4 Ways To Use Employee Email As A New Channel For ABM Engagement

Engagement is the new lead

Purchasing groups and committees are on the rise. That’s why B2B marketers have shifted their approach from “casting a wide net” to account-based marketing (ABM). And within a team’s ABM operation, there are a number of KPIs used to determine success.

“Opportunities created” and “deals won” are amongst the most popular. However, these numbers might register as zero across the board without engagement. How are your top accounts and contacts engaging with your brand? Are you getting your content in front of just a few targets who have already submitted a form? Or, are dozens of contacts within the purchasing group recognizing your logo as they see it across many different channels?

Engagement is the bread and butter of account-based marketing, and measuring the touches happening with an account is vital for assessing the effectiveness of your strategy. That being said, engagement can be defined in many ways. Did a key contact from a targeted account click on your social ad? Did they see the box of swag on their desk that was sent from your team? Were they in attendance during your regional field marketing event? Whatever it may be, and however engagement is defined within your ABM operation, we can all agree on this statement. The more a targeted account interacts with your brand, content, and people, the better.

But it’s not always easy. Teams are constantly trying to break through the noise so the right people engage with their brand. And it’s not always successful, as audience attention is a gold mine for marketers nowadays. That’s why teams are considering a new channel for ABM engagement.

Are you taking advantage of employee email?

In addition to social advertising channels, direct mail, and field marketing, marketers are now utilizing employee email as a way to engage with key ABM targets. And it doesn’t just stop with engagement. Teams are using this channel to move accounts through the sales cycle quicker and generate revenue for the business.

You see, email is still the workhorse of digital marketing. The number of emails sent and received per day total over 246 billion, according to The Radicati Group Email Statistics Report. That’s a number that towers over total daily ad impressions from Google, Snapchat views, and even Facebook visits. Yet the world continues to underestimate the reach of email.

We all live in our email (6.3 hours a day on average). And for some, checking their inbox is the first thing they do after waking up or last thing before going to sleep. Sounds like the perfect opportunity for engagement, right? Employee email presents a huge opportunity for marketers to add personalized, but scalable, content resources into the billions of organic conversations that are already happening. How? The employee email signature.

A small yet effective piece of digital real estate

What does each and every one of these billions of emails include? The email signature.

This small piece of digital real estate allows marketers to unlock a high-volume channel and take advantage of an audience’s attention. What seems relatively simple and straightforward at first, the employee email signature actually represents layers of targeting and engagement possibilities that can help drive more views, downloads, plays, registrations, etc.

Email signature marketing makes a dent in the “Engage” section of an ABM operation. Most interactions with targeted accounts will be in either Gmail or Outlook, and it’ll happen in the conversations your team is already having. You’re now allowing each exchange from your email domain to have powerful banners that are relevant, specifically, to the individual accounts you’re talking to. And the data shows, recipients pay attention to branded email signatures.

Here are four use cases that show how email signature marketing can unlock employee email as a new channel for ABM engagement:

1. Account targeting

Already sending an account personalized handwritten notes and clever social ads? Why not use the same approach when sending them an email? By pairing a specific email signature banner with an email domain, each email sent to that account now includes a personalized touch. For example, when an email is sent to @klowd.com, recipients will see a “We love Klowd Software” banner. All while inviting the targeted account to learn more about your company.

The next step is to scale this approach. Within our own account, we’ve launched 250+ personalized banners for our ABM targets which has resulted in thousands of clicks.

2. Industry targeting

Do you have content that resonates best with a specific industry or audience? Build a target list of accounts and pair it up with a banner that leads them to the relevant resource. For example, the team at SendGrid published several different versions of their essential email guide, each catered to a different vertical. By syncing their Marketo smart lists (built around each vertical) with specific email signature campaigns, each version was promoted to the appropriate audience.

3. Targeting by sales stage

As your ABM targets move through the sales cycle, timely messaging with a personal touch will help your brand stand out amongst the crowd. Imagine adding a prospect to a marketing automation workflow after a successful demo call, which triggers the contact to be added to a recipient list. By pairing a specific email signature banner to that particular recipient list, a “Thanks for seeing a demo!” message will then appear when the sales team member sends a demo follow-up email. With marketing automation and email signature marketing working together, ABM magic can happen within every email.

4. Deliver more relevant content with email signature marketing

If you use a tool or platform to build personalized content experiences for your targeted audiences, you can add email signature marketing as a way to deliver it to them! Think about using a tool like Spotify or Vimeo to create a curated playlist focused on a particular theme and promote it in every email sent to your intended audience. Or, use LookBookHQ to create a content track filled with videos, PDFs, eBooks-you name it-built specifically with a segment or target account in mind. For example, promote a content track that includes ABM-specific resources with an email signature banner wrapped in a matching email message. The recipient is more likely to click and interact with the content because it’s relevant to them.

Consider all channels when trying to engage with your ABM targets. And use personalized content experiences with email signature marketing to unlock employee email as one of those channels. Because in the ABM world, engagement is key. It’s the foundation for accelerating purchase decisions and, ultimately, winning more customers.