Demandbase’s takeover of the B2B marketing provider Engagio in July is bearing fruit.
On Tuesday, Demandbase released a new version of its platform called Demandbase One, which combines the existing marketing automation and account-based marketing offerings with Engagio’s inbound B2B marketing capabilities.
Demandbase One comprises the core platform Demandbase ABM, which uses predictive analytics to help marketers and sellers to prioritize, manage and analyze accounts and ABM campaigns as well as deliver personalized ads, orchestrate them across channels and perform attributions.
“The ability to grow and promote audiences is really going to change the world of B2B advertising,” said Gabe Rogol, CEO of Demandbase.
Understanding the performance of display ads is especially important for marketers in the B2B world, for example, due to their longer sales cycles.
B2B marketers don’t expect their target audience to convert straight from a display ad, said Jimmy Montchal, vice president of demand generation at Coursedog, a startup that sells class planning software for colleges and universities, and one of the beta testers of Demandbase.
“If I have eight different buyer groups for every business, how do I know my ads are working when I look at vanity data like click and impression?” Said Montchal.
Coursedog uses Demandbase to keep track of which advertisements are increasing awareness, which specific accounts visit the website after viewing an advertisement and whether those accounts are anonymous or known.
“It helps us understand the implications of ads, and it helps me justify spending on finance and leadership,” said Montchal.
Justification of expenses and precise targeting have always been important, but became mandatory during the pandemic.
Coursedog is aimed at academic institutions, most of which have been very busy getting students safely back to campus. Signing a deal with a new software provider wasn’t necessarily important to Coursedog’s usual prospect.
“We really had to buckle up to make sure we were spending in the right areas as effectively and efficiently as possible,” said Montchal. “That means focusing on accounts that are actually in the market instead of taking a traditional lead-gen approach where you cast a wider net.”
This is where intent data comes in, said Jon Miller, founder and former CEO of Engagio and now Chief Product Officer of Demandbase.
The new unified platform will allow B2B marketers to integrate their first party and CRM data with proprietary Demandbase data for a broader, unified view of the target accounts and those associated with them, Miller said.
“Marketers can then use this information to find the best accounts for their business and prioritize those accounts,” Miller said.
Demandbase uses its algorithm, for example, to help marketers find high-quality keywords that go beyond the usual, generic keywords, according to Coursedog’s Montchal.
“That way we can see people up the funnel before they even bother with us,” he said. “With COVID, we don’t want to communicate too much with universities that are already stressed. That is why it is important for us to know whether there is actually a commitment.”
Since launching on the new platform, Coursedog has seen a 25% increase in account visits to its website and a 25% increase in revenue from its most valuable Tier 1 accounts. Website revenue is up 250% year over year.
“We saw these massive gains because we were able to turn the web channel into a source of income,” said Montchal. “It’s the ability to see insights for anonymous and known users and make decisions in an automated manner so we can track them in the right order.”