The Personalized ABM Email Playbook

Aligning ABM with emails to deliver exceptional personalization to inboxes with Air Traffic Control and HubSpot.

Executive Summary

Personalization has long been employed for B2C brands and with the rise of ecommerce and social media its impact has exploded. While B2B organizations may have been a little behind B2C, recent emphasis on ABM signals and platforms has brought personalization to the B2B masses. 

This is not a theory. In a recent study McKinsey found that personalization provides distinct, tangible advantages for companies: It can reduce customer acquisition costs by as much as 50%, lift revenues by 5-15% and increase marketing ROI by 10-30%.

Keep in mind that a lot of these metrics are from larger enterprises. ABM can sometimes feel too hard for smaller organizations to execute with a large team and big tech investment. That being said, the metrics are still relevant for smaller organizations and with guidance small teams can get to a thriving ABM process as well.  

The playbook will review the why and how behind marketing email personalization that will turn your everyday marketing efforts for everyone into ABM. And no, personalization does not need to be exclusive to email marketing. 

This playbook is part of a series we’ll be putting together that shows you how to personalize at scale across email, web chat, landing pages and more. For the purposes of this guide however, we will focus on email.

Why Incorporate ABM into everyday marketing

Email marketing has evolved from cutting edge in the 90’s to bread and butter B2B marketing in 2024. Unfortunately with its widespread adoption and marketing automation platforms making it easier than ever we’ve lost some of our edge when it comes to how much effort we put into our marketing campaigns. 

There are lots of companies out there right now that tout their ABM marketing capabilities but ultimately none of them will execute it for you. There are signal providers (6sense, Demandbase), retargeting platforms (Rollworks, AdRoll) and a whole host of marketplaces and platforms incorporating intent signals into their functionality. 

At its core though, the foundation of Account-Based-Marketing is the same as it always was: connecting to prospects through content and offers that are  relevant to their particular needs at the right time. 

As nowadays B2B, B2C, and D2C brands are all at the mercy of their consumers who can do tons of their own research online before committing to anything, the relevance of the content that nurtures them has never been more important. 

The best type of personalization and why 

Sad but true, you are probably still receiving emails that begin with “Hello , do you have problems at ?"

In this form of ‘personalization’ variables are auto populated based on CRM records which are frequently inaccurate or incomplete. Sales teams everywhere can ‘spray and pray’ with generic offers to audiences that vaguely match personas, and they’ll continue to do it because it’s an activity that ‘scales.’

Variables can be lazy OR highly compelling for prospects depending on how relevant they are. At Air Traffic Control when we are reaching out via email we often populate our emails with a custom property and variable for the prospect’s website content volume. This allows us to narrow down our own prospecting to individuals who have prioritized content production and then point out a specific value add for them based on how relevant their content is to their target audience. 

We also find and create custom properties (usually after using Clay to mine these insights) that include technology utilized, visits per page, and bounce rates because for our target audience we can use that information to show how effective our prospect’s content production is. 

Real personalization that goes beyond generic variables like {trial_period_ends=your company} etc, can feel much less attainable and certainly much less scalable. However there is still one very best way to understand what matters to your prospects and it has nothing to do with marketing technology. 

Listening deeply to your current successful customers, to your unsuccessful customers, to your closed won and closed lost prospects will provide personalization insights much more salient than a job title, industry, or persona. 

Taking things back to basics and listening will allow you to understand real pain points which will thus inform your content strategy and enable you to create content that addresses those pain points.  

Content that answers the right questions at the right time for the right people? That’s the type of personalization we believe will always be relevant. 

How to do ABM manually in HubSpot 

Step 1 : Define Your Target Accounts

Before diving into email creation, it's essential to have a clear understanding of your target accounts. These are high-value companies that align with your ideal customer profile (ICP). 

In addition to listening, you can use tools like Clay, LinkedIn, Apollo, or ZoomInfo to research and make a list of the accounts that match your ICP.

Step 2: Segment Accounts by Tier

Not all accounts are or should be represented as equal. Segment them into tiers (e.g., Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) based on factors such as revenue potential, company size, and strategic importance. This will allow your team to prioritize actions that really make a difference.

Step 3: Gather Account Insights

Personalization starts with understanding your accounts. Gather as much data as possible on each target account. Nothing goes as far as listening and taking notes when it comes to understanding your prospects. 

Step 4: Craft Personalized Messaging and Deliver Personalized Content 

With your account insights in hand, it’s time to craft personalized email messaging that speaks directly to each account’s needs. If you’re doing this manually, best to pay close attention to the Tiers because this part will be quite time-consuming. 

• Create Account-Specific Value Propositions: Tailor your value proposition to each account, focusing on how your solution addresses their unique challenges.
• Develop Customized Subject Lines: A personalized subject line can significantly increase open rates. Use account-specific data to make your subject lines relevant and compelling.
• Write Engaging Email Copy: Structure your email copy to address the specific pain points and goals of the account. Mention recent news, projects, or initiatives that are relevant to your solution. 
• Deliver Content That Has Value: Understand what questions your prospects are asking and address them in real content that drives value immediately. HubSpot’s smart rules allow you to personalize content for prospects based on multiple different factors.

How to do ABM with ATC and HubSpot

Air Traffic Control pulls in data from HubSpot such as past content interactions, engagements, and other CRM notes. It can also supplement contact data records with additional insights mined from LinkedIn data (posts, engagements, interests). 

This additional data lets you supplement your data with additional insights from social media, news, and company reports. Look for pain points, recent initiatives, and potential needs.

Once you’ve enabled Air Traffic Control with HubSpot, you can pull in all of the topics that prospect finds most interesting in an interest graph. This allows you to match a prospect automatically with the next best content relevant to them. 

Modules with relevant content can be added immediately into your existing lifecycle and nurture campaigns. When you sign up with ATC, we can automatically load in packages that help you load in these modules with one click. 

These modules can be customized based on the properties passed between Air Traffic Control and HubSpot. So you can bring in any of the custom properties we populate to make a completely personalized email. You can watch a video tutorial our Head of Marketing Julia Winn made recently showing how this works below. 

Experiment, experiment, experiment

Continuous optimization is key to ABM success. Email marketing is a wild wild west right now. Regularly test and refine your email campaigns to maximize engagement.

• A/B Testing: Test different subject lines, email copy, and CTAs to see what resonates best with each account segment.
• Analyze Results: Use the analytics dashboard in AirTrafficControl.io to review campaign performance. Look at metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and reply rates.
• Iterate and Improve:  Based on your analysis, make data-driven decisions to refine your email templates, sequences, and overall strategy.

Scale that thing!

Once you’ve found a formula that works, you can scale that thing across more accounts. 

• Automate Repetitive Tasks: User HubSpot workflows to assign tasks to yourself for follow up.
• Replicate Success Across Tiers: Apply the successful strategies from your Tier 1 accounts to lower tiers, adjusting for personalization depth as needed.
• Keep Listening: your customers and prospects will change as your product evolves. The one thing you can keep doing is listen. 

Tracking ROI

It’s our opinion that open rates are no longer a good metric to track success by. Why? Corporate and enterprise firewalls often employ bot openers that skew results when it comes to open rates. 

Clicks and CTRs are more reliable but still not totally foolproof. For that reason we suggest tracking metrics such as engagement rates on pages (time + behavior/actions on page). Ultimately the best indicator of success will be in measuring the pipeline attributed from your personalized prospecting, nurture, and lifecycle emails. 

Other resources and tools for personalization and ABM

AssetMule: Your bridge between sales and marketing, AssetMule allows you to create interactive sales assets in no time at all that are personalized to your target accounts. Powerful for sales but also enabling for marketing teams that want to make sure assets are consistent from a brand perspective across both functions. 

BeeFree: The best HTML email builder that integrates with HubSpot (and a host of other marketing automation platforms). Loads of brilliant drag-and-drop templates that are incredibly easy to export, modify, build upon, and send. 

Clay: Clay is building fast and furious but has emerged as an essential tool to help revops and growth teams implement outbound outreach. The 75+ enrichment tools + AI-agent (Claygent) maximize your ability to build a perfect personalized outreach list. 

HubSpot: There's a reason why we prioritized building a seamless bidirectional integration with HubSpot. Regardless of if you are an ATC customer yet or not, HubSpot makes it easy to use contact, company, and deal properties to trigger customized journeys. It also has a really robust partner app program which means if you can't figure out how to do it inside of HubSpot, there's an app you can install to solve your problem (like ATC)!

Sendoso: Our absolute favorite gifting and direct mail platform…because depending on the persona you are targeting gifting is a huge value add. Sendoso gets the ROI behind gifting and touts helping revenue teams double win rates, 6x second call rates, and close deals 29% faster. 

Servicebell: Marketing engagement tool extraordinaire that removes friction from the buying journey and turns pipeline into revenue. Incorporates de-anonymizing tools like 6Sense and Clearbit to reveal visitor information in real-time and allow you to engage target accounts with personalized messaging. 

seventh sense:  seventh sense is driven by AI and designed to drive maximum performance and engagement with your existing email marketing program. Essentially, it helps your emails to stand out in crowded inbox. You can't do ABM if people aren't opening your emails!