Messaging Makeover

Introduction

ABMartin is a data privacy software provider that helps enterprises maintain privacy compliance and reduce risk with solutions that automate unstructured data masking. As a long time partner for IBM’s Optim structured data masking software solution, ABMartin has experienced rapid growth for its UMask and Dynamic Masking products in response to customers’ increasing need to protect both structured and unstructured data sets across their organizations.

The Challenge

To support its growing partnership with IBM, ABMartin wanted to refresh and simplify its brand and product messaging to help partner sales teams more effectively introduce unstructured data masking as part of their data privacy solution sales story. While ABMartin’s existing content was rich with technical insight, it’s product messaging and sales collateral had evolved organically over time and thus lacked a cohesive narrative and consistent messaging across all of its marketing assets. In addition to messaging, ABMartin also wanted to develop a new brand identity to create a fresh, consistent look and feel across all of its marketing design assets.

A few things stood out when evaluating ABMartin’s existing sales content library. Most of the assets, including the website, were very text-heavy, making it difficult for prospects to discern the key capabilities and benefits of ABMartin products. There was also a lack of consistency from one asset to the next, with the use of different nomenclature for product names and feature descriptions across each asset. The assets also lacked design consistency, with each using different font types, color schemes, and even logos.  Finally, the underlying drivers for adopting unstructured data masking were peppered throughout the existing collateral, but didn’t fall together in a consistent narrative from one asset to the next.

The Solution

ABMartin enlisted STELR to rebuild its brand and product messaging taxonomy, create a new messaging library, and refresh its core sales collateral and website. The process took 10 weeks, from start to finish, with weekly progress meetings and messaging & design reviews. ABMartin was an integral part of each step, ensuring total alignment of the new messaging and content with marketing requirements for enterprise data privacy.

STELR took ABMartin’s existing collateral and distilled the business challenges, capabilities,  proof points, and benefits into a new messaging library, with a messaging worksheet for each product. Messaging was designed to support ABMartin’s core positioning of “Complete Data Privacy” with layers to address the Professional, Strategic, Financial, and Technical requirements of buyers. The new library went through several revisions, working with stakeholders, before final signoff from ABMartin founders. The revised messaging was then integrated with a new website, marketing collateral, and sales deck. Each marketing asset now had nearly 100% consistency with all other assets– with simplified, easy-to-understand messaging and a cohesive design aesthetic.

“STELR was instrumental in helping ABMartin reposition itself as a strategic solution provider for unstructured data privacy. STELR took our technical content and added a layer of simplicity and polish that brought out the best in our products and brand. Each step in the process was very structured and deliberate, with a continuous progression that gave us confidence we were moving in the right direction. It was an amazing learning experience and such joy to work with Jeff Minich. We are very proud and excited with the end result!”

— Barbara Martin, Co-founder, ABMartin

Results

With its improved messaging, collateral, and brand identity, ABMartin has been able to streamline channel partner sales team enablement and accelerate revenue with partners. With simplified messaging for each product, partner sellers can now quickly adopt ABMartin’s unstructured data masking story into their overall pitch to customers. ABMartin expects these improvements, along with its new brand identity, to give channel partners and buyers greater confidence in ABMartin’s products and brand.