How To Create Personalized ABM Campaigns For Every Contact In HubSpot
Send the right content to each contact at a target account.
👋 Hey, I’m Stuart – welcome to the 88 new ConnectedGTM readers who joined since last week! This edition has been made available for 💸 FREE 💸 by Air Traffic Control | Scale 1:1 ABM infinitely inside HubSpot with personalized campaigns for every individual — every time.
Here’s a question for you…
Is ABM just good marketing in 2024?
If the goal is more efficient spend and impact on revenue, there seems to be a strong case for the answer being yes.
Emily Kramer posted that “All of marketing is rapidly becoming more like ABM.” and was met with a flurry of positive replies, and good debate on LinkedIn.
Mason Cosby put it bluntly in a recent interview “What would anybody else be doing?”
And this isn’t just really smart people saying stuff on the internet, McKinsey research found that personalization (the core premise of ABM for target accounts) provides distinct, tangible advantages for a business. It can:
→ reduce customer acquisition costs by as much as 50%
→ increase marketing ROI by 10-30%.
→ and, lift revenues by 5-15%
So today, we’re digging into how you can build a highly personalized ABM program using HubSpot, enabled by Air Traffic Control.
Highlights
→ Connect existing and competitor content with contact engagement history to identify what topics are working and which ones you should create new content for.
→ Personalize every piece of content you use to engage contacts in your HubSpot account via email, LinkedIn, or on your site with dynamic recommendations based on their interests.
→ Build multi-channel ABM campaigns with confidence they are highly relevant to your target accounts, backed by automated research.
As always, the exact steps to implement this playbook in HubSpot can be found at the bottom of the post. Let’s get into it.
HubSpot already has several built-in features which can be used to build an account-based marketing program.
→ Target accounts (for identifying the accounts you’d like to sell to)
→ Lifecycle stages (for tracking progression through your funnel)
→ Lead scoring (for scoring contacts and companies based on your criteria)
But, regardless of whether you choose to use the Target Accounts features available in HubSpot’s Marketing and Sales Hub Professional plans, there are strategies you can use to run your ABM program inside HubSpot without buying expensive ABM tech.
If you are looking for ways to personalize your account based experience, and engage contacts with the right content at the right time, based on their unique preferences. Air Traffic Control is worth exploring.
This playbook for contact level personalization for your target accounts in HubSpot is enabled by the interest graphs and custom personalization properties Air Traffic Control populates based on each contact’s engagement history.
Features
Air Traffic Control is available in the HubSpot app marketplace and is focused on helping teams deploy 1:1 personalization at scale without adopting another platform, but instead leveraging the existing power of their HubSpot account.
AI Researcher
Enrich the interest graph for designated contacts in HubSpot using their LinkedIn profile and past 90 days of content engagement behavior on the platform to inform how future content interactions should be prioritized.
Personalized Content Recommendations
Air Traffic Control provides automated content recommendations for each contact in HubSpot based on their previous content engagement and enrichment. With recommendations for specific content types including:
→ Blog Posts
→ Case Studies
→ Courses
→ Company News Articles
→ Podcasts
→ Webinars
→ Whitepapers
These regularly updated properties enable 1:1 personalized content across newsletters, emails, and landing pages, all within HubSpot.
Competitor Content Analysis
Knowing how your competitors are investing in content, the topics they're covering, and who's engaging with them on LinkedIn (especially without a lot of manual research) makes it easier to prioritize creating the content that will resonate most with your audience. Insights include:
👀 Real-time tracking of competitors' content
📰 Monitoring 60,000+ media sources for mentions
📈 LinkedIn engagement metrics for each competitive post
👥 Ability to track and export contacts engaging with your competitors
Export LinkedIn Custom Audiences
With Air Traffic Control you can export contacts to LinkedIn Custom Audiences who fit specific interest criteria validated by their content engagement profile.
Typical LinkedIn CPCs are $5-$6, ATC customers have seen CPCs of less than $1 that drive meaningful highly-qualified website traffic by using these focused exports and pairing them with creative and messaging aligned precisely with their interests.
Build an account-based marketing campaign in HubSpot enabled by Air Traffic Control
Let’s see where Air Traffic Control fits inside an account-based marketing campaign and the functionality it provides to enrich the personalized experiences you can build inside HubSpot.
We’ll build our ABM campaign by following 4 key phases of Preparation, Awareness Building, Outbound Engagement, and Lifecycle Campaigns.
Here’s how it works step-by-step:
Step 1. Preparation
The initial prep phase is critical to ensure your ABM campaign is well-targeted and your content will resonate. Here’s how to get started:
Audience Enrichment: Begin by using the ATC LinkedIn enrichment feature to import and analyze the LinkedIn profiles of contacts at your target accounts. This allows you to understand the interests and behaviors of key decision-makers in your target accounts, making your outreach more relevant and personalized.
💡 Consider using LinkedIn engagement as a filter for choosing which contacts to target with 1:1 messages later in the outbound phase of the campaign.
Content Relevance Analysis: Once you’ve enriched your audience data, use ATC’s content relevance feature to analyze how well your existing content resonates with your target accounts.
Start by identifying content that aligns with the interests and needs of your target audience. This analysis is crucial to highlight any content gaps that need to be addressed before launching your campaign.
Competitor Content Analysis: Load your competitors into Air Traffic Control to automatically analyze the content they’re producing. By identifying the topics they’re covering, you can ensure your content is not only competitive but also filling any gaps that your competitors might be missing that your target buyers care about.
Develop a Content Plan: Based on the insights gathered from the relevance and competitor analysis, use ATC’s topic reporting feature to create a robust content development plan. The goal is to reach at least 60-70% relevance across your target audience. This means your content should address the key pain points, challenges, and interests identified during the prep phase.
💡 Aim for 60% content relevance. If your content is only relevant to a small percentage of your audience, develop additional pieces based on the analysis.
Step 2: Build Awareness
In the awareness phase, our goal is to make target accounts aware of our brand while ensuring that this awareness is deeply personalized to increase engagement.
LinkedIn Thought Leadership Ads
Start by converting your most relevant content (from the Air Traffic Control) content analysis to a format that works well on LinkedIn.
→ such as thought leadership text posts
→ flow charts diagrams and pdf slideshows
→ short videos (both 16:9 and vertical 9:16)
Along with repackaging organic social content for LinkedIn you can also export the audience segments identified during the prep phase and upload them as custom audiences in LinkedIn to target thought leadership ads effectively.
💡 Air Traffic Control customers have cut LinkedIn ad costs by 80%. With CPCs of less than $1 using highly relevant content identified by ATC.
Personalized ABM Landing Page
Build a dedicated ABM landing page template using HubSpot’s smart content features and the personalized content recommendations provided by ATC.
This page should be dynamic, updating automatically with new content and personalized messaging based on the visitor’s persona and engagement history.
Elements of an Effective ABM Landing Page
Personalized Hero Section:
Dynamically include both your company logo and the visitor’s (a nice touch 👀).
Use HubSpot’s smart content to dynamically update the hero section with a persona-based value proposition and offering image that adapts based on visitor data.
Recommended Case Study:
Place the most relevant case study recommended by Air Traffic Control for the visitor prominently, including a headline, summary, and personalized CTA linking to the full case study page.
Additional Resources:
Below the case study, offer additional recommended content like blog posts, interactive demos, or on-demand webinars. This provides multiple opportunities to resonate and increase engagement.
💡 Air Traffic Control will regularly update the content recommendations for a contact which will automatically update this page making it more engaging the next time a contact views it.
By focusing on personalization and relevance in awareness-building efforts, we can create a compelling reason for your target accounts to continue to engage and lay the foundation for deeper interactions in the subsequent stages of our ABM campaign.
Step 3: Outbound
In this phase, the focus shifts to direct outreach, including both automated touch points and personalized communication to nurture engagement:
Outbound Campaign Setup:
Consider integrating tools like La Growth Machine, Lemlist, or Phantom Buster to automate viewing profiles and liking posts on LinkedIn. These subtle interactions build familiarity before direct outreach.
Structure your outreach to start with light, value-driven touches. Begin with viewing their LinkedIn profile, then engage with their content, and sending a connection request.
💡 Use the “surround sound” effect of focusing on specific target accounts when managing your LinkedIn engagement. Connecting with the people around your target contact can increase the likelihood of an accepted request.
Email Campaign Structure:
Create a series of emails focused on getting a reply. Start with a simple value prop that matches what you know about a specific contact.
Follow up with personalized content recommendations, such as a case studies relevant to the contact’s industry or a blog post that addresses their pain points.
Introduce progressively higher-intent content throughout the campaign, such as an invitation to an on-demand webinar or a link to a dedicated resource page or course tailored to their interests.
💡 Vary the content and format of your emails to encourage engagement and avoid feeling overly templated. Include short, personalized notes from a rep, and relevant industry news, or insightful blog posts recommended by Air Traffic Control.
🔗 Where it makes sense, link back to the dynamic ABM landing page, ensuring that prospects have multiple opportunities to interact with your most relevant content.
The goal of this phase is about creating meaningful touch points that guide your target accounts through the buying journey, ensuring that each interaction is personalized and adds value.
By combining multiple channels, a lighter touch, with intentionally increasing engagement levels, you’re more likely to convert these interactions into opportunities.
Step 4: Lifecycle Email
Continuous engagement with your target accounts by building a personalized lifecycle email campaign in HubSpot to ensure they receive relevant follow-up content and CTAs that match their stage in the buyer’s journey.
Step 1: Create a list of contacts at your target accounts
Using an active list provides an advantage over simply setting the same filters in your HubSpot workflow trigger. You can use this list to quickly identify and segment users at your target accounts for other communication and reporting.
💡 Filters: If you are using HubSpot’s Target Account features, a list called “All contacts associated with Target Accounts” will already have been created for you.
Step 2: Create an automated contact based workflow in HubSpot
To manage the experience for each contact at a target account we can build an automated workflow to branch the communication and the subsequent experience they receive based on the way they are engaging with our campaign.
1. 👤 Create a contact based workflow
⚡️ Trigger Criteria:
→ List membership - is member of “Target Account Users”
→ Page View has at least one page view of a URL that contains “/abm-landing-page” in the last 30 days
💡 Don’t re-enroll contacts into this workflow - this is an optional setting that will prevent users created with the same email address from receiving this sequence multiple times.
💡I recommend using a contact based workflow to ensure all subsequent contacts added to a target account are eligible for the same personalized engagement.
2. 🌱 Branch the workflow based on whether the enrolled contact has reached a specific lead score criteria
We now use two separate flows that are each designed to increase the conversion rate of accounts to an opportunity with a deal created when a meeting is booked.
In our first activation milestone example we are checking if the “HubSpot score” property on a contact has a value of at least 50.
💡 These branching logic checks will be repeated for each activation milestone we’ve defined and each should have their own corresponding actions for guiding users to complete each milestone.
Success Branch - Hot Lead 🔥
When the lead score criteria we’ve defined is met we want to follow the success branch to check whether or not an opportunity has also been created.
A user will continue following this path through the workflow until they either become an opportunity or complete all the steps in the workflow.
The higher the intent of the lead, the higher intent personalized content we can send. For hot leads you might consider sending more case studies or on demand webinars.
Because Air Traffic Control adds personalized content recommendations for each contact to HubSpot properties you can send one email template and every contact will receive the content that’s most likely to resonate with them.
Failure Branch - Visitor 👀
In the branch for contacts who have not met our lead score criteria we can use the subsequent workflow actions to encourage the engagement needed to increase the lead score such as a ABM landing page visits or engaging with campaign emails.
5. 📧 Send automated emails with dynamically updated content recommended by Air Traffic Control
For many products this email could include recommended case studies, or tactical education to get started.
6. ⏰ Delay and check again if the Lead Score criteria has been met.
7. 🌱 If the Lead Score criteria has been met we can use a “Go to action” step to redirect the work flow to check if an opportunity has been created.
Retargeting Strategies:
Use LinkedIn retargeting ads to stay top-of-mind with contacts who have recently engaged with your ABM landing page. Create custom audiences in HubSpot based on page visits within the last 30-60 days.
Regularly analyze the content preferences of these visitors to identify the most engaging topics, and use this data to boost the visibility of similar content on LinkedIn through targeted thought leadership ads.
This final phase is crucial for maintaining momentum and ensuring that your target accounts stay engaged. By leveraging retargeting and personalized follow-ups, you can encourage ongoing interaction, ultimately leading to conversion.
As always, it’s important to test new products with your own workflows and data, so why not try a free trial of Air Traffic Control, or get in touch with the awesome ATC team if you have questions.
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