Blog / Elevate ROI with Key Account-Based Marketing Metrics

When it comes to account-based marketing (ABM), are you measuring the right things? Sometimes it feels like we’re chasing vanity metrics that don’t translate into business outcomes. 

If you want to demonstrate true ROI and the value of your ABM strategy, you need to shift your focus from surface-level numbers to account-based marketing metrics that actually matter. This will boost your ABM success by allowing you to understand which strategies resonate.

The Trouble With Vanity Metrics in ABM

We’ve all been there – celebrating a spike in website traffic or a surge in social media followers. But in the world of ABM, these vanity metrics can be misleading. 

A huge number of impressions doesn’t necessarily equal engaged accounts that are ready to buy. You need to consider the acquisition cost of these leads and how it impacts your overall ABM campaign costs. It’s about quality, not just quantity-based metrics.

Drilling Down: Account-Based Marketing Metrics That Matter

For a successful ABM strategy, you need to track metrics that provide a clear picture of account engagement, progression through the sales cycle, and ultimately, revenue generated. Using this data, you can easily identify potential leads.

1. Account Engagement Score

This metric aggregates data points from various touchpoints with your target accounts to paint a picture of their overall engagement. It considers interactions with your website content, email marketing, social media, and even sales outreach. This is a crucial account-based marketing metric for sales and marketing alignment as it helps to focus efforts on accounts showing real interest. A strong engagement score could indicate an account is warming up and moving closer to the decision stage.

2. Pipeline Influence

Account Based Marketing should not exist in a silo. Instead, your chosen account-based marketing metrics should reveal how your strategy influences revenue generation. That’s where pipeline influence comes in. By tracking the number of opportunities created from your ABM efforts and how much revenue those opportunities represent, you’ll have a direct line of sight to your program’s effectiveness. This will also give you an idea of the conversion rate and the win rate for your ABM program.

3. Account Health Score

Think of the account health score as a “temperature check” on your target accounts. Are they moving closer to becoming customers or drifting away? Are they interacting with your key content and engaging with your sales team? You can utilise intent data such as content downloads, email open rates, and website visits to find qualified accounts or those quickly becoming marketing-qualified accounts (MQAs). By establishing a baseline for engagement (using historical data or industry benchmarks) you can quickly spot accounts requiring immediate attention from either sales or marketing.

4. Content Consumption by Buying Stage

Savvy ABM marketers don’t just track what content their target accounts are consuming, they pay attention to where that content fits within the buying journey. Tracking this metric lets you understand how well your content resonates at each stage. You’ll gain valuable insights into the customer lifetime value and sales cycle length of your target accounts. For example, if you see low engagement with your bottom-funnel case studies, it might be a sign to refresh them with more compelling examples and data.

5. Contract Value and Deal Velocity 

This powerful combination tells a story of deal size and how quickly it moves through your sales pipeline. Did your ABM strategy lead to bigger contracts and shorter sales cycles? By monitoring deal velocity, you gain a deeper understanding of your ideal customer profile, which can then inform your future account selection processes. The data gathered from tracking this metric can also be used to establish your ABM metrics and set realistic goals for your sales reps.

6. Advocacy and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

While most ABM metrics focus on customer acquisition, measuring advocacy and CLV shifts the emphasis to long-term growth and the lifetime value of secured clients. Track customer testimonials, online reviews, and referrals to measure how successfully your ABM programme is turning customers into advocates. Similarly, analysing CLV gives you insights into your most valuable customer segments, which is a helpful metric for shaping future ABM strategies.

Use ABM Metrics to Drive Business Goals

Focusing on these powerful account-based marketing metrics helps you to stop measuring activity for the sake of it. Instead, you’ll gain valuable engagement data that can improve your marketing strategies. You’ll gather insights into how well your strategies resonate, allowing for better decision-making and an improved ability to adjust campaigns in real-time. Remember, ABM is a journey, and your chosen account-based marketing metrics should guide you toward profitable, long-term relationships with high-value clients