Account-based marketing (ABM) has become a go-to strategy for B2B companies looking to deliver highly targeted, relevant experiences to their most valuable accounts. 

But there are a number of barriers that ABM teams need to overcome to deliver accurate and effective messaging to the right people: 

• Delivering personalization at scale.

• Tactics decrease in effectiveness over time.

• Using Artificial Intelligence is quickly changing what’s possible.

Go-to-market (GTM) teams must continuously innovate their tactics to capture and hold that attention. 

We’ve been interviewing ABM leaders from companies like 6sense, Snowflake, Qualtrics, and more to understand how they run their ABM programs. We wanted to hear directly from them about what specifically they’re doing to engage their target accounts and accelerate pipeline. 

In this post, we'll examine 5 new tactics these companies are exploring to stay ahead of the curve.

Drive Traffic to Personalized Pages Using BDR Efforts

Simply creating personalized landing pages for your target accounts is not enough - you need to actively drive your target accounts to those experiences. Veracode employs a multichannel approach to maximize engagement.

"Another area that we are bringing them in from is through our BDR outreach," shares Meg Noonan, Senior Marketing Manager at Veracode. By including links to the personalized pages in BDR sequences and email marketing campaigns, Veracode surrounds target accounts with consistent messaging across touchpoints.

Before sending the personalized microsite, the BDR will call the prospect to inform them that the page is on its way. If the prospect answers the call, then they’re able to immediately provide value while on the phone by referencing the information that the microsite will include. 

Then, a few days after the personalized outreach is sent, the BDR will follow up with the prospect over the phone to discuss. They’ve seen accounts which have very poor engagement respond positively to this tactic because it offers touchpoints across different channels, all focusing on the same asset. 

The goal is to create an "integrated campaign experience" where accounts are hit from multiple channels, all leading them back to their tailored microsite. This coordinated effort amplifies the impact of ‌personalized content.

ABM Campaigns for Active Opportunities

We’ve seen a resounding increase in the number of ABM teams who are tasked with not just creating net new deals in the pipeline, but also accelerating the existing deal to close faster. 

This is especially important with deal cycles that are over 6 months, as ‌buyers will over time lose interest in the deal. ABM offers some unique methods for re-engaging prospects throughout the buying journey and multithreading to engage new contacts who are part of the buying committee. 

“We use Marketo to track website/email activity and have an ‘engagement’ formula within Snowflake that scores different items differently,” said Casey Patterson, Sr. Manager of North American ABM at Snowflake. “We focus on website activity on ABM pages or the global Snowflake website.”

Snowflake's ABM technology stack uses their own platform as the source of truth, where 1st and 3rd-party data is piped into. They then create their own engagement algorithms to identify intent signals and then use Mutiny to deliver the most relevant personalization for each account.

This allows their website to become a personalized digital asset that evolves as the deal matures. In the early stages, they use the website to educate the prospect on different use-cases their product could be used for. But as the deal moves from engaged to actively assessing, the recommended content and emails the account gets can move closer towards close-won.

Experimenting with Interactive Demos

Another area where 6sense is innovating their ABM program is with interactive product demos. The company is exploring adding these experiences to its website to allow prospects to self-educate and explore the platform at their own pace. 

What's powerful about this approach is the ability to personalize the demo experience for different roles, industries, or even specific accounts. By dynamically customizing the demo content and use cases, 6sense can deliver a highly relevant, engaging experience for each visitor.

"I've seen a lot of people do interactive demos on their sites," says Grace Kleaveland Kupczak, 6sense's Senior Digital Marketing Manager. "Let them learn and let them learn how they want to."

You can see Mutiny's interactive product tour here.

This tactic aligns with the growing trend of B2B buyers preferring to research and evaluate solutions on their own before engaging with a sales rep. By providing an interactive, self-guided demo, 6sense empowers prospects to explore its platform in depth without feeling pressured or rushed.

Moving Away from Batch-and-Blast Emails

One tactic 6sense is moving away from is the generic "batch-and-blast" email newsletter. These one-size-fits-all email blasts often result in poor engagement, as they fail to deliver targeted, relevant content to recipients. 

"I think the thing that I would want to ditch is a one-size-fits-all newsletters," says Grace. "I don't find them very engaging. They are also a lot of work."

Instead of relying on these impersonal mass emails, 6sense is investing in segmented nurturing streams tailored to specific audiences and buying stages. By leveraging the account insights and intent data available in its own platform, 6sense can deliver the right content to the right prospects at the right time, driving higher engagement and conversion rates.

Adopting a "Test-and-Learn" Mentality

The most important aspect of 6sense's approach to ABM innovation is its embrace of experimentation and continuous optimization. Grace emphasizes the importance of constantly testing assumptions through tactics like A/B testing and rigorous measurement.  

"Things I've run in Mutiny that I thought were gonna do well didn't, and things that I might not have thought would have gone well did," she says.

This "test-and-learn" mentality is critical in a world where buyer preferences and behaviors are constantly shifting. What worked well last quarter may fall flat this quarter. Personalization tactics that seem intuitive may‌ underperform when tested against a control.

The only way to know for sure is to treat every tactic as a hypothesis to be validated or disproven through data. By instrumenting campaigns to measure engagement and pipeline impact, and by running controlled experiments, marketers can gain the insights they need to continuously optimize performance.

Critically, adopting a "test-and-learn" approach requires an organizational culture that embraces experimentation and that is willing to accept "failures" as valuable learning opportunities. It requires providing marketers with the resources and runway to try new things, even if not every tactic delivers a home run.

What Does The Future of ABM Look Like?

As we learn from ABM leaders through the ABM MBA series, we’re seeing that even the most sophisticated, data-driven marketing organizations must continuously innovate their ABM tactics and channels to remain effective. In a crowded, noisy market, it's all too easy for buyers to tune out generic, irrelevant marketing messages. 

The antidote is a commitment to experimentation - to generating new ideas, testing them in a controlled way, and rapidly iterating based on the results. 6sense's move away from generic email blasts and embrace of interactive demos, Snowflake’s use of personalization to accelerate the buyer journey, Veracode’s multi-channel approach, and the overall "test-and-learn" mindset provide a roadmap that other B2B organizations can follow.

Of course, tactics that work for one company may not work for another. The key is to stay agile - to keep trying new things, measuring the results, and optimizing for what works. By embracing this approach, B2B marketers can continue to find innovative ways to engage their audiences and drive real business impact through ABM.

To learn the modern ABM tactics and strategies direct from the source, be sure to check out the ABM MBA classes. These short, highly actionable sessions will give you an under-the-hood look at how the best ABM organizations are run, and frameworks you can use to get to that point, as well. 

Check them out here.