Kelsey: [00:00:00] Well, Tom, thank you so much for joining the next CMO podcast this morning. We're super excited to have you on the show. We'd love to learn a little bit more about you and what you do at Madison logic. 

Tom: Absolutely great to be here, Kelsey. So Tom will Regan. I've been at Madison logic for a little over seven years. Madison logic is a global marketing technology organization and we facilitate a account-based marketing platform that helps enterprise marketers. Engage and ultimately convert the accounts they want to sell to faster.

Peter: like a lot of BL goals for forever. And it's certainly something that's important for most of our listeners. I suspect one of the things I wanted to do, Tom, is that. We've talked a lot about ABM you know, in some of the discussions we've had in, in this show. And certainly it's a really popular topic among marketers these days, but be great to kind of go back a little bit into the history.

Can you [00:01:00] tell me sort of how it started, what really ABM means? Because I think it's one of those terms that. Apply to people can apply very broadly, mean slightly different things. Tell me from your perspective, what really is ABM in how long has it been around and how did it get started?

Tom: Yes. So, you know, Madison logic as a business has been around for 17 years and always had a specialty in B2B marketing. Over the last, I'd say six or seven years, B2B marketing has kind of evolved and it's evolved based upon the amounts of pervasive data measurement technology and associated scale to be able to do more sophisticated targeted marketing.

And what marketers have found out is if you're spending marketing dollars on. Channels focused around just the companies you want to sell products to. That's a more efficient and [00:02:00] more effective way to generate revenue. So it sounds extremely simple, but before about seven years ago, there wasn't enough data.

There weren't the tools to allow marketers to see and provide validation and verification that the reaching those accounts and optimize. With the influx of data, measurement tools and capabilities and associated technology. B2B marketers have evolved and they're using ABM as a go to market strategy to be able to grow their business.

And it's been trending up for the last number of years. And. You know, for our business, we work with the most sophisticated marketers. So they've trialed and tested and done all of their various campaigns to understand what the metrics of success are. And once organizations understand those metrics, then we're a viable platform to help them grow and accelerate the.

Peter: So, if you think about ABM, should you think [00:03:00] about, Hey, my targeted, my targeted accounts, is it. Viable for people who have a hundred targets, a hundred thousand, really anything. So tell me a little bit more about sort of the best practices around sort of, how do you think about a how do you think about a target in is ABM really applicable to anyone who really needs to needs to communicate to a well-defined ICP?

Isn't it?

Tom: ABM, as we know it today is focused around kind of one to many, right. And the evolution and accessibility of data and measurement and technology is focused on the scaling of an account-based go-to-market strategy. ABM is not new. Marketing teams have been doing this forever, but what's changed is a one-to-one approach where enterprise marketers were creating specific marketing messaging and a curated plan for a specific [00:04:00] account.

Now have the ability to go after many more accounts with personalized messaging to speed them through the funnel. So that's really what's evolved and changed as it relates to ABM. It's not that it's. Marketing organizations of ours wanted to sell, whether that's expand revenue from a current account or generate a new a new account.

But it's the ability to do that at scale. And, and when I say scale organizations, typically on average go after about 250 companies, or for looking across the enterprises, we work right. 250 companies up to a couple thousand company. But that ability to scale and personalized messages at various stages of the funnel and to measure the impact and optimize for for revenue that's effective, account-based marketing.

Peter: That's super helpful. So a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand is typically what you see. And that's really in, in your domain and where, where you focus obviously broadly ABM in the [00:05:00] approaches can, can apply to. A broader range. It can be people who have one account. It can be people who have, I assume many thousands of accounts.

It may be appropriate for an ABM strategy. And given that, how should marketers think about whether an ABM strategy is appropriate for them?

Tom: Well, there's this really three. That, that marketers should kind of tick the box and check before executing campaigns and spending money in marketing dollars for an account-based strategy, either on an individual channel or in multiple channels. But those three start with an account list, right.

And saying an account list. Well everyone has an account list. That's not true. Right? There's marketing and sales organizations that have two varying lists of accounts. And if you're starting. And account-based marketing campaign or undergoing a strategy. And you're conflicted between marketing and sales on which account list you should go [00:06:00] after you haven't ticked that box.

So marketing and sales teams have to align and agree that their marketing and selling to a group of accounts that are approved. Check the box. Then there has to be recognition of what the goals of the campaign are. Are we branding a new product and solution? To a group of companies that don't work with us or do we have a dual track, which is, here's a group of organizations that we want to retain and upsell.

And here's a group of organizations that we want to acquire. Right. What are the goals and what are the KPIs for success for that new customer acquisition versus the upsell and retention? So understanding the metrics of success. Number two, got to tick that box. And then number three, marketing and sales have to be alone.

On a target account list that they agree upon. There has to be rules of engagement and communication [00:07:00] and intersection between CRM and marketing automation so that the marketing organization can engage and remarket to those individuals that were attracted to either a marketing message, went to a landing page, downloaded some asset, but there has to be an audited.

Marketing effort to be able to bring those individuals at those organizations, into the funnel and remarket to them. And they've got to set those, whether it's lead nurturing and that process up. So integrating the tools to be able to communicate with the individuals of the accounts would be stepping up.

Peter: Yeah. Got it. So I understand the, the requirements and sort of what needs to be in place. And that's, that's actually a really great list. If we step back a little bit and say, should I even be doing AB. And so how would you make that determination? So is it related to your target market? Is [00:08:00] it your go to market motion?

Is it I just do IBM, so I should do it better. How should I think about that as a marketing leader, especially, it's a great opportunity to. Reach those people who aren't doing any ABM today, is there an opportunity as an example, even if you don't have a targeted account strategy, should you be spawning, a targeted account strategy for part of your go to market?

Tom: Absolutely. And I think, I think what's gone are, you know, individual channel marketers, right. And for the last number of years there were channel marketers. There were marketers that were so focused on. I'm going to share content and I'm going to get likes and shares and comments, and they've got all this amazing data, but the sales team never sees it.

They have no understanding of who's engaging with the social content. Who's sharing it, how to connect with those individuals to those accounts. So it's really worthless. So channel marketing has [00:09:00] evolved and you know, the individuals at the organizations we work with, we're working with growth, mark. Right.

They could have come from demand generation. They could've come from field marketing, but the growth marketers have a revenue target. They have a revenue target that's associated with their job and they need to market and sell products to reach a goal. So if there's an individual that has a title of account-based marketer and a growth marketer, they're sitting within the sales organization or outside the sales, but they're measured on KPIs, consistent with.

Then they should be focused on a set of accounts and they should have a strategy in place to be able to grow and generate that goal with a set of accounts. If there's an individual working within an organization and they're a a channel expert in social or in specifically in demand gen or in, or in display advertising they won't be.

For very long, because those [00:10:00] KPIs are inconsistent with revenue growth unless they're associated to a revenue target. So if you're looking to grow a business and you're looking to generate revenue and you're looking to be more measurable about where your marketing dollars are going and account-based strategy always prevails a less targeted general B2B marketing.

Peter: So I think there are two, there are two concepts in there. Tom, if I unpack them a little bit that are important to know, one is the idea of one is the idea of. Targeting and focus that you highlighted, which I would agree is incredibly important in, in one of the real values of account-based marketing.

It's it's a kind of personalization. So it's, it's I think of it as companies station, right? So it's, it's actually Building a message that's applicable for that specific company within that specific domain. The other thing that you mentioned is something that, you know, Kelsey and I talk about all the time.

[00:11:00] I, and we write a book. The next CMO is the idea of thinking more broadly about campaigns and getting away from that channel specific concept. And it's, I think it's, it's related in, in additional to the targeting is the concept of, of going. Broadly after a an approach. And like you said, not getting buried down into these sort of vanity metrics that that may not be related to to an actual outcome that you're trying to drive, which may be a new customer and expansion or whatever it is.

In fact, you, you all talk about the idea that the concept of multi-channel AB. Can, can you define that a little bit? I assume we're in the same. We're talking about the same thing here. Now it's the idea of getting away from a single channel, but defining your words, what you think, what you guys think of is multi-channel ABM.

Tom: Sure. Well, you know, I think marketing technology organizations. Do a great job of [00:12:00] confusing, right? The marketplace and call themselves ABM platforms. So, you know, there's no ABM platform, it doesn't exist. It sounds crazy Madison logic, sin account-based marketing platform, but we don't solve for every challenge that every B2B organization has in terms of website personalization.

Right. And, and every aspect of, of B2B strategy. But what we do is focused on. Working with enterprise marketers that have an account-based strategy, we help them prioritize their account list. So if they have an account list, we provide a level of data that says, you know what, you're trying to target the fortune 500 to sell this particular software.

There's 200 companies that are more likely to buy based upon data and signals that we have as an organization. And we'll shorten the sales cycle and what we propose. Is doing a multi-channel strategy, which we define is account-based demand generation, right? Focus [00:13:00] on the personas at those accounts that are most likely to buy, right?

Getting the assets, the white papers and infographics and all the long form content in the hands of those buyers within that. So that's number one, one channel demand generation, which is the fast growing very effective channel for ABM. Then there's, account-based display advertising, right?

Programmatically targeting accounts, and those personas on the programmatic web with display ads. And then the third one, which is really important over the last few years, we've integrated, we've got a bi-directional integration with LinkedIn. So a account-based growth marketer can see. How they are engaging with personas at a set of accounts in one unified central reporting system that integrates with CRM and marketing automation, so that that organization can understand who's engaging with content.

How do we remarket to them? And how can we [00:14:00] track engagement from three channels into opportunity creation in Salesforce. And I think if you're established. Metrics set up front. We want to generate pipeline. We want to close deals. Having a multi-channel approach is effective at shortening sales cycle, increasing deal size, and ultimately driving revenue for. 

Kelsey: So I think Tom, one of the issues, a lot of people struggle with in marketing is obviously measuring that success and understanding, you know, how Well, these campaigns are performing and especially ABM, it's such a complicated, you know intense process to make sure, you know, you're hitting the right accounts and all that.

How are you measuring that success? How are you understanding that recognition of those campaigns that you're currently doing to say, Hey, this was a viable campaign. ABM worked. We should continue to do it in our marketing strategy.

Tom: Well, we built a end-to-end measurement platform that basically allows marketers to see [00:15:00] either logging into our software platform or logging into their marketing automation or CRM, how those accounts are engaging with their content in real time. Right. Seven years ago. You'd be spending money as a marketer, programmatically targeting individuals, but not understanding how many of those individuals were at the companies that you were trying to engage with.

Right? So programmatic without measurement, isn't an effective tool because you can optimize publishers that are running campaigns on associated content and websites. If there's no measurement on how those ads are engaging with accounts you can optimize. So the whole premise behind it, behind account based market.

And the reason Madison logic exists is we provide real time verified, validated measurement of the individuals at the companies. Our clients are targeting in real time, so they can optimize different creative to be able to drive conversions. And that measurement is across demand [00:16:00] generation, programmatic display and LinkedIn, and one unified measurement platform.

So it's the basis behind why. Is not only effective, but increasing in terms of a go-to-market strategy because it's the verification and validation. And what we saw going into the pandemic, B2B marketers have been transitioning higher percentages of their budget to digital over the years. But during the pandemic, a hundred percent of the buyer and seller journey was focused online.

And the marketers that one that grew faster during the pandemic are ones that already understood how much they can pay to acquire a new. What the metrics of success were to retain an upsell current accounts. And those organizations grew way faster during the pandemic than organizations that said, wow, maybe we should do some testing and maybe we should trial some ABM on multi channels.

It was harder for them to figure it out. And we had a unique vantage point to be able to see our organizations working with us, [00:17:00] the sophisticated ones, they were able to scale. Right.

Peter: So it sounds like the primary thesis for, for ABM. Is that a more targeted message? Reaching the right person is going to convert at a higher rate. Is that fair?

Tom: That's right. And, and it's taking all the guesswork out. So it's not run a campaign for three months and then get a report after three months, here are the impressions and here's who you reached, you know, marketers think they know what content is going to be. Even Madison logic, maybe we think, right, here's the right content for that audience.

But if you're running multiple assets digital assets are multiple you know, gated assets. You're able to see very quickly in real time, which ones are resonating with the buying groups, that the accounts that you're targeting and evolve, optimize out, create new content. And that's the key with a successful account-based marketing strategy using. Optimizing that content [00:18:00] increasing engagement and then being able to track all of that through to pipeline and.

Peter: So I assume a more evolved approach. If you look back, I think it's some of the initial approaches for ABM. It really was a form of personalization. As we talk about it says, Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to customize my content to this particular company. What I think you advocate is, is also mapping that to the point they happen to be at a buying cycle at that current time.

And because obviously just personalizing saying welcome IBM to my website is not very exciting, but if you happen to know that IBM is in the market for your thing, and they are in step three of the buyer's journey and you might present them with more financial information versus a high-level thing or something like that.

So is the, are. typical is it that people are sort of data [00:19:00] evolved, Tom where they're mapping not only to the account, but also to the point in the buyer.

Tom: Th that's like level three, you know, so we, we have marketers that we've been working with for over a decade and it takes a long time to ensure that you've got the trucks. And the level of security to integrate with the systems they use. But everything with ABM is shifting to a more dynamic, always on approach.

And to be successful, you have to personalize messages at varying stages of the funnel, which is what you're mentioning. So what we've done with our platform, we don't want to force people to go into the ML platform and log in all the time. So we've created these integrations with our data. To integrate with Eloqua, integrate with Salesforce, integrate with Adobe marketing cloud and HubSpot, HubSpot, and Marketo. And those integrations facilitate more knowledge. So our clients don't want to be [00:20:00] serving marketing messages to an account that has a hundred million dollar opportunity in their Salesforce instance. That doesn't make any sense. So basically with an integration, we're able to bucket these accounts. Are not currently clients and there's no opportunity in Salesforce.

This group of accounts has an opportunity in Salesforce at 25% stage. This group of accounts is 50% or 90%. So we basically bucket the accounts based on opportunity stage, and we create these personalized marketing message. That are in turn, helping to speed deals through the funnel. So there's a quarter of our clients that are fully integrated that personalize the journey and are leveraging a feature.

We call journey acceleration, which is where everyone wants to go. An integrated multichannel account-based strategy, designed to optimize and shorten deal cycles, but that's account based marketing [00:21:00] and that's the Nirvana and that's, that's where the industry and account-based marketers are moving.

Peter: So you, you, you said that was level three. How many levels are there?

Tom: There's really three right now. There's three levels. That's that's the highest that's that's the highest

Peter: I didn't know if it was three out of 11

Tom: no, no.

Peter: something like that.

Tom: everything's in threes here. Madison logic. That's the third level.

Peter: So when one thing that I, I always wondered, Tom, and you can demystify this for me. So if I'm doing ABM kind of targeting and I'm mapping to the sales cycle, is there ever a point. Where you would say don't deliver any message to that customer because they're at a sensitive point in the bind cycle. Is there a point where you sort of opt them out of communication?

Because they're about to put the pen on the contract digitally and you don't want to do anything that may distract.

Tom: I would say. Because there's, you know, if you're confident in your brand and your [00:22:00] product and the challenge that products, the, that product is solving for, it's always okay to reinforce, even if it's just a brand new. Where someone feels good signing that contract, right? Because sales cycles and enterprise software are extremely long, right?

Six to 12 months. If we're talking about some of the products, our clients are marketing. So you know, we're all susceptible to brand messages on various channels. So I don't think there's ever a time where you kind of stop marketing, but I do think there's the right level of marketing and maybe you stop sending emails.

That are maybe for a prospect that are not associated with someone who's going to sign a multi-year enterprise software license. So you'd stop that, but it's okay to perhaps some brand reinforcement.

Peter: And how, how has the whole set of restrictions on third-party cookies effected ABM for, [00:23:00] for your customers?

Tom: You know, for programmatic display the privacy laws were put in place to protect consumers. And when you look at some of the approved language from Google and apple, they look at cohorts around companies and accounts and they book. Into these groups and the individuals are anonymous, but we're really targeting effectively individuals at an account.

So that is a approved above the board digital effective way to target engage individuals. And in many instances the integration within CRM and marketing automation, and even the website activity allow for the retard. Of individuals and it's, it's way more permissible and open as compared to the privacy laws and increasing privacy laws as relates to consumer individual personal identifiable information.

Peter: Yeah, th there's permissible [00:24:00] and then there's possible, right? Because there's some cases, of course, if you've you're blocking third party cookies, as an example, are there cases where you can't deliver a message? Even, even if it's viable under under the current law. And in that case, how, how do you get around it?

How do you adapt your strategy to deliver those personalized messages?

Tom: Well, if we're talking about programmatic advertising, You can always deliver a message, but what you may not be able to do is verify that individual, who they are, what their title is and what company they work for. So there could be some opacity as it relates to resolving to a domain or an account, which is what we do, right.

We know who you are, where you work, and we can resolve to that domain. If those. Metrics or information elements aren't there, then we're not effectively reporting that we served you an ad, but the ad is [00:25:00] still served to you, but it's not a, it's not a major problem in, in B2B or account-based marketing.

And it's not as prevalent as the consumer privacy challenges that are, that are happening now.

Peter: Yeah. And I, and I assume certainly on four elements of your strategy, where if you're doing, you know, email outbound, as an example, that's clearly. affected at all by these things. If you're doing anything with first party data on your website, that's not effected at all. It, it, it does impact things like your ability to do retargeting in some cases, especially if people are using some of these

Sort of emphasizes in my mind, the requirement for marketers to think about creative ways, one to build their own first party data, build their own communities, build reasons for people to come back, build compelling data, et cetera. It w which reminds me, I I'd love your perspective, Tom, on w what is your, the [00:26:00] end prospects better?

Of ABM, because I think it's meaningful, right? So obviously your direct customer, the marketer, who's trying to get their end prospect to convert, but I suspect there's probably significant value for the for the, the, the prospect, just in things like relevance. Does that make sense?

Tom: Oh, in terms of the the potential buyer of the product. So having relevant marketing messages that solve for a real challenge, absolutely having more tailored marketing and personalized marketing. Benefits the consumer or the target individual at the account. We all open our email every morning when we wake up, we're getting the same things, right.

Every day, right. Messages that are not targeted that are totally unfiltered. Not understanding what we do over challenges we have, but in that there is a personalized marketing message that really would solve for challenge with. You know, in my case, I forward that. Right. I'm a great forwarder, right?

I, I won't read it, but I'm going to send it to [00:27:00] someone. Hey, this looks interesting. And sometimes my team says, thumb, that's an automated marketing message. And I said, well, why does that matter? I was like, it really matter. It's relevant to something we're talking about. It could solve for a challenge. I don't care if it's a bot, but it's relevant to me and I kick it on.

But some people in my team they're, you know, they're so sophisticated. They're all expert marketers. And they don't like to be called. By an automated marketing message. Me I'm indifferent. I'm not reading it anyway. I'm just passing it on. But long story short, I respond to effective marketing. I love effective personalized marketing and and it just works. 

Kelsey: so Tom, where do you see the future of account-based marketing going and like, you know, put on your, your, your light bulb cap, where do you see ABM going in the future? 

Tom: But when we talked about levels, right, we talked about three levels. So the first level level one is doing an executing an account-based strategy through an individual channel, [00:28:00] right? Targeting personas at a group of accounts that you think are going to buy your product and emailing them assets and having them register and download and generating leads.

That's that's level one level two is wow. We can reach more people on the buying. If we programmatically target display advertising to those accounts while we generate demand and generate leads, right? That's level two, level three is, you know what? We can reach more people influence more of the buyers across social, integrating with LinkedIn, connecting our demand gen and promote programmatic display and tie in our Salesforce and marketing automation and track engagement.

As it relates to pipeline. And accelerate the journey by personalizing messages. That's the future of ABM. So, you know, our platform is built for sophisticated account-based marketers that understand metrics of success for investing real digital dollars and achieving pipeline. So we don't [00:29:00] work with everybody.

They're totally vetted. So we are on this continuum for organizations at work with. And we are working with them as they get more advanced in their strategy, whether that's multi-channel or integrated to personalize the message, but the future's here for those marketers that are ready to execute and activate and always on an account-based digital strategy to accelerate the journey and convert their account.

So it's, it's, it's there, but it's, it's it's up to the organization, their teams. And their competence in and just getting going.

Peter: So outside ABM, what are you most excited about?

Tom: That's a great question. I focus so much of my time on, on account-based marketing, but you know, I've been doing digital marketing since 1999. And when I sold digital advertising@acompanycalledthestreet.com [00:30:00] my first full I was giving reports that talked about. Here's how many people clicked on your ad and then no knowledge of like purchase you know, those are gone, right?

So no one's sharing with CEOs, the click-through rate, right? That is just a meaningless metric. The metrics that I look at that leaders look at our return on investment. So just take me through. The metrics of success for how we spent money so that I know we can continue it and spend more based upon the pipeline and revenue.

So I love the fact that there is growth marketers and revenue, marketers geared towards generating business outcomes. And that's what I'm excited about. And that's what every leader of every organization would be excited about. Not their allocation to. But the effectiveness of reaching the right customers and seeing business impact.

So that's, that's what excites me. It does morph into account-based, but it just revenue marketing and growth marketing and verified, validated [00:31:00] ROI, centric, approaches, and strategies that yield businesses.

Peter: But that's great. There's music, art ears obviously in our business here at planet that's, that's what we do. So we're excited about that. The, a couple other things, one question I had for you was about. The companies that are doing the best job today at ABM. Do you have an example of someone who's just really killing it with ABM today?

Tom: I won't say any one client, because I wouldn't want to call out an

Peter: Your favorite child? You, you,

Tom: I can't.

Peter: you can anonymize them. We'll use the voice changer.

Tom: Well, I'll go to the, I'll go to the the level three analogy, right? We went through the three levels, so there's a group of marketers. And I said it was about a quarter of our clients at Madison logic.

We've got hundreds of clients. Those that 25%, right? That, that top [00:32:00] 25%, those marketers are ones that are executing their strategy, knowing more about the accounts they're selling to than the other 75%. So knowing the most about the accounts you're selling to, right personalizing messages, understanding the effect and impact of reaching with reaching more people at the buying committee.

Multiple channels and doing the work to plug in the systems they use to communicate between marketing and sales so that they're tracking pipeline and personalizing messages. That is the most effective way to generate revenue, whether you're upselling cross-selling or focused on new accounts, but.

Having the metrics of success that we can see as a business of Madison logic and they can see and setting that always on strategy. That is the most successful approach of account-based marketing, where the market's headed, headed. And these are organizations we've been working with for [00:33:00] literally a decade to get there.

So that that's the group that gets.

Peter: Makes a lot of sense. And by the way, it was a great to go down memory lane there. Talking about the street. I remember that I was in the digital advertising world in the, in the late nineties, working for a CMGI company called engage. If you remember

Tom: of course. Yeah.

Peter: and yeah. Back in the day. Yeah. It's amazing what we were trying to do back then.

And you know, you and I were in these pioneering kind of companies and we were dealing with. Sticks and rocks for tools to try to make this stuff happen. But it's, it's been incredible to see over the last couple of decades, the evolution in, in a lot of it is really the connectedness, the cloud computing platforms, the kind of technology that enables these ideas that really existed in some form even more than 20 years ago.

So it's exciting to see the evolution over time.[00:34:00]

Tom: I totally agree. It's digital transformation. It's the advancement. And in CRM, marketing automation, you know, that that's fueled. The whole growth of B2B marketing, the evolution of ABM and it is exciting to see.

Peter: Great. Well, I think we're, we're about to get to our last question here. Time flies when you're having fun here. And I, I wanted to one, thank you, Tom, for for being on the podcast. Really great discussion. I need to have someone who is so deep in this domain, because it is such an important topic for, for many of our listeners.

So I really do appreciate it. Just before it, Kelsey goes into our last question. How do people learn more about Madison logic?

Tom: Oh, Go to our website, Madison logic.com. You can go to, you can go to LinkedIn. Also one of our partners, but it's been great. Thanks a lot, Kelsey. Okay.

Kelsey: Yeah, 

Peter: We'll I'll put a link in the, in the show notes there for you to find out more information about Madison logic indefinitely. If you are a B2B [00:35:00] marketer, you should check it out. And with that, I think Kelsey, we have your last question.

Kelsey: Favorite question.

What advice would you give to those that are CMOs or aspiring to be one someday? 

Tom: focus on the metrics that matter, right? The metrics you can take to a CEO, those are the metrics that matter. Everything else are just vanity metrics. If you focus on that, you'll win. 

Kelsey: Music to warriors. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Tom. It was great to have you on the show. Make sure to follow the next Simo and plan out on Twitter and LinkedIn. And if you have any ideas for topics or guests, you can email us@thenextcmoatplanet.com. Have a great day, everyone. Thanks Tom. 

Tom: All right. Thanks. Very much.