Predictions Series 2022: Interview with Matt Belkin, COO and GM of Data at Terminus

In 2021, CRM and data management platforms made rapid strides in open source and low-code computing. Could you tell us how you approach these techniques at Terminus?

There’s no question data has become critical to the decisions we make as marketers, and in particular, those that are assisted or driven by AI. Terminus has invested aggressively in allowing marketers to tap into and build on the rich data stories within our platform. Most of these efforts have been around low-code/no-code computing. For example, Terminus customers can adjust their AI-based account scoring models using an intuitive UI and without any coding whatsoever. Similarly, customers can build complex data application workflows on top of the Terminus platform that route data from key parts of our platform to other systems like CRM or marketing automation.

Tell us more about your Terminus CDP. How does it leverage Zylotech’s renowned CDP within your existing ABM capabilities?

Data accuracy is a massive problem for marketers. According to Forrester, only 12% of marketers are confident in their data. CRM data is painfully inaccurate and incomplete, and manual efforts to clean, deduplicate and activate are slow and costly. This leads to poor conversion rates, an incomplete view of buying committees, and misleading ROI.

Terminus is now the only platform with a standalone and embedded CDP purpose-built to fix this problem. Why does it matter? Our customers can continuously cleanse and enrich their most important account data within an easy-to-use platform that scales with their ABM efforts. To put it simply, customers will finally be able to put their trust in their data, unleashing their go-to-market teams to accurately engage buying committees every time and execute multi-channel ABM at the highest level.

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We saw the healthcare industry becoming one of the biggest ABM adoption centers in the COVID era. Could you tell us about the future of ABM practices for the healthcare industry? How is it different to serve the healthcare market compared to other B2B markets?

In the healthcare space, marketing can be challenging to say the least. There are complex purchasing cycles with diverse buying committees, departmental silos with little (or limited) communication, and heavy privacy and regulatory concerns amongst many others.

ABM helps solve these challenges by using proven tactics to target and engage prospects at every stage of their buying journey. ABM also enables you to personalize the buying experience. Furthermore, targeting key accounts under a cohesive messaging strategy facilitates conversations — and buy-in — among all involved parties.

Buying committees for health care organizations can involve 8-10 people — some are decision-makers and some aren’t. ABM streamlines and simplifies the process of targeting these buyers, tracking patterns and gathering data insights — like each buyer’s priorities — and identifying similarities across accounts.

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Your predictions for 2022. What does your product development roadmap look like for the coming year?

As we look to 2022, I believe you’ll see B2B ABM become a lot more like B2C retail, where the best brands are delivering highly personalized experiences to consumers across channels, based on a single view of the customer that is privacy compliant. As pressure regarding third-party cookies and privacy compliance continues to mount, I believe you’ll see accelerated investment in owned, first-party channels like chat, website, social, and email, where companies are directly engaged with their prospects. Ultimately you’ll see the ABM sector continue to shift to real-time buyer engagement and targeting across multiple channels — helping the right buyers find the right information they need to inform their decision-making process.

Your thoughts on leveraging the 3As for businesses- AI, Analytics, and Automation for CDP (customer data platform) adoption?

By leveraging AI, analytics and automation, CDPs can automatically update account and contact data profiles, while also predicting intent and offering recommendations for ABM campaigns. Essentially, these capabilities provide a snapshot into customer behavior, enabling marketers to engage them, in real-time, throughout their journey. With this immediate, and holistic, understanding of their customers, companies can drive highly personalized interactions across all their marketing channels.

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Thank you, Matt! That was fun and we hope to see you back on AiThority.com soon.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]