Account Based Marketing Examples

The Seven Parts Every Example Shares

Strip any ABM play down and the same seven parts are there. If a part is missing, the play is missing something too.

That last row is the one most write-ups leave out. Our own account-based marketing method documents every play with what triggers it, what marketing does, what sales does and what ends it, and a play that cannot be described that way does not run. Hold the examples below to the same standard.

Example 1: A Comic Book for One CEO (One-to-One)

This is the most-cited ABM example there is. GumGum, an ad-tech company selling computer vision, wanted T-Mobile as a client. Its own account of the campaign, published on Convince & Convert, goes like this.

T-Mobile’s CEO, John Legere, was very active on social media, and his feed made two things plain: he liked to wear magenta, and he loved Batman. T-Mobile was rolling out its unlimited data plan at the time. GumGum put editors, writers, illustrators and letterers on a comic book called T-Man and Gums. They spent months on it, then shipped 100 copies to T-Mobile and its agencies of record. Within hours Legere praised it on Twitter. Within days there was a meeting, and GumGum says the conversation eventually led to T-Mobile becoming a client.

Taken apart:

• Account: one, named, chosen first.
• Trigger: a product launch the account was already talking about.
• Committee: not just the CEO. The 100 copies went to T-Mobile and its agencies, the people who would actually run media.
• Measure: a meeting, then a client. GumGum reports both, in that order.

What to copy is the research, not the comic. Somebody read the CEO’s public feed closely enough to know what he cared about. That is an account research brief, and it costs an afternoon, not months of illustration. In our programmes, a short brief per tier-one account comes before anything is sent: what they do, what changed recently, who sits on the committee, and the hypothesis for why we are worth their time. Sales gets it too.

What not to copy is the budget. Months of a creative team aimed at one account only pays back when one account is worth that much. If yours isn’t, that is a tier decision, and our post on ABM strategy walks through the arithmetic.

Example 2: A Hundred Burger Kits for One Brand

Same company, same write-up, different shape. To get through to McDonald’s, GumGum built burger kits and shipped 100 of them to McDonald’s executives and the brand’s media agencies, with each person’s name printed on a fast-food receipt inside the box. Each ingredient stood for part of the product: the patties for first- and third-party data, the onions for targeting, the special sauce for computer vision. There was an augmented reality tattoo in the box too, and short social videos tagged the decision makers.

The result GumGum reports is a meeting with the relevant decision makers. Not a contract. That honesty is the useful part.

• Account: one, but the play is aimed at a hundred named people inside it and around it.
• Committee: executives plus the agencies who influence media buying. The champion alone was never going to be enough.
• Case: one product, explained ingredient by ingredient, so every recipient got the same argument.
• Measure: a meeting with decision makers. An early measure, reported as an early measure.

A meeting is what an ABM play should be judged on in its first months. Revenue arrives on the account’s buying cycle, not yours. In our programmes, coverage and committee reach typically move within four to eight weeks, and revenue follows the client’s existing sales cycle. Reporting the meeting as the win it is keeps a programme alive long enough for the contract.

Example 3: Tattoos at the Client’s Own Conference (One-to-Few)

The third GumGum example is the least famous and the most copyable. Clorox runs an annual internal conference for its marketers, iConnect. The 2017 edition had more than 400 attendees, its biggest guest list. GumGum wanted the attention of several Clorox brands, Brita, Burt’s Bees and Hidden Valley among them, and built 3D tattoo kits for people to use and share during the event. Combining augmented reality with the event itself, GumGum reports more than 200 app downloads and strong interest at its booth.

Source: GumGum’s own account of the three campaigns, on Convince & Convert.

• Tier: one-to-few. Several brands, clustered by something real: same parent, same room, same week.
• Trigger: an event the accounts were already attending.
• Play: one idea, lightly adapted across the cluster.
• Measure: downloads and booth conversations. Engagement, not pipeline.

This is the shape most programmes should spend most of their time in. Our service page calls one-to-few the workhorse tier: accounts clustered by industry, use case, trigger event or tech stack, with one narrative lightly personalised across a handful of companies at once.

Examples 4 to 7: Four Plays Without a Stunt

The famous examples are all about landing a new logo. That is one of the jobs ABM does. The four below cover the rest. The companies are fictional and the numbers are illustrative. The mechanics are the point.

Example 4: 400 Accounts, Programmatic (One-to-Many)

A software company selling route-planning tools has 400 mid-sized freight and distribution firms that fit its ideal customer profile. Nobody can research 400 accounts by hand, so the play is paid air cover on the named list, with first-party signal deciding who gets human attention.

• Account: 400 named companies, uploaded as a list.
• Trigger: none at first. The play’s job is to find one, using the company’s own pricing-page visits, email replies and CRM history.
• Play: role-specific ads to operations and finance leads at those companies. An account that visits the pricing page twice in a month moves up a tier and gets a sales sequence.
• Measure and exit: the share of the 400 showing any engagement, and how many moved up a tier. A creative that has not moved an account in six weeks is swapped out.

One platform detail shapes this example. LinkedIn’s company list targeting needs at least 300 rows to upload, and the list has to match at least 300 member accounts before an ad set can run. That makes LinkedIn a natural fit for the one-to-many tier and a poor one for a ten-account list. Most of our ABM air cover runs on LinkedIn Ads for that reason: it can target a named company and the roles inside it.

Before buying intent data for a list like this, use what you already own. We exhaust first-party signals (site behaviour, email, CRM and sales-engagement data) before recommending anyone pay for an intent platform, and we take no vendor commissions on tools we suggest. More on that in intent and signal marketing.

Example 5: The Stalled Deal (Pipeline Acceleration)

A $120,000 deal has been in procurement for seven weeks. The rep knows one person, the operations director, and that person has gone quiet.

• Account: one open opportunity.
• Trigger: no stage movement in 30 days.
• Committee: map the roles nobody has reached. Here that is finance and IT security.
• Case: the same case the champion bought, rebuilt for the two new readers. A payback page for finance. A one-page security and data-handling summary for IT.
• Play: ads aimed at those two roles at that one company, plus a short note from the rep that hands the champion both documents to forward.
• Measure and exit: a new contact engaged from finance or IT within three weeks, and a stage change within six. If neither happens, the deal is reforecast honestly.

Single-threaded deals die when the champion goes quiet. This play costs almost nothing beyond two documents, and it is often the cheapest revenue on the board.

Example 6: The Division Next Door (Expansion)

A client has used your product in one of its warehouses for a year. The company runs two more warehouses that buy separately.

• Account: an existing customer, but a different buying centre inside it.
• Trigger: the first site’s renewal, 90 days out.
• Committee: the operations leads at the other two sites, plus the regional VP who sits above all three.
• Case: the first site’s own result, written up with the client’s permission, in the client’s numbers.
• Play: a short internal case study the first site’s manager can forward, followed by a site visit invitation for the other two managers.
• Measure and exit: a meeting with either site before the renewal closes.

The first signature is the smallest revenue event in a good account. Most companies have nobody whose job is the second one.

Example 7: The Shared List (Partner and Channel)

A manufacturer sells through two regional distributors. All three keep separate target lists and step on each other.

• Account: 60 named end customers, agreed jointly.
• Trigger: the distributors’ annual planning cycle.
• Committee: on your side, the distributor’s sales reps are part of the committee too.
• Play: co-branded content for each cluster, run under the distributor’s name in its territory, with leads routed to the distributor’s rep.
• Measure and exit: joint pipeline across the 60 accounts, reviewed quarterly by both companies.

How to Turn an Example Into Your Own Play

Pick the example closest to your situation and fill in the seven parts for one real account before you build anything.

If you cannot name 50 companies you want as customers, ABM is probably the wrong motion. That is the test on our own service page, and demand generation is the better route if you fail it. If you pass, start with one tier-one account and one example from this list. A pilot with one tier, one objective and a fixed window teaches you more than four hundred accounts on day one.