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ZERO TO ABM: The Strategy that Helped Turn Snowflake into One of the World’s Fastest Growing Companies

Published Date

Presented by: Daniel Day, Senior Director of Account-Based Marketing and Market Planning, Snowflake Computing

Bridging the gap between sales and marketing is more important than ever. That’s why many B2B marketers are turning to ABM. In this interactive session, Daniel Day discusses Snowflake’s ABM philosophy, how they set up their sales team for success with the right tools and processes, and where content fits into their strategy. As an early adopter of ABM, Daniel shares the practical steps necessary in executing an award-winning ABM strategy.

Session Notes

Mr. ABM himself, Daniel Day, though soft-spoken, commanded the stage with his knowledge and quiet confidence in how he’s brought Snowflake to the top of the game. He kept the audience engaged with facts and figures they may not have ever thought even existed while bringing his personal experience to the table. 

ABM’s Impact on Snowflake

  • Zero to ABM is the strategy that helped turn Snowflake into one of the largest growing companies. 
  • When he joined two years ago there were only 100 people. Now there are almost 1,500. 

Responsibilities of Team Members at Snowflake: 

1. Account intelligence: Finding all the good data that we can use and making sense of it

2. Account engagement: Once you make sense of it, you work with sales and determine how those accounts will be prioritized

3. Sales alignment: Working hand-in-hand with sales advisors 

4. Measure success: Iterating and reviewing the process and how companies were engaged 

Snowflake is a data warehouse built for the cloud: we help companies store all their data 

  • And make that data accessible to all the people within the organization for analytics 
  • Yes, companies need to store and access their data but that’s not always true/easy. 
  • Companies usually store their data, but it’s often very difficult to actually access it and get insight from it 
  • Snowflake works with companies like Intricately to figure out how companies spend on technology 
  • They also work with:
    • Bombora: helps with intent data, which is a blind spot monitor for engagement happening outside your brand 
    • Engagio: helps measure engagement in an account-based way 
    • Business intelligent partners Tableau and Looker to visualize the data and give insights into their sales organizations as well 

The Coolest Thing

  • Over the last two years, Snowflake has been collecting data and recently they’ve put data science behind the data they’ve been collecting in a way that accounts have found to be valuable. 
  • When they do account scoring and data science, the likelihood of companies opening opportunities with them is 80%. 

Engagement Data, Intent Data, and Contextual Cloudspin Data

  • It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. 
  • When they started, they started small.
  • They worked hand-in-hand with sales to drive content out, piece by piece. 

Today

  • Snowflake markets to over 2,000 companies in an individual way.
  • This is ABM for strategic one-to-one relationships, and as a tool to build relationships with prospective customers but to build relationships within their own organization and sales. 
  • ABM drives the democratization of content consumption.
  • The program is scalable: no forms, no salesforce campaigns, no Marketo programs.
  • They use open-source content that people can view and consume without barriers or expectations.  
  • They try to build these unique experiences based on insights and share them with the entire company—from the sales team, sales operations, to finance even. 
  • They are also focused on educating their prospective customers on the business side of Snowflake.

Customized Content 

  • When we look at personalized, tailored content experiences, they’re not completely customized.
  • We have to curate our content and use the data and insights found by our teams and put that to work and in front of our most important customers. 

Snowflake’s Goal

  • Invest heavily in engaging top accounts - they’ve done the work to ensure these companies are worth their time.
  • Democratize content consumption - super scalable, no forms, only open source content, and can consume as much content as they like. 
  • Build a unique experience based on insight. 
  • Educate others on our business value. 

Content Experience

  • It’s not about just putting content in a repository style format, it’s about trying to drive customers through a guided experience. 
  • Companies are still shocked and question why they’re being targeted, so we have to be very specific about the data experience we’ve created for them and why it is of value to them. 
  • We get full control over what’s happening within content experiences, 
  • For the first time, Snowflake has gone from creating a content landing page to a guided content experience.
  • This is something they do and change continually, as they get additional feedback and insights. 
  • Creating a page used to take Snowflake up to seven days but now with the Uberflip team they’ve got it down to a science, where anyone can go in and create a custom content experience in a very specific way (after they’ve done their research) in 10 to 15 minutes. 

The ABM Marketing Team

  • Nine account-based marketers
  • Each is responsible for approximately 30 sales directors on average
  • 300-400 accounts each
  • That’s how you get to over 2,000 companies in an individual way

Snowflake’s Goal

  • Using data to build content experiences

Snowflake Results Over the Last 12 Months

  • Snowflake markets to 10% of their target accounts
  • Their average deal size has been increased by 3x 
  • Companies’ engagement with them is over twice what it was the year before. 
  • The deal is now 2x more likely to close

The Collaboration Process with Sales 

  • Identify the top 10 accounts
  • Identify key contacts
  • Own your message 
  • Refresh and update messaging 
  • Reinforce key messaging with the value proposition and reiterate 

Key Takeaways 

  • “Insightful account intent married together with marketing engagement data makes where to focus clear” 
  • Do what you do for the people you work for and share it!