Demandbase launches Demandbase One

Barely five months after its acquisition of Engagio, ABM vendor Demandbase today announced the launch of Demandbase One, a platform which incorporates Demandbase and Engagio solutions.

“Demandbase: intent, advertising, personalization – really strong. Engagio is really strong with orchestration, lead-to account-mapping, sales insights,” Demandbase CEO Gabe Rogol told us at the time of the acquisition.

For the first time, Demandbase will be using not just proprietary and third-party data, but clients’ first-party data, with the aim of providing a comprehensive view of target accounts, and Engagio-derived orchestration capabilities to steer deals to closing.

The Demandbase One suite. The new offering blends traditional Demandbase and Engagio capabilities:

• Advertising: personalized for target accounts;
• Personalization: personalized engagement across channels, including web-site and landing pages;
• Orchestration: marketing automation, including audience segmentation and multi-channel messaging;
• Attribution: multi-touch attribution to confirm ROI.

“We did it.” We caught up with Rogol, and Jon Miller, Chief Product Officer at Demandbase — and co-founder of both Engagio and Marketo.

“The aspiration was to take the best of Demandbase and Engagio — the best of the upper funnel, and the best of the middle and lower funnel — putting that together to enable B2B marketers to handle today’s customer journey, which is not the same as it was,” explained Rogol. Rogol also emphasized the speed of the integration: “It’s been four and a half months, and we did it.”

“There was very little redundant or overlapping technology that we needed to reconcile,” said Miller. “We were able to take the mature Engagio platform, take all the Demandbase technology, and integrate it into that in a way that was very straightforward.”

The changing buyer’s journey. “There have been so many changes,” said Rogol. “The world of B2B is a new world. The result for marketers is that it’s much more difficult to transact with clients. There are more people involved in buying decisions, and it’s harder to reach those people.”

Under the pandemic, Rogol has observed more careful risk management in the purchase cycle, a need for more consensus, and less resources. Sending emails is no longer enough.

Emails aren’t working. “What’s the future of marketing automation?” asked Miller. “Emails are not working, and marketing automation is a lot about email. People are using Reddit, and all these other sources of information; it’s just not credible to email them, and there’s also low tolerance for getting inundated. If it’s an SDR from company number 172: spam.”

What’s the alternative for orchestrating the journey? “You have to get companies that have intent interested and engaged, and translate that into action that’s not email and lead-based,” said Miller. “Taking data signals from the upper funnel, then getting that to sales teams so that they can act on it digitally — that’s the connective tissue that’s been missing.”

Engagio and Demandbase customers will upgrade to Demandbase One. New customers will be onboarded to Demandbase One.

Why we care. Demandbase was well-established as an enterprise option for detecting intent signals from accounts and re-targeting them with relevant ads. Adding orchestration layers representing the rest of the customer journey significantly increases the scope of what the solution offers.