Sangram Vajre has quickly built a reputation as one of the leading minds in B2B marketing. Before co-founding Terminus, a SaaS platform for account-based marketing (ABM), Sangram led the marketing team at Pardot through its acquisition by ExactTarget and then Salesforce. He’s the author of Account-Based Marketing for Dummies (at https:// www.amazon.com/Account-Based-Marketing-DummiesSangram-Vajre/dp/1119224853) and is the mastermind behind #FlipMyFunnel. Here’s a recent chat with him, facilitated by Lauren Patrick, Storyteller at Terminus, on the artificial intelligence (AI) leverage in account-based marketing (ABM). Follow Sangram on Twitter @SangramVajre.

Interviewed by S. Sahu

/ / How have marketers been using AI/ machine learning in recent times?

Marketers across an array of industries now recognize the importance of good data from AI and the impact it can have to create hyper-targeted and personalized campaigns. For B2B marketers, machine learning helps with identifying the best-fit companies, or accounts, that are demonstrating a propensity to buy. For example, in ABM, powerful AI helps to signal if a contact at a key account is searching for information on a potential solution like the one your company provides.

/ / How important is it for a business to adopt AI?

At the end of the day, regardless of whether you’re in B2B or B2C, it’s about human-to-human, or H2H, connections. What’s interesting about this intersection of marketing and technology is how machine learning is giving marketers more insights into what people are doing and searching. Having AI/machine learning as part of your marketing technology, or MarTech, stack is essential. If you’re not leveraging a data platform to help you identify the best-fit people to market to, and to see if they are demonstrating intent to buy, then you’re falling behind. Our VP of Marketing, Peter Herbert, and ABM Superhero, Kristen Wendel, have a great formula to use: Fit + Intent + Engagement. The Fit + Intent pieces are where machine learning really comes into play.

/ / Roughly what quantum of investment is recommended for running enterprise AI/ machine learning systems?

There’s no right answer to how much your company should invest in machine learning or AI. It’s a question of what purpose AI/machine learning systems will serve for your organization. Once you have all these great insights, how are you going to market to these people? How will you engage the companies you want to do business with? How will you measure those interactions? What matters the most is that you have a strategy. No technology in the world will help your company if you don’t have a marketing strategy aligned with every stage of the buyer’s journey. Using my #FlipMyFunnel model for ABM, think about building a customer experience stack based on the following components:

• Identify who you want to market to (this is where AI/machine learning comes in)
• Expand: Find more people in those target accounts who fit your ideal customer profile, or ICP
• Engage where personalization of messaging comes in, using a variety of activities like advertising, content, video, events, webinars, social… you name it
• Advocate: Create raving fans of your business • Measure. It’s so important to measure the impact of all these tactics from Day 1.

/ / What are some common challenges a CMO faces, when considering adopting the technology in his/her organization?

Again, the biggest challenge is aligning new technology with your strategy. If you’re a CMO who is embracing ABM, you need to consider how this technology is going to help drive engagement at each stage of the buyer’s journey and customer experience. Adding a new tool isn’t useful unless you know how it should work to drive new revenue.

/ / How do you see the future panning out in the AI/machine learning space, in terms of technological advances, cost reduction, and user perception/awareness?

As machine learning and AI continue to proliferate the B2B marketing industry, there will be an increased awareness of how these tools help to tell a story. By “story,” I mean the buyer’s journey from start to finish. AI will help marketers improve whom they are targeting to tell their story and engaging those contacts throughout the entire purchase decision [journey] by serving up personalized, relevant content. While there may not be cost reductions, we will see an improvement in operational efficiencies on the cost of customer acquisition, or CAC, which is a huge metric for every CMO, CEO, and executive responsible for bringing in new revenue.

/ / For many marketers, AI and machine learning are forbiddingly esoteric topics. So where does the CMO go to gather information about the subject and its possibilities for his/her business?

There’s a certain amount of irony in this question because when a CMO today goes to Google or another search engine to research about AI and machine learning technology solutions, there are companies like Bombora that are monitoring the “surge” in interest and that CMO’s propensity to buy!