Salesforce Einstein Key Account Identification: Grade Accounts With AI

Einstein Key Account Identification “uses AI to surface the accounts with the highest likelihood to purchase” within your Salesforce org. You could say this new feature is Pardot Einstein Behavior Score at the account level (vs. the individual), and Pardot score on steroids.

Einstein Key Account Identification, and Accounts as Campaign Members, are two new features that Salesforce Pardot tout as “Salesforce ABM”. Sources say that these Salesforce ABM features are currently available for Salesforce Digital 360. It will become available in Beta for Pardot Advanced edition in the Summer ‘21 release (May/June).

My guess is that you are reading this as someone who is close to Salesforce, either as a Pardot/Salesforce admin, or a marketing user. You already know that ABM has been ‘hot’ for some time (apparently 92% of B2B marketers consider ABM “extremely important”, and other sources quote a fast incline in budget dedicated to ABM).

Pardot product development has cited enhancing ABM capabilities as a top priority, being able to take a view of all marketing activity at the account level (not solely at the individual prospect level). Moving in this direction is a core differentiator and value sell against competitors.

As the buzzword is still on many lips, let’s now turn to Einstein Key Account Identification.

Einstein Key Account Identification Overview

Key Account Identification, a Lightning component on Salesforce Account record pages, promises to “help companies easily identify accounts with the strongest buying signals and kick-start their ABM campaigns in seconds”.

How? Einstein will examine patterns in:

• Pardot prospect engagement data,
• Historical trend data from your org,
• Supplemental data from the public web

In order to spot the sequences of marketing activities that contribute to positive (or negative) conversion outcomes. These are known as ‘contributing factors’ and explain the ‘why’ behind Einstein’s calculations (Einstein will build a custom model just for your database!)

Key features:

• “Einstein Account Tier”: introducing a new score which uses letters, similar to Pardot grading. Where Einstein Account Tier supersedes Pardot grade is that it adjusts itself automatically, whereas Pardot grade is rules-based, set by marketing users.
• Likelihood to covert: Einstein indicates how likely it is that the account will have an opportunity created in the next six months (eg. “3x more likely to convert”, shown in the image below). This is calculated by pitting this particular account, its demographic and engagement history that you’re viewing, against every other account in your Salesforce org.
• Einstein Scoring card insights: information on contributing factors (impact of data such as their industry, or recent engagement) – in other words, the ‘why’ behind the Account Tier.

The takeaway here is that both sales and marketing teams have a new, comprehensive, and intelligent way to prioritise which accounts they are doubling down on.

Setup Einstein Key Account Identification (High-level)

1. Turn on Einstein Key Accounts Identification (Beta) in Salesforce Setup
2. Add the Einstein Scoring component to account records in the Lightning App Builder.

(Note: it takes a few days for Einstein to build your custom model)

Accounts as Campaign Members

The other feature, Accounts as Campaign Members, is more relatable for the average Salesforce marketer who spends their days working with Salesforce Campaigns. Generally available in Summer ’21, this feature set includes:

• “Add Account” button on Campaigns,
• Campaign History related lists on Accounts,
• Changes to the Campaigns and Campaign Members report type.
• And… Pardot have an extra trick up their sleeve – Marketers can add an account to a campaign even before the account has any contacts. When contacts are added to the account, they will also be added to the campaign.

The idea is that marketers can use the “Einstein Account Tier” to drive which accounts are being added to campaigns.

Use Cases

If you’re looking for ways other organisations are using Salesforce ABM, check out Salesforce’s own press release for stories from McAfee, Wartsila, and Sercante.