Account-Based Marketing

4Your Target Account List:

This List Is at the Very Heart of Your ABM Strategy

By now we’ve referred to the target account list a lot, and how it is central to any ABM effort. It’s now time to do the work of creating the target account list for our pilot.

You should take a bit of care when you choose the name of this list. Yes, you could call it something plain and descriptive, like “target account list,” or TAL, but that’s missing an opportunity. You are a marketer, after all!

You’re taking the first official step in your ABM pilot, and this has the potential to become a turning point for the business, if things go well. Therefore brand your list. This list will be a unifying force in your company—something that will help bring Sales and Marketing together, and it will be the focus of new behaviors across the teams.

At Demandbase, our target account list is called the DB4K, because we currently have around 4,000 accounts on it. Given that your list for now will contain only enough accounts to run a pilot, you may not feel like including a number in there. It could be the Gold List or some other name that works for you.

Beginning the List Process

We carefully chose the preceding words instead of saying “creating your list.” To “create” the list can sound like you whip it together and you’re done, along the lines of creating a filename. We can assure you that you will not get an acceptable list on the first try, hence our language about beginning the process.

Identify the ...