12 essential ABM metrics and KPIs to measure success
Account-based marketing metrics let teams effectively engage with key decision-makers within target accounts, strengthen customer loyalty and identify areas of improvement.
The success of account-based marketing (ABM) programs can be measured using KPIs and other valuable metrics. ABM is a highly targeted approach that focuses on engaging and building relationships with specific high-value accounts, rather than casting a wide net across a broader market. By defining and tracking metrics and KPIs, marketing teams can evaluate the performance of their ABM efforts.
ABM metrics and KPIs let marketing teams align their goals and strategies with overall business objectives. They serve as a roadmap for the team, helping them identify the most important areas to focus on. Whether the objective is to increase revenue from existing accounts, expand into new markets or strengthen customer loyalty, well-defined metrics provide a benchmark for success and enable marketing teams to measure progress over time.
For example, marketing teams can assess the ROI of their ABM programs using metrics such as customer lifetime value, average deal size and revenue generated from target accounts. By understanding the financial impact of their efforts, teams can make data-driven decisions and allocate resources more effectively.
Information regarding account engagement score, account penetration rate and account progression rate offers valuable insights into how effectively the team is reaching and engaging key decision-makers within target accounts. This data also identifies areas of improvement, enabling the team to personalize their messaging and content to better resonate with an account's needs and preferences.
12 essential ABM metrics and KPIs
The following 12 account-based marketing metrics and KPIs will help the marketing team fine-tune their strategies, optimize their campaigns and ensure they're allocating resources to activities that yield the highest ROI.
1. Account engagement score
This metric quantifies the level of engagement a target account has with marketing and sales activities. It measures various interactions such as website visits, email opens, content downloads, event attendance and social media interactions.
2. Account penetration rate
This KPI measures the extent to which an ABM program has successfully penetrated the target accounts. It indicates the percentage of decision-makers or key contacts within the target accounts where an established relationship exists or is building.
3. Account progression rate
This metric measures how effectively target accounts move through the buyer's journey. It tracks the percentage of accounts that have advanced from one stage to the next, such as from initial contact to opportunity creation, opportunity to closed deal or up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.
4. Customer lifetime value
Customer lifetime value measures the total revenue a customer generates throughout their entire relationship with a company. For ABM, it helps assess the value of target accounts and determine the success of ABM efforts in driving long-term revenue.
5. Average deal size
This metric calculates the average value of deals closed with target accounts versus those from other marketing strategies, such as demand generation. It helps evaluate the effect of ABM on deal size, as personalized and targeted efforts often result in larger deals due to the focus on high-value accounts.
6. Revenue generated from target accounts
This KPI measures the total revenue generated from the target accounts. It reflects the overall success of an ABM program's ability to drive revenue growth and indicates the ROI from those efforts.
7. Sales cycle length
This metric tracks the average duration it takes to close deals with target accounts. It helps evaluate the effectiveness of ABM strategies in accelerating the sales cycle and shortening the time it takes to convert target accounts into customers.
8. Account churn rate
This KPI measures the rate at which target accounts discontinue their relationship with a company. Churn rate helps identify potential issues or gaps in the various ABM efforts and enables proactive measures to retain and nurture accounts.
9. Customer acquisition cost
The customer acquisition cost (CAC) metric indicates the sales and marketing costs spent to acquire a new customer. CAC is critical to ABM because it's a key indicator of the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of ABM efforts.
10. Pipeline velocity
Pipeline velocity measures the speed at which target accounts move through the sales pipeline. It calculates the average time it takes to progress from one stage to another and helps identify bottlenecks or areas of improvement in the sales process that might benefit from additional ABM support.
11. Deal conversion rate
Also known as win rate, this KPI divides the total amount of opportunities marked "closed won" by the total closed opportunities -- both "closed won" and "closed lost" -- during a select time period. Deal conversion rate can also be compared against the same KPI for deals that were not influenced by ABM efforts to measure the effectiveness and quality of the deals generated from ABM.
12. Customer satisfaction and retention
This metric measures factors such as customer feedback, net promoter score and customer retention rates to evaluate the success of an ABM program in building strong customer relationships.
Editor's note: TechTarget offers ABM and project intelligence data, tools and services.
