How are you at riddles?
What leads are already qualified without engaging with one of your marketing channels, already know they need your solution without asking for a demo, and are likely your biggest fans, but often remain silent?
You guessed it: your customers!
In a down market when new customers are harder to acquire, one of the best ways to weather the storm is to strengthen your existing customer base by preventing churn or uncovering untapped revenue through upsells.
This is one of the hallmarks of account-based customer marketing (ABCM), a strategy that focuses on cultivating stronger relationships with high-value accounts. However, successful customer marketing often requires unique messaging and content tailored to specific needs, a challenging process to scale.
In this article, we’ll highlight two ABCM revenue plays used by the LeanData RevOps team to strengthen customer accounts. Both plays are easily scaled and customized with the power and flexibility of LeanData Revenue Orchestration.
ABCM Revenue Play #1: Renewal Opportunity Motion
Renewal rate is an important metric for subscription-based businesses. It’s one of the most reliable ways to gauge customer satisfaction and loyalty. At renewal decision time, a customer can either 1) churn, 2) renew the existing contract or 3) add additional products or services.
To stay on top of customer renewals in a personal, yet automated, scalable way, LeanData’s RevOps team employs a go-to-market (GTM) play we call “Renewal Opportunity Motion.”
Here’s how it works:
Within the LeanData platform, the RevOps team runs a daily scheduled job to look for accounts that are 120, 90, and 60 days out from renewal. This scheduled job is based on a “Days from Renewal” field on the account. If an open renewal opportunity is 120, 90, or 60 days from renewal, LeanData FlowBuilder logic checks to see if that opportunity is in the stage it should be.
If the opportunity is not in the correct stage, the LeanData platform creates a Salesforce task for the appropriate account manager (AM) with specific action items. This is where personalization happens.
AMs investigate customer usage and support tickets. They perform customer research for any news about layoffs, hiring, or VC funding. This helps AMs evaluate whether customers may be candidates for new products or additional licenses.
If the opportunity is not in the appropriate renewal stage, the LeanData platform will send a “missed service level agreement (SLA)” Slack alert to the AM.
Additionally, LeanData automation looks for opportunities at risk for churn based on fields or criteria in Salesforce like low Ebsta score, no primary quote created, churn risk notes, or account health score. Then, LeanData bubbles those opportunities up to AM leadership through Slack and email alerts and generates a detailed report of all overage opportunities.
ABCM Revenue Play #2: Overage Alerts to Trigger Upsell Motions
It’s a common occurrence: customers often exceed the number of licenses purchased in their software contract, also known as “usage overage.”
This is good news!
Typically, if your customer is using more of your product, there’s increased revenue potential through upsell opportunities. Your customer may need to upgrade to a higher tier or a more comprehensive software package that better suits their needs.
Overages may also be a sign of customer satisfaction and loyalty. This strengthens the potential for future renewals.
To automate overage alerts in LeanData and put the upsell into motion, the LeanData RevOps team employs a GTM play we call “Upsell Opportunity Creation.”
Here’s how it works:
The LeanData platform monitors customer account records in Salesforce by comparing the custom field, “Users in Contract,” with another custom field, “Users Routed.” When Users Routed exceeds Users in Contract by a predefined percentage, LeanData creates an “Overage Opportunity” in Salesforce and routes the opportunity to the AM.
This flow signals the AM to begin a discussion with the customer to purchase more licenses. Once the customer account is in this state for 30 days, the LeanData platform will create an upsell opportunity, again alerting the appropriate AM.
The AM then checks with the customer if the overage is valid. The customer is given the option to either reduce their number of users to come into compliance or agree to the upsell.
Applying Account-Based Marketing to Your Customers
Traditional account-based marketing (ABM) is not about your company and your products, services and solutions, but rather about your target accounts and their needs.
ABCM simply applies that level of personalization to your customers, acting on their specific data and signals. So whether you’re tracking your champions with repeat customer plays, personalizing the renewal process, or automating overage alerts, don’t neglect this revenue stream, easily scaled through revenue orchestration.
