Building two-way relationships

Today’s business landscape is highly competitive. So, effective marketing requires so much more than just broad messaging and one-way communication. It demands a deep understanding of customer needs, personalized experiences, and strategic alignment between marketing and sales teams. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) emerges as a powerful approach that fosters connections, drives engagement, and generates meaningful results. In our latest ABM podcast, Hillary Carpio, Senior Director of ABM at Snowflake, shares strategies for aligning marketing with sales, scaling ABM efforts, and orchestrating impactful campaigns.

Connection in buying cycles

Unlike traditional marketing, which relies on broadcasting messages to a wide audience, ABM prioritizes building two-way relationships between companies and prospects or customers. It aims to understand their interests, values, and goals, aligning those with what the company has to offer.

Hillary’s transition from NetApp – where she began her career – to Snowflake allowed her to home in on her skills as a facilitator and embrace her passion for connecting people, ideas, and teams. Valuable insights meant she learned to navigate the pressures of shareholder expectations and the need for rapid growth. Snowflake’s startup speed, combined with enterprise-scale operations, encouraged agility, teamwork, and a focus on delivering the best results every day.

“The idea of ABM is to get the right message to the right people at the right time. And that is connecting what they’re interested in, what makes them successful in their jobs, what they value to what you have to offer. It’s a two-way relationship with the company and the prospect or the company and the customer.”

ABM at scale and the integration advantage

Scaling ABM efforts can be challenging, but Hillary believes it’s possible by adopting an adaptive approach. Snowflake’s ABM program operates at both one-to-many and one-to-one levels. They leverage data and technology to provide personalized experiences when a prospect engages with their content, while also maintaining a human touch where necessary. The program is supported by a well-structured team and robust infrastructure to guide and coordinate efforts effectively.

Snowflake’s ABM program is part of the demand gen organization, which fosters seamless integration between various marketing functions. The shared goal of driving value for the company and supporting sales allows teams to collaborate closely. Alignment with demand gen, field marketing, marketing intelligence, marketing operations, and SDRs creates a unified approach, ensuring cohesive efforts and maximizing the impact.

“There’s a scale that we’re trying to involve a human where it’s necessary and use technology where you can scale without it. The other side of scale is in the volume of how we run our program. We have four tiers of ABM programs that we run within our team. So, when you look at this scale, just by sheer size of the team, there’s a level of infrastructure process and organization measurement that you have to have in place.”

Orchestration to unlock power and growth

In Snowflake’s ABM program, the ultimate KPI is pipeline generation. Marketing, demand gen, and field marketing teams share a common set of metrics that align with this objective. The focus on pipeline reinforces the collaboration and mutual support among teams, keeping everyone accountable and working towards the same goal.

Operates in harmony with the field marketing team, Hillary explains how they leverage their expertise in events and regional activities. Rather than handing off accounts, they adopt a three-legged stool approach, where ABM, field marketing, and sales development representatives (SDRs) collaborate closely. Together, they identify the accounts to be targeted and determine the most effective strategies, ensuring a holistic approach to engagement.

“The benefit of having all of those under one leader and all bought in on an account-based approach is that we become all one function. So, we’re really just one big team operating together and each filling a different portion of what our goal is together. Our goal is to drive value for the company and to support sales and as our marketing. That’s what we’re focused on, as opposed to individual attribution and individual work that competes against each other.”

By aligning marketing and sales, adopting an adaptive approach, and integrating with other marketing functions, Hillary and the team at Snowflake have achieved impressive results. As the business landscape continues to evolve, Unpacking the power of ABM principles and strategies allows organizations to deliver personalized experiences, forge meaningful relationships, and achieve sustainable growth.

Listen to the full podcast here.