Conversion Rate Optimization in ABM

I analyzed 12 months of ABM campaigns that actually worked. Here's the data: Most Account-Based Marketing fails before it starts. After analyzing 12 months of successful ABM campaigns (and plenty of failures), I've identified the patterns that consistently drive pipeline. Here's what the data shows: 1. Timing matters just as much as content Accounts that received 3+ touches within 48 hours of showing buying intent converted 4x better than those that received the same content a week later. 2. The magic number is 6.2 (for this brand at least) The average closed-won deal had 6.2 stakeholders involved. Yet most ABM campaigns only target 1-2 personas per account. Expand your reach. 3. The "champion experience" is everything The accounts where we delivered a memorable experience to a single champion (personalized video, custom research, direct exec outreach) had 3x higher conversion rates. 4. Sales and marketing misalignment kills ABM Our most successful campaigns had sales activity within 24 hours of marketing touches. When this alignment slipped to 72+ hours, conversion rates dropped by 48%. 5. Personalization at scale actually works But not how most people do it. We tested 4 levels of personalization: - Generic (18% engagement) - Industry-specific (27% engagement) - Company-specific (42% engagement) - Individual + company-specific (63% engagement) 6. Direct mail isn't dead But swag is worthless (or at least it didn’t work for this audience 🤷♀️). Our highest ROI direct mail: Personalized research reports addressing the account's specific challenges. $250 spend → $45K in pipeline (average). 7. The "Double-Down Effect" When an account engages with ANY marketing touch, immediately increasing the frequency and personalization level produces a 3.5x lift in conversion rates. The companies getting ABM right understand it's not a campaign—it's a complete go-to-market strategy. P.S. I'm working on a new episodic ABM show in collaboration with Clay, so stay tuned 🤗

Us B2B marketers won't shut up about ABM. But the reality is that many organizations haven’t nailed the execution. Every week, I meet with teams across the spectrum—from SMBs to large enterprises—to discuss ABM. And almost every time, I’m shocked to discover that only about 1 in 10 actually have an ABM program up and running. What’s even more surprising: when ABM is in place, I often hear they’re converting at around 4% - far from what I would expect from these programs that are spending 6-figure on ABM tech stack alone. At UserGems, we’re seeing a very different story. We’re converting between 12-15% of the accounts we target into opportunities through ABM, with a cost per hand raiser of $245 this quarter. How are we doing this, even with 50% capacity on the BDR team? ✅ Score accounts with signals (90% of our account scoring model is built on people level signals) ✅ Identify & prioritize contacts within those accounts with (again) signals ✅ Automatically enroll contacts into the right sequences ✅ Draft the emails using (you guessed it) signals for reps to review That ensures we go after the right accounts & buyers, and action consistently. Reps only need to focus on prospecting, calling, LinkedIn, etc. 2024 has been the year of wondering why ABM isn't performing like it should, 2025 is going to be the year of signal-based ABM. 🔥

A VP of Demand @ $50M+ ARR company asked me this week: “What's the average Past Champion > Opp conversion rate?' The answer = 9.81%! (Range is between 5-12%. Source: last 12 months, 350+ customers from start-ups to public companies.) 1 out of 10 of your Past Champions (customers, users, closed/lost contacts who recently changed their job) you reach out to become a new opp! I’m not talking Reply Rate, or Meetings. I’m talking Sales Opportunities! There aren't many programs that convert this high (outside of inbound demo requests) Honestly, it should be illegal not to run it. It should also be illegal if you don't run it correctly. At UserGems 💎, at least 2-3 meetings are booked from this program literally every day. Here's how we do it: 1) Job changes: Gem-E (our AI Agent for Outbound) tracks thousands of Past Champion job changes each month, filtered for ICP and Persona 2) Stack additional signals: Gem-E captures other signals daily (New exec hire, CRM data, Gong transcripts, Email exchanges, Funding, Website Visits, News + 100 more) 3) AI emails: Gem-E combines all data for highly contextual & personalized email sequences. Reps focus on calls, replies, and social selling. Example: 'Hi Joe, you might have remembered us from → acknowledge relationship We talked to Jane from Sales last year about using AI to automate outbound, ABM and improving efficiency. She liked what she saw but timing was off. → CRM research of past interactions & closed lost notes + building the buying group Not sure if you knew, [Competitor] shared how they use Gem-E to 2X team's capacity. [Link to story] → External social proof & competitive intel Curious if this is interesting in your new role? PS. Congrats on the new role! Hope you enjoy this small celebratory gift!' 4) Multi-touch sequence: Buyers need time to build a business case, even the warmest ones. We recommend at least 5 touches & multi-channels (email, call, ads) For cold calls: our reps use Gem-E Chrome extension as a cheat sheet to know why they're calling this account & this person. They've booked 3X more meetings from calls now. (check out Sara Angell's posts with a screenshot of this cheat sheet) For ads: we run signal-based contact-level campaigns to surround buyers with similar messaging that our SDRs and AI are sending. 5) Rep Accountability: If reps don’t action these signals within 7 days, Gem-E takes the lead back and adds it to an Autopilot sequence. This guarantees that we act on all hot signals, 100% of the time. ------- If you have > 100 customers, 5-figure ACVs, or a finite TAM, doing this play well requires research and thought. And let's be honest, humans can't execute this 100% consistently. But this is where AI shines. AI is SO much better & faster at: - capturing data & signals - researching CRM + Gong transcripts + email exchanges - combining all that into hyper-personalized emails And it executes 100% consistently. The ROI will pay for itself. Guarantee.

"Just a lil' bit of creativity. A scrappy mindset. Just a little innovation to string your tech stack together - and you'll be there" - this comes from a very popular ABM book*, and that's the kind of advice you get from most ABM resources. You will be there, but when? And where is "there" (reasonable goals, benchmarks, budget?) In our case, this "stringing tech stage together" with "little bit of creativity" took our team of 4 (marketing ops manager, ABM manager, growth/performance manager, myself)...5 months of hard slog. We'll be soon sharing our entire process in Kyle Poyar's newsletter, but in the meantime - here's tactical advice that would've helped us set up our ABM operation much faster: 1. If you don't want to commit to a $60,000 platform & a year+ long contract with an ABM platform that you're not sure will work for you - start from LinkedIn. We’ve so far used Fibbler + Hubspot for this, but brace yourself - the rev ops for setting the account scoring + reporting dashboards + lead assignment for BDR flollow ups are not for the faint-hearted - you’ll need an MOps persona for that. We’re currently building an internal solution for this. Another big + for LinkedIn - reverse IP lookup for website traffic deanonymization tools have 5-25% accuracy rate. 2. Break your campaign down into stages: Identified (=all accounts from your SAM targeted in the campaign), Awareness, Interest/Engagement, Consideration (pre-opp/demo) and Selection (deal). Create three layers of ads/ resources: 1) for the identified and aware account - catching the prospects’ attention with more problem-reinforcing ads. Use a lot of single-image and video ads. Use some Thought Leader ads - with moderation. They look suspiciously good based on the CTR, but it’s not clicks to the website - the conversion rate to landing page from those is low. 2) For the engaged stage - move on to more solution-led content - showcasing how your product provides the solution to the formerly identified pain; 3) For considering and selecting accounts - show more product-focused content, with tons of testimonials and relevant case studies. 3. Set *simple* thresholds for moving from one state to another (= account scoring) based on LinkedIn ads engagements. For us, this was: 💠 Identified: All targeted accounts included in the campaign. 💠 Aware: Accounts with 50+ ad impressions. 💠 Interested/Engaged: Accounts with 5+ ad clicks or 10+ engagements (e.g., likes, shares, comments). 💠 Considering: Accounts that have booked a demo or signed up for a trial. 💠 Selecting: Accounts with an open deal in progress. 4. Budget: Work backward from revenue goals. E.g., $1M ARR goal, $50K ACV = 2405 accounts to target. With 0.4% CTR and 1% LP conversion, you’ll need 2.7M impressions for 107 demos. At $55 CPM, that’s ~$147K ad spend. Benchmarks: Monitor pipeline per $ spent. Example: $5.3M pipeline with $147K budget = $36 pipeline per $. We aim for ~$10 per $ spent. TBC in the comments 👇

This LinkedIn ad strategy from last year still drives high-quality leads for 83% of the cost for one of my clients. It's been so successful, my Linkedin rep called me to ask questions. 👀 It's now part of our holistic demand gen playbook. The experiment? Running impactful ABM ads. It's not an earth-shattering concept. But a ton of marketers struggle to make LinkedIn ABM ads work. You’re not alone. Many marketers find themselves: ❌ Targeting the wrong accounts. ❌ Using generic messages that don’t resonate. ❌ Creating audiences that are way too small to make an impact. It doesn’t have to be this way. With this focused ABM approach, my client saw: 🔥 Decreased cost per lead by 83%  🔥 2.5x higher form conversion rate (3.50% vs. 1.41%) 🔥 4% higher lead quality leads Here are 5 tactics (with real examples!) that helped achieve these results: 1. 𝐈𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐲 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡-𝐑𝐎𝐈 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐬. Focus on accounts with high revenue potential and strategic GTM alignment. Margins need to make sense.  2. 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 1:1 𝐜𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐬. For this motion, make sure each campaign is targeting only one account.  3. 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐬𝐢𝐳𝐞. Focus on targeting 300 min contacts matched, but ideally 1,000+ contacts. Using skills OR job titles helped us unlock more scale without sacrificing lead quality.  4. 𝐂𝐫𝐚𝐟𝐭 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐥𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠. Everyone says this, but actually do it. Go beyond just adding the account logo in your ads. Try using specific messaging, pain points, & stats that are unique to each target account.  5. 𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐟. Build trust and credibility fast with each account by using testimonials from similar users. Or, if you're expanding users on an account, use testimonials from existing users! Check the full guide below to help you create ABM campaigns that convert. Have you experimented with ABM ads? What's worked for you?

our data shows that marketing efforts usually drop off the moment an opportunity moves deeper into the sales funnel. but this is exactly when buyers need more confidence — and when marketing can have the most influence. so what if you didn’t pull back then? what if, instead, you increased marketing investment by 20% or launched a fresh abm campaign at that handoff? when marketing stays actively involved in the sales process — not just at the top of the funnel — conversion rates from target buying groups to pipeline increase by 65%. and the effect holds even when alignment isn’t perfect. even when the handoff between sales and marketing is clunky. even when teams are targeting different contacts within the same accounts. so instead of stepping back once sales picks up the phone, consider: - adding tailored nurture tracks for key decision-makers in active deals - using targeted advertising to reinforce the message in parallel with sales outreach - giving sales direct access to marketing content that addresses deal-specific pain points because buyers rarely make decisions in a straight line, and marketing can be the steady voice that keeps your story alive while sales brings the deal home.