As the clock struck midnight and 2019 became 2020, many had high hopes for the coming year. Not only was a new decade beginning, but 20/20 has always been a reference to having perfect eyesight. What was supposed to be ‘the year of vision,’ where people found clarity and resources to achieve their goals, ended up being a year full of challenges: a pandemic coated the globe, businesses struggled or were closed, and financial markets were extremely unstable.

The B2B Marketing industry was suddenly transformed. Live events and opportunities to network disappeared, and according to Gartner, marketing budgets were cut by an average of 44%. With this chaos brought tremendous opportunity, and as in-person engagements diminished, companies redesigned their marketing strategies to suit an entirely digital environment. Influ2 was poised and prepared to support Enterprise Marketing's sudden shift.

Knowing companies were struggling, we offered special deals to new clients who signed with us in April and May, allowing them to use our product for free until the end of June. Along with that we expanded business with our existing clients and brought new ones on board, such as Amplitude, Genesys, Corelight and Centrical. Our growing client base demonstrated 500% growth year over year, and we received MarCom’s Platinum Award in November for fostering such accelerated growth in a very difficult business environment.

Securing the largest round of seed funding in account-based marketing history (at $3.4M) was exciting and allowed us to support new functionalities and add audience insight features to our platform. These developments steer our clients toward increased leads and overall ROI by helping them better understand the exact person they need to target and the style of communication that person responds to. This is one of many ways we’ve improved our product.

As we look toward the future, I see more industry change on the horizon. I believe that ABM will continue to take over B2B Marketing and will be at the center of digital marketing strategies.

Business evolves with the circumstances, and with further investment in ABM there will be an increased demand for more precise solutions. These person-based solutions will allow B2B Marketers to tailor campaigns to an exact target with precision. Offering broad-blanket communication to an entire company or group via traditional methods often doesn’t yield much success.

Marketers’ role in the sales funnel is ever-expanding and they'll be tasked with more than driving awareness of their product or brand. Next-level ABM has B2B Marketers aligning closely with their Sales teams, guiding leads through the entire process, and exploring ways to build and maintain the customer relationship well beyond the initial conversion.

I invite you to join us in celebrating Person-Based Advertising and the future of Account-Based Marketing (ABM). Witness the strategic growth and innovation driving our industry's most insightful platforms in our latest annual summary.