CRM, MAS, and ABM – The Tech Stack Trifecta

Elevating CRM and MAS Integration: Unleashing the Power of Account-Based Marketing

B2B sales and marketing organizations vary in size, structure, funding, and objectives – but the one thing which ties them all together is a deep investment in their CRM and marketing automation systems. Tech stacks are anchored by these systems with a dozen or more technologies loosely tethered to them. Countless resources are put into scrubbing, reconciling, and enriching the data contained in them. They are the source of truth – for better or for worse.

For sales, the gravitational pull of the CRM is strong – it’s the system of record for sales activity, individual performance, and sales revenue. Sales reps are never more than one click away from their CRM. Their philosophy is clear and simple, “If it doesn’t happen in Salesforce, it doesn’t happen.” But there are clear limitations: CRM does not directly enable engagement with prospects and can only track activity against known contacts. There is a world of valuable information outside the CRM which can facilitate research, increase efficiency, and accelerate deals but until now, it has been siloed.

Marketing teams, on the other hand, have centralized much of their activity and reporting within marketing automation systems (MAS). This has helped enable lead generation and lead management capabilities with engagement activity insight as well as multi-channel analytics. But there was still a need for integrating marketing, sales, and 3rd party data in a way that could provide actionable insights and deliver stronger key account relationships over time. That’s why many B2B marketers have added Account-Based Marketing (ABM) to the stack as a third, essential technology.

ABM allows you to focus on the right individuals from top accounts in order to engage them and move them through the funnel, and surfaces insights based on both known and unknown account activity and measures performance at an account level.

But as powerful as these systems are individually, the data is siloed, and teams are using it in isolation or even worse, ignoring it.

That must change.

Competition is increasing. Prospects have a wealth of information available for researching products and services. Security, privacy, and technical considerations complicate the sales process. To win, sales and marketing teams must be aligned, working in lock step to identify, target, and nurture accounts at the time they are actively in market for what you offer.

That principle is what has driven the partnership between Salesforce Sales Cloud, Pardot and Demandbase. Our vision is to create a seamless, integrated ABM experience for sales and marketing aligned around consistent data utilized with their core technologies.

The expansion of our partnership announced today, introducing Demandbase for Salesforce Pardot, will allow B2B marketers to access Demandbase’s anonymous website engagement and intent data within both Salesforce Pardot and Sales Cloud. This provides marketing and sales teams with the same information about what accounts are researching – both on their own website and across the web.

Teams can use this data to get a more complete view of each customer and prospect account.

For sales, intent insights and buying signals help them reach out at the right time with the right message.

For marketing, the ability to segment audiences for use in Pardot engagement campaigns and apply account-based attributes to measure, analyze, and optimize campaigns increases effectiveness.

And, for the first time, Salesforce Pardot users will be able to leverage Demandbase’s artificial intelligence-enabled account-level data to identify high-value accounts in real time. Marketers can take action on these segments through targeted advertising, website personalization or nurturing.

Unified account-based data makes it easy to monitor the health of your ABM strategy across all marketing and sales stages. The power of the integrated tech stack trifecta announced today – Sales Cloud, Pardot, and Demandbase – is a winning combination, creating the ABM machine you need to convert your target accounts into revenue.