Many brands have recognized that LinkedIn is invaluable to their marketing efforts. Now Adobe and LinkedIn are working together to significantly increase the platform’s marketing utility, especially for account-based marketing (ABM) programs. Any brand that is serious about ABM can now take it to the next level.
Marketo Engage, part of Adobe Experience Cloud, is making it easier to draw information from LinkedIn’s base of users that can contribute to highly targeted, effective campaigns.
Brian Glover, head of product marketing for Marketo Engage, said that the new ABM enhancements “start with the process of identifying the right accounts that best fit a specific ABM initiative. Using Adobe’s Marketo Engage application, with its AI capabilities and analytic tools, brands can build a specific set of accounts that best fit very specific criteria.”
That sort of capability does more than support a marketing team’s traditional ABM programs; the team can also easily create new account lists that focus on a specific competitive scenario, a new product launch, or another focused initiative. The key word is “easily,” since legacy processes often include many manual steps, multiple meetings, and guesswork. Marketing initiatives can be much timelier with Marketo Engage.
A powerful aspect of the LinkedIn/Adobe partnership is the ability to sync the list of target companies, going beyond the pre-existing ability to sync a list of contacts.
“This new integration with LinkedIn makes it much simpler to find exactly the right individuals from your target accounts, even if they are not in current marketing or customer databases,” said Glover.
Brands can reach out to the targeted individuals via many different in-app LinkedIn methods of contact (InMail, ads on news feeds, etc.). The integration between Marketo Engage and LinkedIn also is automated, building on joint solutions that Adobe and LinkedIn already provide.
In addition, this announcement opens the door to new opportunities for brands to extend their ABM programs “down market” and to highly specific verticals. Legacy ABM programs have tended to focus on the largest enterprises, and the economics of ABM programs have made them impractical for other segments. Now, however, with the new efficiencies of named account development and the ability to target specific individuals in those accounts using LinkedIn, scaling up ABM activities is possible in ways previously unavailable.
It should be noted that privacy compliance isn’t an issue with these new capabilities. Brands that plan to use the ABM capabilities from Marketo Engage need to have a relationship with LinkedIn, and they can simply use the LinkedIn lead-generation form or have customers fill in their contact info. At no point in the process does a brand have access to personal or sensitive information. This ensures that lead generation is compliant and meets existing privacy standards.
Glover offered some advice on how to get the most out of the new capabilities available through this LinkedIn/Adobe integration.
“The most effective way to start using this solution is to ensure you have a data-driven approach to creating the targeted account list,” he said. “It is also imperative to include sales in the account-generation process.”
“A successful ABM program doesn’t exist in isolation,” Glover added. If the website, marketing content, and other touch points don’t have any relationship to the ABM program, it’s hard for the ABM program to work. Brands need to think about the end-to-end experience to ensure success.
As Glover observed, “The goal is that the prospect has an account-based experience that informs their entire journey.”
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