In the complex landscape of B2B marketing, success hinges on a deep understanding of your customer’s organizational structure. Organizations rarely operate as single entities; instead, they exist as intricate corporate families—a network of parent accounts, subsidiaries, divisions, and regional offices.
To truly align your marketing strategy with this reality, you need an audience-building tool that can look beyond the individual account and see the entire corporate family.
Want to know how B2B marketers can use Salesforce’s Data 360 Segmentation? This article shows you how to build audiences by tapping into the Account Hierarchy structure using Hierarchical Aggregation in Segmentation.
What is Account Hierarchical Aggregation in B2B?
An Account Hierarchy is the structured representation of parent-child relationships between company accounts within your Salesforce CRM system (like Salesforce Sales Cloud). This hierarchy logically connects related entities, such as:
- Parent Company → Subsidiary
- Headquarters → Regional Offices
- Holding Company → Brands or Divisions
For example, imagine a large enterprise “Acme Corp” and its subsidiaries as:
Hierarchical Aggregation is the process of consolidating key metrics (like revenue, pipeline value, or engagement data) from all child accounts up to their parent account within this structure. This roll-up provides a single, comprehensive view of the entire corporate relationship.
The key benefit is moving from isolated account-based targeting to a strategic approach that captures the full financial and operational context of an organization.
Establishing and Using Account Hierarchies in Data 360
How to Establish a Parent-Child Account Relationship
The parent-child relationship between accounts in Data 360 is established within the Account DMO. Each account has a “Parent Account” attribute. By populating this attribute with the ID of another account, you designate that account as the parent, thereby building out the hierarchical structure automatically within the system.
When Salesforce CRM data is ingested, accounts and their hierarchy information are loaded into the standard Account DMO.
Utilizing Account Hierarchy for Segmentation
The key benefit of this hierarchy is realized through the Hierarchical Aggregation feature when defining segments in Salesforce Data 360 based on Account or Unified Account.
When a marketer creates a segment filter using a related attribute, a dedicated container appears on the segment canvas. This container provides options for standard aggregate functions (such as sum, count, and average) on numeric attributes. Importantly, it also includes the “Hierarchical Aggregation” checkbox for Account and Unified Account based segments.
Selecting this checkbox instructs the system to include data from all related child accounts in the aggregate calculation, ensuring the segment accurately reflects the entire corporate structure.
B2B Use Cases of Hierarchical Aggregation in Segmentation
Here are three impactful B2B use cases you can implement today:
1. Identify Expansion and Cross-Sell Targets
Targeting a parent account based on its total corporate pipeline value is far more effective than targeting accounts based on individual deals.
The Goal: Build an audience of parent and child accounts in the hierarchy where the combined opportunity value across the hierarchy meets a certain threshold (e.g., all accounts with at least 2 opportunities worth more than $50k).
How it Works: By applying the Hierarchical Aggregation checkbox on the Opportunity Count and Total Amount filter, you segment accounts based on their cross-company potential, revealing the strongest signals for upsell and expansion. When you activate this segment with Activation Membership as Account Contact, you will be able to reach contacts from Parent Account even though the qualifying opportunity is created for the Child Account.
How to implement:
- Create an Account / Unified Account based segment.
- In the Include criteria, add a related attribute: Opportunity.Total Amount in the segment canvas.
- In the Aggregation section of the container,
- Select Count as Measurement.
- Select At Least as Operator.
- Enter 2 as Value.
- Select the checkbox for Hierarchical Aggregation.
- In the Filter section of the container, for Opportunity.Total Amount
- Select Is Greater Than Or Equal To as Operator.
- Enter 50000 as Value.
- Click Done and Save the Segment.
2. Target High-Value Parent Accounts with Aggregated Revenue
B2B marketers need a way to effectively target high-value parent accounts based on the combined revenue of their child accounts. Without visibility into the total revenue of the parent company, marketers may miss opportunities to focus on enterprise-level solutions that address the needs of the entire organization. To achieve this, marketers require a solution that aggregates revenue data across the account hierarchy, enabling them to identify and prioritize parent accounts with substantial financial potential.
The Goal: Segment top-level parent accounts whose combined Annual Revenue (from the parent and all subsidiaries) is greater than a specified amount (e.g., $600M).
How it Works: The feature sums the Annual Revenue across all levels of the hierarchy. By adding a final filter to include only accounts that Have No Value in the Account.Parent Account field, you ensure your audience is restricted to the top-most company in the hierarchy.
How to Implement:
Let’s consider the following sample data:
| Account ID | Account Name | Parent Account ID | Annual Revenue | Hierarchical Revenue Aggregation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | Acme Corp | $400M | $490M | |
| 101 | Acme IT | 100 | $90M | |
| 200 | GlobalTech Group | $500M | $605M | |
| 201 | GlobalTech Europe | 200 | $50M | |
| 202 | GlobalTech Asia | 200 | $35M | $55M |
| 203 | GlobalTech India | 202 | $20M | |
| 300 | MegaCorp Inc. | $620M | $920M | |
| 301 | MegaCorp Financial Services | 300 | $100M | |
| 302 | MegaCorp Manufacturing | 300 | $200M |
Let’s assume the B2B marketer’s requirement is to target parent accounts with annual revenue more than $600M. In this case, MegaCorp Inc. is the only parent company that matches the criteria without hierarchical aggregation. However, with hierarchical aggregation, GlobalTech Group is also revealed as a parent company with aggregated revenue more than $600M.
- Create a segment based on Account or Unified Account.
- In the Include criteria, add the self referential Account object as related attribute: Account.Annual Revenue Amount in the segment canvas.
- In the Aggregation section of the container,
- Select Sum as Measurement.
- Select Annual Revenue Amount as Attribute.
- Select Is Greater Than Or Equal To as Operator.
- Enter 600000000 as Value.
- Select the checkbox for Hierarchical Aggregation.
- In the Filter section of the container,
- Select Has Value as Operator.
- Click Done.
Now, to get only the top most parent accounts:
- Create a filter by adding a direct attribute Account.Parent Account.
- Select Has No Value as Operator.
- Ensure the two filters are combined using AND operator.
- Click Done and Save the Segment definition.
3. Exclude Accounts and their Subsidiaries Based on Support Case
Another common use case is suppressing automated marketing campaigns from contacting any part of a customer’s corporate structure that currently has an unresolved, high-priority support issue.
The Goal: Exclude any account or subsidiary from a marketing campaign if any entity within the corporate hierarchy has an unresolved, high-priority support case.
How it Works: Use the Exclude criteria in your segment, applying Hierarchical Aggregation to a filter that checks for Case.Case Status = Escalated AND Case.Case Priority = High. This protects the customer relationship from conflicting communication at a critical time.
How to Implement:
- Create an Account / Unified Account based segment.
- In the Exclude criteria, add a related attribute: Case.Case Status in the segment canvas.
- In the same container, add another related attribute: Case.Case Priority.
- In the Aggregation section of the container,
- Select Count as Measurement.
- Select At Least as Operator.
- Enter 1 as Value.
- Select the checkbox for Hierarchical Aggregation.
- In the Filter section of the container, for Case.Case Status
- Select Is Equal To as Operator.
- Enter Escalated as Value.
- In the Filter section of the container, for Case.Case Priority
- Select Is Equal To as Operator.
- Enter High as Value.
- Click Done and Save the segmentation.
Conclusion
Account Hierarchical Aggregation is a strategic capability that enables B2B marketers to model real-world business complexity. By furnishing a complete perspective of entire corporate structures and consolidating vital data—such as opportunities and service concerns—this functionality empowers marketers to establish exceptionally precise segments. Ultimately, this optimizes campaign efficacy and stimulates enduring expansion within intricate B2B landscapes by:
- Augmenting revenue through the identification of cross-sell prospects.
- Broadening campaign reach by uncovering additional contacts across the comprehensive account hierarchy.
- Enhancing risk mitigation by permitting the exclusion of high-risk accounts and their related hierarchies.
References
Salesforce Help: Hierarchical Aggregation in Segment Filters
Salesforce Help: Creating a container for segmentation with Hierarchical Aggregation
