An Account Story chronological visual narrative of all go-to-market interactions associated with a single account over time. Account stories make it easy to identify how different stakeholders have engaged through various touchpoints, which include web page visits, email interactions, content consumption, and other sales and marketing activities. They also indicate correlations with sales data, such as opportunities being opened, lost, or won, as well as key milestones through the customers lifecycle.

How Account Stories work

In B2B, purchase decisions are typically associated with buying groups over longer sales cycles. In these scenarios, it's crucial to understand the Account Story. Since there may be thousands of individual touchpoints across all contacts within an account, account story tools help collect, organize, and present these touchpoints in a useable manner. Advanced account story tools typically offer:

• Ability to filter touchpoints to only buying group members on a particular deal

• Ability to filter touchpoints to one category/channel of activity

• Functionality to search touchpoints contextually

• Visual indicators that take the analyst directly to moment in the buying journey of interest

The Account Story narrative is the foundation for multi-touch attribution modeling, as well as measuring the impact of account-based marketing. These help data-driven marketers and sales leaders assess the effectiveness of their strategies at the account level.

Components of an Account Story

• Chronological interactions: A timeline of touchpoints, including activities directed to and received from the prospect/customer.

• Account contacts: A full list of all contacts with activity within the account, as well as periods of high engagement.

• Buying group members: A clear way to separate account contacts that are relevant to deals from those who are not.

• Channel categorization: Each touchpoint should be classified into higher level categories, such as email, web, advertising, or meetings.

• Buying signals: Fluctuations in activity suggest buying intent and/or sales readiness.

Business applications

• Campaign optimization: Identify which channels, messages, and plays resonate best for different roles within an account.

• Retrospective analyses: After a notable deal closes, teams can use Account Stories to tell the story of the deal internally, either to recreate positive outcomes or learn from negative outcomes.

• Sales visibility: Enable sales teams with context on past engagement to tailor outreach strategy effectively.

• Enhanced forecasting: Use engagement patterns to predict which accounts are most likely to convert, as well as identifying if deals need to be adjusted to a different sales stage.