How to Use First-Party Intent Data and Sending to Achieve ABM success

This post is brought to you by Kickfire Content Marketing Specialist Andy Golden. Kickfire is a market leader in company identification and B2B first-party intent data, powered by global IP (Internet Protocol) address intelligence.

Traditionally, sales and marketing teams have viewed their direct mailing strategy like the legendary Larry Enticer – “I’m just gonna send it!” video. But unfortunately, in today’s data-driven world, with every dollar accounted for and measurable ROI expected on all spending, teams must be savvier when it comes to their account-based marketing (ABM) strategy. This paradigm shift also applies to the world of direct mail and gifting.

In this article, we’ll discuss how to find a list of companies interested in your products, how to send targeted items that they actually want to receive, and finally, how to measure the impact of sending.

Identifying your direct mail target list

If you’re already running an ABM campaign, then you’re probably no stranger to the practice of building a target list (or, if you’re not and want to learn how – check out How to Build a Better ABM Target List Using Firmographics). However, while your ABM target list might include hundreds of companies, your direct mailing list will likely be much smaller since you’ll be sending to your most engaged accounts.

So how do you find a targeted direct mail list within your ABM target list?

First-party intent data

First-party intent data is information gathered directly from your own assets (like your website) about your customers, prospects, and visitors, giving you valuable insights into what they are looking for, how interested they are, and the perfect time to engage with them. Think about it like fishing – you could go around guessing where the fish are, but it would be a whole lot easier if the fish simply told you where they are and what kind of bait they prefer.

Leveraging first-party data across your website is one of the most effective ways to tap into your engaged audience and see which companies are actively in the market for your products and which ones you should be sending a direct mailer to.

For B2B sales and marketing teams, this is the easy part. Companies like KickFire can place a simple tag on your site that will gather all the first-party intent data you need. In addition, you can also see valuable company data like industry, revenue range, employee count, and more that you can use to power your sales and marketing programs.

To illustrate this, let’s look at an example:

• An anonymous visitor comes to your website
• You identify them as someone from Company X
• You see that Company X perfectly matches your ICP
• The visitor downloads three whitepapers, reads a case study, and looks at your pricing page.

Now, depending on the lead scoring model you have in place, it would be safe to assume that Company X is in the market for your products and should be placed into a sales outreach email sequence. Once you have a list of companies like this, you can upload them into a direct mail platform like Sendoso and begin the sending process.

How to Strategically Send It!

When done right, sending targeted swag can be an excellent touchpoint for sales teams to engage with high-value target accounts – the key here is “when done right.” To maximize the return on investment, it’s important to be strategic with which companies you send to. Instead of blindly sending to hundreds of companies that have never heard of your company, send fewer higher-quality goods to a more targeted list of companies that have shown buying intent. This approach will be much more effective, save money, and increase engagement rates.

Here are some tactics you can use to increase the effectiveness of your sending:

• Set up an intent-based auto-send – By integrating with technologies like Hubspot, Sendoso can automatically send direct mail gifts to potential prospects once they reach a specified lead score on your website. This will take a lot of the legwork out of the sending process.
• Send different items for sales and marketing – In general, the number of marketing leads your team has will be larger than the number of sales leads. However, they will likely be less engaged as they have yet to reach out and book a meeting with a salesperson. So the marketing team may send out less costly items like coffee cards, mugs, etc., to a larger number of potential prospects while the sales team sends higher-priced items like nice jackets, Yeti water bottles, etc., to a smaller list of more engaged accounts.
• Send different items based on sales stage – This tactic piggybacks off of the previous one. There will likely be a smaller number of accounts in the sales cycle that make it down the funnel, but those that do will be more engaged and higher-value for the sales team. So it makes sense to send higher-cost items to the smaller list of high-value target accounts that make it to the middle/bottom of the sales funnel.
• Use the send to re-engage with accounts that have gone quiet – This is a highly effective way to create a new touchpoint for the sales team that provides them with a reason to reach out again and provides value to the prospect. We’ve seen great success using this method with a roughly 50% response rate.

Measuring the impact of the send

Once you’ve sent your direct mail to your select list of in-market target accounts, monitoring their actions after they accept the items will inform you about how well your campaign is working.

Luckily, in today’s data-driven ABM landscape, measuring the key performance indicators (KPIs) is easier and more accurate than ever before. Here again, KickFire can monitor your watchlist of target accounts to determine when they are actively returning and engaging with your website.

At a minimum, if the prospective buyer accepts the send, it will show a sign of life – that the person works at a company and is aware of your company. However, establishing the specific goals of your direct mail campaign will help you determine whether or not the campaign is working. Do you want sales prospects to re-engage with the sales team? Do you want them to visit your website? Book a meeting? Or are you just trying to stay top-of-mind with your target accounts? Once you have answered these questions, you’ll be well on your way to launching your campaign.

Direct mail sends are one of the most effective ways to stand out amongst the noise of crowded inboxes, and when done properly, can push your sales and marketing efforts to the next level. By integrating first-party intent data into your direct mail platform, you’ll be able to maximize the return on investment of your direct mail campaigns and push your conversion rates to new heights.