marketing software. It’s logical. It’s useful. It helps their customers - which Drift is all about.

#2 - Sometimes the simplest use cases are the most powerful

You work hard to target your target accounts, through both inbound & outbound channels. When they get to your website, you want alarm bells going off for your sales team to capitalize on this, especially if the account is engaging in product specific or “higher intent” content.

I’ve previously made the point that this type of interaction is one of the intersection points between Inbound Marketing & Account Based Marketing, and Drift is taking that to another level by not only providing sales reps with the insight, but the ability to take immediate action and engage in conversation with that target account.   

Target account on our website. Alarm bells should be going off!!!!!
Target account on our website. Alarm bells should be going off!!!!!
...and give the account a personalized greeting
...and give the account a personalized greeting

It’s so simple. That’s the beauty of it though. How many businesses are actually doing this? Very few.

Which makes it a massive opportunity. Win for Marketing. Win for Sales. Win for Drift.

#3 - “Shipping” has massive value to company momentum

Drift ABM represents Drift’s second major product release in the past month, on the heels of the announcement of Drift email at the Hypergrowth show.

These releases are not just about the added product capabilities, it’s about setting the tone for the business. It’s a major statement from Craig Daniel’s product team and Elias Torres’ engineering team, which in turn builds more confidence for the sales & marketing teams to have the confidence to execute and deliver.

#4 - Put Drift on your shopping list

If you haven’t already done so from reading my “Five Ways Drift Helped Us Engage with More Web Visitors - in the First Week” blog or amazing recent articles from Jera Brown or Andy Raskin, put Drift on your company to watch list.

They have up-leveled the website chat product game to conversational marketing, and it’s an immediate way to 1) generate more leads from your website, 2) accelerate the velocity of those leads engaging with your sales team and 3) give sales & marketing teams a win-win that just makes sense, not to mention 4) be part of the rise of a company that is firing on all cylinders.

#5 - Drift’s big strategic question going forward

Drift has reinvented the live chat category. Cancel talks about his company's growth strategy is about finding a commodity category, and then winning in that category by building a better brand.

I expect Drift to be able to dominate customer acquisition in stealing share from other chat products, and winning over customers who are adding chat to their website for the first time. At a price point comparable to other chat vendors, the decision to add Drift should be a no-brainer at $250 per month or thereabout.

Here’s the big question though: will that be enough for Drift? Or are they going to take aim at eating the lunch of the marketing automation vendors?  They’ve gone out and said marketing automation is broken, after all.

That’s going to be closely related to the price point Drift wants to aim for to drive the greatest return for its investors such as Sequoia & General Catalyst. If it pushes up into the thousands of $ per month, marketers will be forced to think about Drift vs. Marketing Automation, and that will add a lot more friction to the sales process (short term) but present massive upside to the company (long term).

What’s for sure -  Drift could build a better marketing automation product. This is the team that rebuilt HubSpot and provided the product foundation for the multi-billion company HubSpot has turned into today.  I’m sure the team could build a better marketing platform.

As a marketing technologist, I’m rooting for it.

Choose the marketing and sales performance levers to fuel your growth (and here are 20 to choose from…)

In 2014 SiriusDecisions introduced their Intelligent Growth Model which detailed five pillars of growth that companies could choose from or combine as part of their business growth strategy. The five are:

  1. Expand into new markets – geographical expansion, vertical market expansion
  2. Introduce new offerings – add additional product offers with new revenue streams
  3. Sell to new buyers – sell existing products to those you haven’t reached before
  4. Increase productivity – improve effectiveness in marketing & sales
  5. Acquisitions – acquire businesses as a source of expanded revenue

Taking a closer look at these, I’d segment them into these two categories:

  • Growth via Business Expansion: includes #1 (expanding into new geographies or verticals), #2 (expanding with additional products) and #5 (expanding by acquiring other businesses).
  • Growth via Business Improvement / Optimization: These apply to growing an existing product in an existing market, and in this case the two options are #3 (new buyers) or #4 (productivity).

The second category is more universally relevant, as every line of business can relate to it as management teams plan growth for existing products in existing markets typically as part of an annual business planning cycle.  When planning business growth in these scenarios, teams can categorize growth drivers into two high level buckets:

#1 - Growth in marketing qualified leads and opportunities

And/or

#2 - Improvement in sales performance metrics (e.g. win rate, average order value) – I use the term ‘sales’ to describe the business process, not the department, as sales performance metrics are influenced by sales, marketing and product management – as you’ll see below.

When planning for growth within a product line, management teams should agree on to which degree these two areas will contribute to that growth – as that decision will foster alignment, and may impact other investment decisions including resources and budget.

As part of that decision, there are many potential levers to consider within each of the two buckets – let’s take a closer look.

To grow marketing qualified leads (and resultant opportunities) here are 10 levers to consider:

  1. Grow web traffic (via SEO, SEM, Social Media, Influencer Marketing, PR programs)
  2. Grow website conversion rates (make website more effective in converting visitors from #1 to MQIs or MQLs)
  3. Improve web conversion rates through post-visit tactics such as abandonment techniques or retargeting
  4. Grow MQIs through expansion of or improvement in MQI generation programs (“Growing the top of the funnel” – e.g. content, webinars)
  5. Improve MQI to MQL conversion rates and velocity via optimization of lead nurturing programs and/or expansion or sales development / teleprospecting resources (more MQLs via "optimizing middle of funnel")
  6. Grow incremental MQI/MQLs via highly targeted account-based sales and marketing programs (“small net fishing”)
  7. Improve the effectiveness of sales development / teleprospecting resources through tools including lead prioritization engines, predictive lead scoring or training
  8. Generate more upsell MQLs from customer base via educational programs or specific upsell paths
  9. Generate more MQIs/MQLs through harnessing customer base via community, advocacy or referral programs (typically a longer term strategy)
  10. Grow partner generated leads by expanding number of ‘push’ partners actively marketing your offerings and/or adding additional marketing programs implemented via partners

And to improve sales performance metrics, here are 10 levers to consider:

  1. Grow MQL-to-opportunity rate via improved lead response times
  2. Grow MQL-to-opportunity rate via developing, improving or optimizing MQL follow up programs (conversation guides, email messaging & sequences)
  3. Grow MQL-to-opportunity rate via follow up techniques or data (e.g. leveraging of multiple contacts at an account)
  4. Grow win rate through applying sales process around ensuring the right criteria is applied to choose which deals are qualified
  5. Grow win rate through more effective enablement of a champion buyer (enabling that buyer to more effectively sell up/across their organization) – this could be via conversations, content and/or technologies
  6. Grow win rate through focus on urgency drivers (including content to position the buying decision vs. the downside, risk or pain attached to the status quo)
  7. Grow win rate through the development of specific competitive content or positioning vs. key competitors
  8. Grow win rate through development of new product functionality to address top loss or no decision reasons (a process for win/loss analysis will help uncover and prioritize these)
  9. Grow average order value through product packaging or bundling  
  10. Grow average order value through price increases (hey, you gotta consider it right!)

Aligning around the how of growth, first at the high level and then into the specific growth drivers, is a key step to achieving the growth that every business wants.