The Great ABM Unbundling Is Here

Your all-in-one ABM stack is bloated, expensive, and stuck in 2016

Social trends this week are pulling us straight back to 2016. Your feed is probably full of VSCO-edited, Snapchat-filtered, oddly cropped 2016 highlight reels like we're reliving our glory days.

But in B2B marketing, ABM never left 2016. We’re still running the same bloated playbooks, still drowning in 6-figure platform contracts, still spending months prepping campaigns that could launch in weeks. The tech evolved. Buyer behavior changed completely. Budgets got slashed and scrutinized.

But somehow, our ABM approach stayed frozen in time.

I’ve had three calls this week alone with CMOs at B2B SaaS companies asking the same questions: Should we renew our ABM platform? How do we get our sales team to actually use this thing? Why are we spending $200K annually on tools we barely touch? Is there a better way?

These aren’t outlier conversations. This is the norm right now.
Or at least it sure feels that way to me.

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👋 Hi, it’s Kaylee Edmondson and welcome to Looped In, my newsletter covering demand gen and growth in B2B SaaS. Subscribe to join 2k+ readers who get Looped In delivered to their inbox every Sunday.

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Insert…The ABM Maturity Gap

Most companies fall into one of three camps when I audit their ABM setup:

Camp 1: The Holdouts Still running on gut feel and spreadsheets. They know they need something more sophisticated but haven’t taken the plunge. Budget constraints, team capacity, fear of complexity. Whatever the reason, they’re stuck watching competitors move faster.

Camp 2: The Over-Investors Went all in on a massive ABM platform 2-3 years ago. Signed a multi-year contract at $150K+ annually. Now they’re using maybe 30% of the features while their sales team ignores the alerts because they’re too noisy. Classic overshooting problem.

Camp 3: The Experimenters Testing point solutions across the stack. RB2B for website identification, Clay for enrichment, Warmly for conversational ABM. Moving fast but struggling with integration and data consistency. They have the right instincts but lack the connective tissue.

None of these camps are wrong. They’re just operating with outdated assumptions about what ABM requires in 2026.

The gap exists because we built ABM practices during a different era. When 6sense and Demandbase launched their platforms, they solved the problems we knew then. Intent data was scarce. Personalization at scale was hard. Integration across tools was a nightmare.

Today? Intent data is everywhere. Personalization tools are abundant and affordable. Integration got 10x easier with tools like Clay and Zapier. The old all-in-one model doesn’t make sense anymore, but most teams haven’t caught up.

3 Mistakes Slowing Down Your ABM Motion

After working with dozens of B2B teams over the past two years, I keep seeing the same patterns that kill ABM velocity:

Mistake 1: Treating ABM Like a Separate Program

You spin up an “ABM initiative” with its own budget, its own tool stack, its own Slack channel. Meanwhile, your regular demand gen motion continues unchanged. Sales operates in their own world. Customer success runs separate plays.

This creates three versions of customer engagement that rarely sync up. An account might be in your top tier ABM list while sales is ignoring them because they don’t show up as an MQL in Salesforce. Or CS is trying to expand an account that marketing just sent a generic nurture email to.

One client a few quarters back had their tier 1 ABM accounts receiving:

• Personalized SDR outreach (appropriate)

• Generic paid social ads (not appropriate)

• Mass email nurtures (definitely not appropriate)

• Customer marketing emails meant for existing customers (wildly inappropriate)

Nobody coordinated. Everyone optimized for their own metrics. The account experience pretty crazy.

Mistake 2: Building Before You Have Signal Clarity

Companies rush to implement ABM infrastructure before figuring out which signals actually matter for their business. They track everything because they can, then wonder why their sales team tunes out the noise.

I worked with a Series B company that was tracking 47 different intent signals across their target accounts. Forty-seven. When I asked which ones correlated with actual closed deals, the team couldn’t answer. They had data everywhere but zero clarity on what mattered.

We spent two weeks analyzing their last 24 months of closed-won deals. Turns out, only 4 signals consistently showed up before deals closed:

• Multiple stakeholders viewing pricing within 7 days

• Technical decision-maker reviewing API docs after demo

• Finance stakeholder on pricing page multiple times

• Job posting, or existing FTE, for a role that their product enables

Everything else was noise for them. Expensive, time-consuming noise.

Mistake 3: Optimizing for Volume Over Velocity

The old ABM playbook says “identify 100-500 target accounts, then hit them with everything.” More touches, more channels, more content. Spray and pray, just with tighter targeting.

This approach made sense when data was scarce and personalization was hard. Now it just creates noise and burns out your team.

A growth-stage company I advised was running 12 different ABM campaigns simultaneously across their tier 1 accounts. Email sequences, LinkedIn ads, direct mail, SDR outreach, webinar invites, event sponsorships. The works.

Problem? Their tier 1 list had 400 accounts. With 2-3 target contacts per account, they were trying to orchestrate 12 plays across 900+ people. The team was underwater. The accounts were overwhelmed. Conversion stayed flat.

We cut it down to 3 plays, focused on 50 accounts, and conversion rate doubled in 8 weeks.

A New ABM Model for 2025

The companies winning with ABM right now aren’t using the 2016 playbook. They’re operating with different assumptions entirely:

Assumption 1: Start with Fit, Layer in Intent

Old model: Identify accounts showing intent, then qualify for fit.
New model: Map your entire TAM by fit first, then use intent to trigger action.

This flip matters because it changes how you structure everything. Your CRM becomes a living map of your market, not just a repository of inbound leads. You can proactively track accounts through their buying journey instead of waiting for them to raise their hand. This concept of account progression is baseline in my opinion.

One client mapped 2,000 accounts into their CRM based on ICP fit and deal size. Then we set up intent monitoring across those accounts. When high-intent signals fired, we knew exactly which tier that account belonged to and which play to run.

Compare that to the old model where you’re reacting to intent signals from accounts you know nothing about, scrambling to figure out if they’re even worth pursuing.

Assumption 2: Orchestration Over Programs

Stop thinking in campaigns. Start thinking in orchestrated plays across channels.

A campaign has a start and end date. You launch it, measure it, optimize it, maybe run it again next quarter. This creates gaps. Accounts fall through the cracks between campaigns.

Orchestration runs continuously. You define plays for different account stages and tiers, then trigger them based on signals. An account moves from one play to another based on their behavior, not your campaign calendar.

This requires different infrastructure. You need:

• Clear account staging (not just lead stages)

• Signal tracking that feeds into your CRM

• Workflow automation that respects engagement rules

• Content that maps to account stage, not campaign theme

Assumption 3: Point Solutions Beat Platforms

The great unbundling of ABM is happening. The all-in-one platforms that cost $200K annually are losing to nimble point solutions that cost $5K-$30k each.

You can now build a sophisticated ABM stack that outperforms legacy platforms. Here are a few tools on the market I keep coming back to:

• Keyplay for account mapping and ICP modeling

• Clay for enrichment, signal tracking, play development

• Vector for website de-anonymization + audience builds

• Userled for 1:1 ads and microsites that accelerate enterprise deals

• Cargo for GTM orchestration, workflow automation, and agents for sales

• v0 + AI models rapid campaign prototyping and experimentation

• Your existing MAP for marketing orchestration

The trade-off though is that you need someone on your team who can stitch these together. RevOps or a technical marketing ops person. But that’s a one-time setup cost, not an annual platform fee.

Budget Allocation for Modern ABM

Most companies overspend on platforms and underspend on execution.
Here’s a generalized recommendation for how’d I’d break down an ABM budget:

• Events (~45%): High-touch, high-return. Events drive pipeline, strengthen deals, expand customers, and deepen relationships.

• Paid Ads (~20%): Personalized ads that engage and convert our top-tier accounts, accelerate deals, and expand isn’t customers.

• Contractors (~15%): AI doesn’t mean more headcount, but it doesn’t mean understaffed either. Some necessary resources like web, design, and video, are done with experts.

• Tooling (~10%): this is spent on orchestration (ABX, GTM, workflows).

• Campaigns (~10%): Customers and influencer campaigns, experiments, tactical bets on new formats, channels, or creative ideas – often used alongside AI and gifting.

This should without a doubt be tailored to your unique market and marketing advantages, too. Just because something similar worked for someone else, doesn’t mean it will work for you.

ABM Orchestration in Practice

Let me walk through a real example of how modern ABM orchestration works.

A Series B company selling to mid-market SaaS companies had 800 accounts in their target market. They tiered them like this:

Tier 1: 50 accounts - Highest fit, highest deal size, active buying signals
Tier 2: 200 accounts - High fit, good deal size, moderate signals
Tier 3: 550 accounts - Solid fit, smaller deal size, low/no signals

Tier 1: Premium Investment

• Willing to accept 2-3x your normal CAC

• Justify with higher ACV and LTV potential

• Budget allows for human touch at every stage

• Custom everything—research, outreach, content

Tier 2: Balanced Investment

• Aim for 1.5x your normal CAC ceiling

• Mix of automation and personalization

• Templated but customized approaches

• Shared resources across similar accounts

Tier 3: Strict Efficiency

• Must hit standard CAC targets

• Automation-first, human touch only when earned

• Leverage existing content and campaigns

• Minimal incremental spend per account

The math is simple: if Tier 1 accounts close at 3x the deal size of Tier 3, you can afford to spend 3x more acquiring them.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Tier 1 Plays:

• Unknown stage: 1:1 ad creative, dedicated research budget

• Aware stage: Multi-channel (email + LinkedIn + direct mail/gifting)

• Engaged stage: High-touch (executive briefings, reverse demos, workshops)

• Considering stage: Custom deliverables (ROI analysis, technical reviews)

Tier 2 Plays:

• Unknown stage: Targeted ads with segment-level personalization

• Aware stage: Automated nurture + SDR outreach

• Engaged stage: Group demos, case study packages

• Considering stage: Templated resources, standard sales process

Tier 3 Plays:

• Unknown stage: General demand gen, no incremental spend

• Aware stage: Retargeting + automated nurture

• Engaged stage: Self-serve options (interactive demos, product tours)

• Considering stage: Standard sales process, earn your way to human time

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Budget Allocation Rule of Thumb

Most companies should allocate roughly:

• 50-60% of ABM budget to Tier 1 (your smallest group, highest investment per account)

• 30-35% to Tier 2 (your middle group, balanced approach)

• 10-15% to Tier 3 (your largest group, automation-first)

This feels backwards at first. You’re spending the most money on the fewest accounts. But that’s the point.

KPIs You Should be Tracking

Stop measuring ABM success by marketing metrics. Start measuring it by revenue metrics.

Traditional ABM metrics teams track:

• Target account engagement rate

• Advertising impressions on target accounts

• Email open rates from target accounts

• Website visits from target accounts

These are activities, not outcomes. They tell you if your machinery is running, not if your machinery is working.

Better metrics:

• Coverage rate - What percentage of your target accounts are actively engaged with your brand right now?

• Velocity - How quickly do accounts move from first engagement to opportunity stage?

• Win rate by tier - Are you actually winning more deals in your tier 1 accounts than tier 2/3?

• Deal size differential - Do ABM-influenced deals close at higher ACV than non-ABM deals?

• Account penetration - How many contacts within target accounts are engaged vs. just one champion?

One client tracked all the traditional metrics religiously. High engagement rates, great open rates, lots of website visits. But their win rate in tier 1 accounts was actually lower than tier 2.

Turns out they were over-indexing on activities that made them feel productive without actually influencing buying decisions. We shifted focus to quality signals and engagement from actual decision-makers. Win rate improved by 23% in the next quarter.

Making the Shift

If you’re stuck in 2016 ABM mode, here’s how to start moving forward:

• Audit your current state Map out every ABM tool, workflow, and campaign you’re running right now. Be honest about what’s working and what’s not.

• Define your signal framework
  Pull your last 2 quarters of closed-won deals. Document what signals appeared before they closed. Those are your high-value signals.

• Tier your target accounts Map your entire TAM into tiers based on fit and deal size, and anything else that’s uniquely relevant to your biz. Not just your “ABM list” of 100 accounts.

• Design 3 plays One play per account tier. Keep them simple. You can add complexity later.

• Run a pilot Pick 25, 50, 70 tier 1 accounts. Whatever you realistically have the buy-in, budget, and resourcing for. Run your new play. Measure everything. Iterate weekly.

• Scale what works Once you prove the model on tier 1, expand to tier 2 and 3 with appropriate modifications.

The companies that move fastest on this transition will build significant competitive advantage. ABM in 2025 doesn’t look like ABM from 2016. Smaller budgets, nimble tools, continuous orchestration, and tight alignment between marketing and sales.

Time to update your playbook.

See ya next week,
Kaylee ✌