6 ABM Examples That Actually Worked (And The Tactics Behind Them)

The ABM examples that get shared the most tend to be the flashy ones.

Branded bobbleheads sent to a shortlist of dream accounts. A fully personalized microsite that features every buying group member's name. A custom magazine built around a single prospect's favorite sports team.

These campaigns are impressive, and they deserve the attention they get. But they're also kind of hard to learn from.

The mechanics get glossed over in favor of the reveal, and marketers end up feeling inspired but ultimately without a clear sense of how to actually pull something like that off, or whether it's even the right move for their program and budget.

The six campaigns in this guide are practical, real-world examples of what can be done in account-based marketing today. Not just what each team did, but how they thought about it, why it landed, and what you can take into your own program.

Virtual events and webinars are everywhere in B2B. In addition to great content, the ones that generate pipeline focus on two things that actually matter:

Getting the right people in the room, and designing a deliberate post-event sales sequence that separates genuine buyers from casual attendees.

Iridium Mobile built their virtual summit around exactly that logic, with just three people and a $3,000 budget, the campaign created five new customers with LTV above $100k.

Iridium's guest list was built across five categories of attendees. Each category was chosen because it served a specific role in driving pipeline:

• Existing customers, who added credibility and helped with promotion
• Tier 1 target accounts, where pre-summit prep calls doubled as qualification conversations
• Thought leaders, to attract new audiences
• Partners, who promoted the event to their own customer bases
• Industry media, to amplify reach

This ABM example worked because it created a network effect, as each participant promoted the summit to their own audiences. For attendees, the invite didn't come from Iridium; it came from someone they already knew and trusted.

That's a fundamentally different entry point than a cold email or a paid ad, and it's what meant that 39% of the 2,320 attendees were net-new accounts Iridium had never reached before.

Rather than following up with every attendee, the team ran targeted post-event webinars exclusively for their highest-priority target accounts. Invitations were sent manually via email and SMS, with the sales team calling some accounts directly. 

Post-webinar, Iridium sent a content hub to all attendees containing the webinar recording, product presentation, case studies, FAQs, and a link to book a call with the CRO.

This was added value for attendees, but it also acted as an intent filter for the ABM team.

By tracking who visited the hub, what they consumed, and how long they spent inside, the team could identify which accounts were actually evaluating and follow up with those specifically, with messaging tailored specifically to the intent signals Iridum generated.

• Your guest list is part of the strategy. Choose participants based on who you want in the room and what role they can play in amplifying your reach
• Don't follow up with everyone who attends. Create a post-event touchpoint that separates buyers from attendees, then let sales focus their effort on the accounts that are showing genuine intent 

Iridium already got to the hard part, which is tracking who actually engaged with the hub after the event. Where I'd layer Influ2 in is upstream of that, before the invites even go out. 

Running contact-level ads to Tier 1 decision-makers in the weeks leading up to the summit means the company name is already familiar by the time a partner or thought leader forwards the invite. The network effect does more work when the target has seen you a few times already.

ABM segmentation is usually based on what the account looks like—ICP fit, industry, geographic location, firmographics, etc.

Bonterra instead organized their program around what they were trying to accomplish with each account. They built three distinct cohorts, each with completely different strategic goals, creative, and messaging:

• Customer expansions: Built to deepen relationships with existing customers, with messaging focused on collaboration rather than direct upsells.
• Competitive knockout: Designed to engage buyers who were actively evaluating alternatives, with messaging targeting known technical challenges with competitors.
• Event activation: Targeted known attendee lists, with messaging focused on driving booth visits.

For each segment, Bonterra prioritized accounts by buying stage, then funneled those accounts into Influ2, where they built precise segments of 5-15 named stakeholders per account.

That meant the person seeing the expansion campaign was someone who actually had a say in the decision to increase the budget, and the people seeing the event campaign were those who’d actually attend.

“We reached 80% of the buying committee,” said Justin Lopez, ABM Manager at Bonterra. “We knew we were getting to the right people with the right message.”

The combined approach of intent-based segmentation and contact-level targeting brought Bonterra a 2x higher win rate compared to cold outreach, a 39.7% increase in opportunity conversion rate, and a 2.5x increase in deal value.

• Segment your ABM program by what you're trying to accomplish with each account, not just who they are
• Expansion, competitive, and event plays require completely different messaging and targeting; treat them as separate campaigns
• Contact-level targeting is what lets you confirm the right person within the account is actually seeing your message

Dig further into this ABM example: Read the full Bonterra case study.

ABM programs are typically built around winning new logos. But some of the highest-value opportunities are already inside your existing accounts, sitting in business units you haven't touched yet.

For Revenue.io, that meant selling into one of their largest existing accounts, an enterprise cloud provider that was already bringing in over $1M a year in revenue.

The white space expansion potential inside the account was enormous, but the trick was getting a foot in the door with those untapped business units. Revenue.io couldn’t use the customer’s logo externally or talk publicly about the relationship, but they could create content specifically for the customer to use internally.

They brought in a full video crew, produced a detailed case study with the buyer at the account, and gave them something they could share inside the organization to help sell Revenue.io to their colleagues in other business units.

“The foundation of everything was our champion.

We'd built a real relationship, delivered consistent value, and we knew how to position the expansion in a way that made him look good to his peers and his leadership. When your champion is the one opening doors, the whole motion changes.

He gave us the intelligence we needed on the other business units—who the right buyers were, how the org was structured, how decisions got made. And he made warm introductions to sales leadership and SDR managers inside those units because those were our buyers.

We already knew how to sell to this company. We just needed the right entry points.”

Brandon Redlinger, Fractional VP of Marketing

Revenue.io then built on those warm introductions by running webinars exclusively for sales reps inside those other business units. The framing was always education-first—here's how to be more efficient. The product angle was secondary because once they’d built the trust, the product was an easy next step.

The pitch was also practical: We're already an approved vendor. Procurement and security are already cleared. Another business unit inside your company is getting these results. We can help you get there, too.

Eighteen months later, they’d closed two new business units at roughly $250K each, with the deal cycles for these new business units running about half the time of a standard enterprise motion because they’re weren't starting from zero on trust, compliance, or credibility.

What made this ABM example work was treating each business unit as its own account while using the existing relationship as proof, and as a way to get a foot in the door. Your current champion becomes your most effective sales rep if you give them the right tools to tell the story.

• Existing accounts often contain expansion opportunities that are faster to close and cheaper to win than net-new logos
• Your champion is your most effective sales asset. Invest in the relationship and give them the right tools to tell the story internally
• Treat each business unit as its own account with its own buying group and entry point, while using the existing relationship as proof

Champions open doors, but they can only introduce you to so many people at once.

Where I'd lean on Influ2 here is in parallel with the intros. Map the rest of the buying group inside each new business unit (procurement, finance, peer teams) and run contact-level ads to them while the initial conversations are happening. 

By the time a new contact jumps on a call, the case study, messaging, and proof points have already been in their feed for weeks.

The other thing Influ2 adds is the kind of signal a champion can't always give you, because they don't see it.

Influ2 can surface when those new contacts start searching competitors, reading up on industry news on other sites, or posting about the problems you solve on social media. That's the moment internal momentum has shifted, and you want to catch it without having to email the champion every week to ask.

Running an ad-based ABM program isn't about making one great ad and letting it run.

Your messaging needs to change over time as buyers move through their journey, as they engage with your content and you collect intent signals, and as you learn more about what's actually motivating them to buy right now.

That's the approach Marketbridge took for BioCatch, and it drove a 6x increase in accounts entering active pipeline.

BioCatch sells fraud prevention technology, which means the buyer pool is narrow and specific: CISOs, CSOs, and fraud leaders. Marketbridge used intent data and firmographic signals to identify and segment those decision-makers from the start.

From there, the campaign was built around three funnel stages using Influ2's Journey Builder, each with its own targeting, creative, and call to action:

• Unengaged: Contacts with no prior interaction were identified through intent data and firmographic signals, focused on fraud, risk, and cybersecurity decision-makers. They were reached through one-to-many tactics, with problem-led messaging designed to build familiarity with BioCatch in the right rooms.
• Engaged: Contacts who had previously interacted with BioCatch content were segmented by role, region, and engagement level. Messaging shifted from awareness to role-specific product and solution content.
• Pipeline: Known stakeholders tied to active Salesforce opportunities were prioritized based on opportunity stage and deal influence. They received one-to-one outreach with ROI-focused assets, case studies, and proof points timed to their deal stage.

Contact-level ad targeting and engagement tracking ran through Influ2, with ad engagement data flowing directly into HubSpot so sales could act on signals in real time.

What made the difference in this ABM example was that the ad program moved with the buyer.

The messaging they saw reflected where they actually were in their journey, which ultimately moved them through the pipeline faster: Contacts who engaged with Influ2-delivered ads moved through the funnel 41% faster than those who didn't.

• An ad program only works if it adapts as buyers move through their journey. Map your creative to funnel stage and let engagement data drive how messaging evolves over time
• Contact-level targeting is what makes that adaptation meaningful. When you know exactly who engaged and what they responded to, your next move is informed, not guessed

Learn more from this ABM example: Read the full Marketbridge case study

When new accounts are added to HP Apollo’s ABM program, they’re still years out from buying.

When you’re targeting enterprise, by the time your buyer is writing an RFP—and your ABM tool surfaces the account as “in-market”—it's already too late to shape how they think about you.

HP's strategy was to start early and build a program that evolved as accounts moved closer to a decision.

Target accounts were segmented based on how far away they were from RFP, and at each stage, the targeting, tactics, and messaging all shifted to match where those buyers actually were:

• Tier 3 (2+ years from RFP): Broad brand awareness via display, programmatic, and paid social. Drip-feeding thought leadership so HP is already in the conversation when the time comes.
• Tier 2 (less than 2 years from RFP): High-touch and personalized. One-to-one reports delivered directly to key stakeholders via social selling. Account intelligence reports and sales enablement decks built for HP's sales team to use in direct prospecting.
• Tier 1 (at RFP stage): Back to paid channels, but messaging shifts from thought leadership to product-focused content distribution.

HP’s tiering system worked because it wasn't just about accounts, but about targeting the right people within those accounts, at the right moment for their role in the deal.

Early on, that meant broad awareness among C-Suite and Director-level contacts. As accounts moved closer to RFP, the shift to one-to-one social selling implied something important: the team wasn't casting wide anymore. They were working from named contact lists, reaching specific people with relevant messaging. 

• Map your target accounts by distance from a likely buying decision, not just by ICP fit
• Build distinct plays that reflect where each account actually is
• You don't need a five-year program to apply this logic; you just need to stop treating all target accounts the same way

HP's tiering depends on someone on the team noticing when an account is moving closer to RFP, which is a judgment call, and the cost of getting it wrong is missing the window. 

Influ2 could take some of that pressure off by flagging when contacts at a Tier 3 account start searching category terms, reading third-party research, or posting about the topic, which is usually a stronger signal that the account is moving than firmographic tiering alone.

Buyer Journeys would also let HP run all three tiers inside the same ad program, with each contact's stage triggering the creative they see. A CISO who's “tier 3” sees thought leadership; when their deal stage shifts, the journey moves them into product-focused content without anyone manually re-segmenting the list.

ZS Associates had strong relationships across 30 of their highest-potential accounts. The problem was that they were all at the wrong level. Directors knew ZS well, but the CCOs and CEOs who controlled strategic budgets barely knew they existed.

To change that, ZS first needed to understand what those executives actually cared about, what problems they were sitting with, and what kind of conversation would earn their attention.

So before building anything, they went and asked.

The qualitative interviews they ran with existing clients revealed something important: pharma leaders knew their commercial model was broken, but had no framework for thinking about what came next.

ZS built the campaign around that idea, developing a concept called Business-to-Ecosystem (B2E) that reframed how pharma companies should think about their commercial relationships. Rather than pitching their product, they gave executives something genuinely worth engaging with and positioned ZS as the partner who could help them navigate the shift.

This ABM example worked because the B2E concept addressed something execs were already thinking about, which meant ZS wasn't interrupting them, they were joining a conversation that was already happening internally.

From there, the campaign was built around getting that idea in front of the right people.

Buying group mapping across the 30 accounts identified 1,500 net-new senior contacts to target. The campaign ran across paid media, content syndication, email, and a dedicated microsite, all anchored by the B2E concept. For the most senior contacts, ZS hosted a VIP event featuring Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a credibility play designed to reach executives who wouldn't respond to a standard demand gen touchpoint.

With this program, ZS achieved 100% account engagement across all 30 targets, opened new meetings with CEOs and CCOs at Fortune 100 pharma companies, and influenced $40 million in net-new revenue.

• Start with research, not messaging. Interview your audience before you build anything
• The most powerful ABM plays at the executive level aren't built around your product; they're built around an insight your audience doesn't have yet but immediately recognizes as true
• Buying group mapping isn't just a targeting exercise. It's how you find the people at your best accounts who you should be talking to, but aren't

The B2E concept is what made this campaign land. But executing it at 1,500 contacts across 30 accounts usually means uploading the same list to LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, and the rest, then stitching the reporting back together in a spreadsheet with no visibility into who you actually reached.

Influ2 runs the ads to those named contacts across all these channels and more, from one interface, and shows you exactly who saw and engaged with which ads.

Then, track their ad engagement (and Influ2’s other signals) for all the contacts to decide which CCOs to move toward the VIP event and which still need another touch.

The campaigns that actually drive pipeline aren't always the flashiest ones. 

They're the ones built around a clear understanding of who the right person is, what they care about, and how to reach them at the right moment in their journey.

They go beyond the account and connect with the people within it.

Book a demo with Influ2 to see how contact-level ABM can fuel more targeted outreach and meaningful engagement with your audience.