Embracing the Quantitative. For Bretton Hoekwater, ABM Success Hinges on Data.

Demandbase Champion Bretton Hoekwater, Growth Marketing and Analytics Manager at Folloze originally studied to be a neuropsychologist. His statistics and research methods courses fostered a love for data — which led him through the doors of a private equity firm post-college. A few years ago, Bretton shifted from corporate acquisition research and analysis to marketing analytics and was introduced to ABM. We chatted with Bretton to learn about how data analytics can shift a sales strategy, to gather some advice for ABM newbies, and to hear how he keeps calm and carries on.

What is a memorable moment in your career?

While working in private equity, I was conducting an analysis of a portfolio company’s sales data. As a beverage company, their team was targeting individual convenience stores for the bulk of their sales. I discovered that 70-percent of the sales were coming from recurring purchases, primarily from businesses. Discovering this pivoted their go-to-market strategy. Instead of devoting a majority of their time to individual sales, they began to focus on creating a self-service subscription model. This sparked my interest in utilizing data to inform strategy as well as developing business intelligence (BI) insights. These are skills that have transferred throughout my career and, more recently, have been utilized in the strategy and optimization of our ABM campaigns.

What do you like about your current role?

My job is different every single day. I could find myself strategizing on campaigns, or working closely with the sales and marketing teams, or building out a dashboard or report to analyze data from our marketing efforts. The variety motivates me. Often marketers have a hard time directly attributing the work they do to a contract renewal, an expansion deal, or a revenue gain. Being in analytics, I’m the person in marketing that says to sales, “hey, we helped you to close this deal and here’s how.” Analytics help demonstrate marketing’s impact on the business. It’s satisfying when the sales team tells us that a specific ad or marketing tactic ultimately helped bring a customer onboard.

How do you make Demandbase sing?

I’ve worked with Demandbase at three different companies, in three different environments, and have been able to bring my learnings from each situation into the next. With Demandbase, we can hone in on just the right data based on the Pipeline Predict and Qualification Scores, engagement minutes, web page visits, and combine them with Folloze’s own behavioral score. We can take all of this information, run descriptive statistics, and utilize standard deviation to parse out the tiers for our ideal customer profile (ICP). This effort uncovers the universe of companies that fit our ICP — roughly 100 tier one accounts owned by AEs, 1,000 tier two accounts owned by ADRs, and a bunch of tier three accounts that will be nurtured by marketing.

We allocate a lot of marketing and sales resources to the tier one accounts. They are assigned to a sales rep, and we deliver very targeted, down-funnel messaging to each based on what the intent data indicates. We have had success delivering a slight push to book a demo by running industry specific campaigns with a high value offer and one or two targeted case studies.

What do you like to do outside of the office?

I spent two years traveling just before the pandemic, and I worked remotely before it was the norm. During these travels, I fell in love with Denver, Colorado and moved here from Michigan. Now, I’m a big Denver Broncos fan, even after growing up rooting for the Detroit Lions. You also can’t live in Denver without being a skier, so I spend a lot of winter weekends on the slopes with my friends. When I’m at my apartment in Denver, I get out for a run every morning with my Australian Shepherd, Kona. Her need for exercise helps me wake up in the morning and start the day on the right foot.

What are your superpowers?

Being level-headed and taking a pragmatic, calm approach to challenges helps me to succeed. I don’t get overwhelmed easily, and I am intentional about how I spend my time. I take a structured approach to my day and to the things I need to accomplish. I’m not afraid to say “no” to something that interferes with what I’ve scheduled that day (even if it sounds more fun!).

What tips do you have for someone just starting out in ABM?

• Start small with specific use cases. Don’t shoot for the moon right out of the gate. If your target account list is too big, it’s hard to scale down because it takes so much time.
• Take what you’ve learned from your test cases and iterate them across the other accounts. Starting small helps you scale faster and easier, and gives you quick wins.

About Folloze

Folloze, the easiest and most powerful B2B Buyer Experience Platform, is used by B2B marketing, sales, and revenue teams. Requiring no code, Folloze empowers any marketer to easily build data-driven, highly engaging, personalized content destinations across the entire B2B buyer journey to drive deeper account engagement and revenue growth. Top B2B brands, including Oracle, Google Cloud, Cisco, Autodesk, MetLife, and UL trust Folloze to boost customer engagement, revenue growth, and expansion across their target accounts. To learn more, visit www.folloze.com.