I work as a contract web application developer for the marketing department at Frontline Education. I was initially brought on to help finish and maintain the Frontline Education ABM, a project they had started with an agency. Something happened between the marketing department and the agency, and the agency was no longer a part of the project.
The ABM is one of my favorite projects that I have ever worked on. The ABM was used by different departments and groups to help with sales and marketing.
Sales Team
Sales team members could track the accounts assigned to them, the contacts belonging to the accounts, and the products the accounts had or didn’t have. A sales associate could also create different email lists with their accounts. The sales associate could then take their email lists, target the contacts belonging to the accounts on the list, choose and email template, and then send the email. The sales associate could then monitor emails received, emails opened, and emails where the call to action was clicked. The sales team, however, has moved on from this system to a new tool due to some technical issues that are explained below.
Marketing Team
Marketing team members still use the ABM, however they call it the Marketing Portal. The Marketing Portal allows the marketing team to create and schedule different marketing campaigns.
Competitive Intel
The Competitive Intel team used the ABM to track information regarding competitors and what products they sell.
Issues
The ABM/Marketing Portal was basically duct tape between a CRM and Marketo. The CRM sent the customer info to Marketo. Marketo would then store the info on their systems and use web hooks to send the data the ABM. The ABM would make calls to Marketo for updating customers and sending emails, but information was starting to get messed up between the CRM and Marketo. In order to alleviate the confusion and get rid of the “duct tape”, Frontline cut ties with the CRM and moved to Salesforce, which did what they needed out of the box, rendering the ABM useless for the Sales team and the Competitive Intel group.