Breakthrough ’24 is officially in full swing, with a short but eventful Day One setting the tone for three more informative and fun-filled days to follow!
If FOMO has you curious about what you’re missing, or you just took in too much to remember it all — we’ve got you. Here’s how Day 1 went down.
6sense 101: New Customers and Users, Unite!
New 6sense users kicked off their first ever Breakthrough experience together in this interactive session. 6sense experts Claire Couch, Senior Director of Customer Marketing & Community at 6sense, and Brandon McBride, Account Based Marketing Manager at CivicPlus — and Mayor of RevCity — dove into essential resources, best practices for a smooth setup, and strategies for achieving goals.
Takeaway: Community is Essential for Successful Marketing Strategies
In the world of B2B marketing and sales, community and connection are critical, but often hard to come by. Claire and Brandon emphasized the importance of community and what a powerful resource it can be for problem solving, inspiration, and general support — and how 6sense users don’t have to look very far for it.
RevCity, 6sense’s online user community, is invaluable for marketers, sellers, and other revenue team members. In addition to working with customer success managers on reaching their goals, 6sense customers can lean on and learn from each other, celebrate wins, gett help with campaigns and KPIs, and share successful marketing strategies with their peers.
Takeaway: Implementing AI-driven Tools Can Boost Marketing Efforts.
The critical role of AI tools in enhancing marketing efforts came up a few times throughout the session. For example, 6sense’s Conversational Email tool, essentially an AI-powered SDR that can take over mundane routine tasks from its human SDR “colleagues,” was a hot topic on day one.
Brandon shared the story of how outreach sent with the Conversational Email tool got a customer connected with someone who could solve their problem, preventing churn and leading to a great customer experience.
Takeaway: Sales Intelligence Platforms are Key to Revenue Team Alignment
Brandon shared his experience with implementing 6sense. He highlighted the benefits of the platform, emphasizing how it helps align marketing and sales strategies, increases engagement, boosts lead generation, and creates more qualified leads.
It’s important to get top-down support when implementing the platform, said Brandon. Aligning goals with the sales leadership from the beginning leads to a smoother implementation process.
6th Street Live: Personalization and Automation Are King
The most popular session from Breakthrough ’22 and ’23 returned! 6sense senior leaders delved into the transformative role of AI in marketing and sales.They discussed how AI can help identify the right audience and progress accounts from awareness to purchase.
The session was led by Sr. VP of Marketing and Analytics Saima Rashid, VP of Demand Generation and Marketing Operations Chris Dutton, VP of ABX EJ Oelling, and VP of Brand and Growth Marketing Adam Kaiser.
Takeaway: AI’s Role in Engaging Buyers
Saima kicked off the discussion with a compelling look at how AI is revolutionizing pipeline generation. She demonstrated how 6sense’s Smart Forms have led to a 35% increase in conversion rates.
It’s well-known that shorter forms lead to better conversion rates, but they come with the major tradeoff of capturing less data. Smart Forms eliminate that tradeoff. Users fill out just a few fields, and AI-driven account matching appends deeper detail about the account to the submission.
What happens next is even more impressive. To explain it, Saima introduced a team member who wasn’t on stage: “Quentin” – an AI Email Agent within the 6sense Conversational Email platform.
“He’s the one who’s making sure there’s contextual follow up to every single one of these,” she said.
He responds to lead submissions and customer replies, uses language processing to understand and carry conversations, and books meetings for sales reps.
“Just this past quarter, 25% of our net new business pipeline was generated using 6sense’s AI email agents,” Saima revealed.
Takeaway: AI’s Role as an Outbound Powerhouse
Chris introduced another use for Conversational Email agents: Automating outbound.
It’s important to know that using AI to send email isn’t about sending more and better spam. It’s about:
- Understanding when it’s appropriate to reach out
- Always nailing that moment, and
- Sending personalized messages that are tailored to each account and individual.
Conversational Email can use intent signals and rules you control to begin outreach and to carry conversations to qualify prospects.
Instead of spending hours chasing people to talk to the outbound AI Email Agent does that outreach and tees up conversations. Human sales reps get to spend more time with people who are ready to talk and less time chasing people who aren’t.
Takeaway: AI Transforms the ROI of Field Marketing
EJ shared how she uses Revenue AI for Sales’s sales intelligence to power field marketing by identifying people who will be attending events, and who else you might want to invite.
As an example: Imagine you’re attending a trade show in Austin. You can get the pre-event list of companies that will be attending. Using SI, you can identify the likely attendees that fit your buyer persona. Then, you can work to expand your opportunities. Using SI you can find everyone in the Austin area who also fits your ICP and buyer persona.
She then creates a new audience for the event and puts it into 6sense to identify keywords being researched. From there, you can craft campaigns to build interest.
EJ uses Conversational Email to do personalized outreach and invite people to enjoy a VIP experience (like Club6!) at the event. And the VIP experience needs to be awesome.
After the event? AI Email Agents assist with follow-up outreach to book meetings.
For 6sense, this approach to ABX is generating an ROI of 56x.
Takeaway: The Effectiveness of Persona-Based Advertising
Adam Kaiser wrapped up the session by discussing the effectiveness of persona-based advertising. He emphasized how crucial it is to target ads to specific audiences.
Using intent data and predictive analytics, 6sense is able to dynamically segment accounts and personas based on keywords they are researching as well as buying stage.
These dynamically segmented audiences can then be enrolled in campaigns that are very specific to the needs of individual buyers.
With B2B buying journeys averaging 11 months, and accounts and individual buying team members frequently moving between buying stages and topics of interest, dynamic audience segmentation allows you to keep accounts enrolled in campaigns that fit their current needs.
As Adam pointed out, dynamic audience assignment allows messaging to shift along with buyers, keeping messages relevant and progressing accounts through their buying stages to the point where they’re ready to talk to sales reps.
That’s a Wrap on Day One!
For those of you who are here with us, enjoy! We have much more in store in the next three days.
For those who couldn’t make itbut are keeping tabs on Breakthrough, we’ll have plenty more to share tomorrow!
