Folloze’s Bet on ABM Generates 75% of Both Pre-Pipeline and Pipeline

What’d They Do?

Folloze tapped into Demandbase Account Intelligence to help them identify accounts that fit their ideal customer profile (ICP). Technographics played a big role in that. Because Folloze integrates into specific marketing automation and CRM systems, they could save themselves a lot of time and resources by zeroing in on accounts known to use those technologies.

Next, they used Demandbase ABX Cloud to segment their ICP accounts into tiers based on engagement minutes, pipeline predict scores, and the qualification score, combined with their own behavioral intelligence score. This combination of scores painted a picture of which accounts were the most in-market, most ready to buy, and had awareness of the Folloze brand.

They assigned Tier One accounts to the sales team, Tier Two to the account development reps (ADRs), and Tier Threes to marketing.

One key strategy has been to surround their accounts with ad messages that fit where they are in the buying journey. Tier One accounts receive targeted, one-to-one and one-to-few, bottom-of-the-funnel messages, because these are the accounts most ready to buy. They’re driven to a Folloze board that is automatically personalized. It’s the best of Folloze’s and Demandbase’s personalization capabilities combined.

On the other end of the spectrum, Tier Three accounts receive top-of-funnel brand ads that drive them to the website to begin the journey of learning about and engaging with Folloze.

Supplementing the advertising, the sales team leans on Demandbase sales intelligence to gain a deep understanding of their accounts so they can engage with them in a highly customized, consultative way. They’ve also discovered that Sales Intelligence Cloud is a great prospecting tool, revealing new accounts to target — accounts that are using competitors’ products or other tools that Folloze integrates with — even if they didn’t initially fit into their ICP.

Folloze also uses Demandbase Data Cloud’s Data Integrity to keep their CRM data clean and up-to-date. Among the many hats Bretton wears, he’s in charge of running those workflows and processes. Data Integrity automatically updates and enriches Salesforce account, contact, lead and opportunity data, but Bretton uses it with a combination of automation and human interaction. He runs leads and contacts through it monthly to generate a report that he sends to the sales team to serve as a double check and to make sure the reps note the changes.

Why Demandbase?

How’d They Do?

With Demandbase One — ABX Cloud, Advertising Cloud, Sales intelligence Cloud, and Data Integrity — Folloze is seeing impressive results, including:

• Generating 75% of pre-pipeline and actual pipeline
  Folloze’s ABM program, orchestrated through ABX Cloud, is now generating the majority of their pre-pipeline and actual pipeline by zeroing in on the ICP accounts that are most in-market. They nailed their Q4 pipeline goal and then doubled that in Q1, exceeding all expectations.
  According to Bretton, “Demandbase has been pivotal in understanding and working through our ICP, determining what accounts we really want to go after based on historical and technographic data, and then working with the intent signals and engagement minutes to understand which accounts are the most in-market. It’s made all the difference.”
• Accelerating accounts through journey stages, reducing time to close
  For Folloze, a “surround sound” advertising strategy, activated through Demandbase Advertising Cloud is pushing accounts through their journey stages more quickly across marketing and sales, ultimately reducing the time to close. Not only has it shortened their sales cycle, Bretton also reports that it’s made his job “a heck of a lot easier.” He loves the seamless way he can change landing pages and make quick fixes on the fly, organize and aggregate creatives into different libraries, and switch ads in an instant.
• Tailoring outreach and preventing churn
  Folloze is using competitive intent data to focus their outreach, customize their messaging, and prevent customer churn. It’s been especially helpful for their sales teams. If they know one of their accounts has shown interest in a competitor, they adjust their messaging to point out their own strengths. In a similar vein, if a current customer is checking out a competitor, it might be time to talk about differentiators they haven’t discussed before, or see if the account is having an issue that can be resolved. This extra intelligence gives them a chance to make sure their customers are using their platform to the fullest before it’s too late.
• Progressing the right accounts and growing their ICP
  Sales teams at Folloze are loving Demandbase Snapshots and sales intelligence embedded within Salesforce, where they live everyday. Bretton pushes snapshots to the reps through Salesforce every Monday, so they can start their week seeing which of their accounts have recently engaged, who has a lot of engagement but not a lot of sales outreach, who’s been actively marketed to, and so forth. They see intent keywords their accounts are searching on, know what web pages they’ve visited, and combine that with a deep understanding of their accounts gained from using Demandbase sales intelligence to customize their prospecting efforts. Having all this intelligence in one view within their CRM, helps them focus on the right accounts and progress them faster.An unexpected bonus: Their sales teams discovered that Sales Intelligence Cloud is great for finding new prospects that didn’t originally fit within their ICP. As they convert these accounts to customers, they’re widening the definition of their ICP and finding new whitespace to fill.
• Gained a partner
  Bretton wrapped things up by giving a shout out to his Demandbase account team, saying, “I think it’s essential to have a strong partnership with the vendor, rather than viewing them as a contractor. That’s very, very important!” He looks forward to calls with his customer success manager and believes, “every CSM I’ve ever worked with at Demandbase has been fantastic — really quick to answer my questions, quick to respond to my emails and work through things with me, always open to having a session, or coming onto our sales calls.” It seems the love is mutual.