Top 7 Account Based Marketing Examples to Inspire Your Next Campaign

Tired of casting a wide net and hoping for the best? These powerful account based marketing examples show you how a focused, personalized approach lands dream clients.

Account-based marketing (ABM) isn’t just another buzzword. It’s a strategic shift that aligns your sales and marketing teams. You’ll target high-value accounts with surgical precision.

Instead of marketing to the masses, you treat each key account as a market of one. This helps you build deeper relationships and shorten sales cycles. It’s about quality, not quantity.

We’ve broken down seven real-world campaigns from B2B leaders like Snowflake, Adobe, and SAP. You’ll see what they did, why it worked, and how you can apply their tactics.

Let’s dive in.

1. Snowflake’s Personalized Direct Mail Campaign

Struggling to get your message past digital noise and into the hands of C-suite executives? Snowflake, the cloud data platform, proved that a physical touchpoint can break through. Their direct mail campaign is a masterclass in combining high-value items with deep personalization.

This approach goes far beyond generic swag. It involves sending meticulously researched and highly customized packages to key decision-makers. This isn’t just a nice gift; it’s a strategic play to show you understand their business challenges.

Strategic Breakdown

Snowflake’s success hinges on its “high-touch” integration of physical and digital outreach. The campaign wasn’t an isolated mail drop. It was a carefully orchestrated sequence designed to open doors and start conversations.

The core strategy was to deliver undeniable value before asking for a meeting. By providing customized reports and industry-specific insights, Snowflake positioned itself as a helpful expert.

Key Insight: The goal of a high-value direct mailer is not just to be seen, but to be felt. Snowflake made recipients feel understood by creating content that spoke directly to their unique business context, making the follow-up call from a sales rep a welcome continuation of the conversation.

Tactics and Implementation

This campaign is a prime example of quality over quantity in account based marketing. Here’s how Snowflake executed it:

• Deep Account Intelligence: Teams invested heavily in research. They identified specific pain points, business goals, and the key metrics a particular executive would care about.
• Hyper-Personalized Content: The packages contained items tailored to the recipient’s role and industry. This included custom data reports showing a CFO potential cost savings.
• Coordinated Multi-Channel Follow-Up: This is the critical link. The moment a package was delivered, the account executive followed up via email and phone. The outreach referenced the package contents, creating a seamless experience.

Actionable Takeaways for You

This lets you replicate Snowflake’s direct mail success with precision and coordination.

1. Invest in Research: Don’t guess. Use tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and company reports to understand the challenges your target accounts face.
2. Integrate Physical and Digital: Use your CRM to trigger digital follow-ups the moment a package is delivered. This ensures your outreach is timely and relevant.
3. Measure Everything: Track engagement with personalized URLs or QR codes inside the package. Monitor metrics like meetings booked and pipeline generated to prove the campaign’s ROI.

2. GumGum’s T-Rex Campaign for Target Account Acquisition

How do you capture the attention of a single, high-value account? GumGum, a contextual intelligence company, answered this with one of the most creative ABM campaigns ever. By targeting T-Mobile’s CMO with a hyper-personalized campaign, they showed a bold approach can land massive deals.

This was the epitome of a “one-to-one” ABM strategy. GumGum focused all its energy on a single decision-maker with a campaign that was impossible to ignore. The goal wasn’t just to get a meeting; it was to show T-Mobile that GumGum was the kind of innovative partner they needed.

The infographic below highlights the incredible return from this focused campaign.

With a staggering 25,000% ROI, the data proves that a high-impact, creative ABM play delivers results that traditional marketing can’t match.

Strategic Breakdown

GumGum’s strategy was built on deep research and unrestrained creativity. They learned that T-Mobile’s CMO, Phil Schraeder, was a comic book enthusiast. This single insight became the cornerstone of the entire campaign.

The core of the campaign was to treat the decision-maker like a celebrity. It created an immersive experience that was both professional and deeply personal. It was a high-risk, high-reward play that relied on perfect execution.

Key Insight: The most effective ABM campaigns often connect on a human level. By tapping into the CMO’s personal interests, GumGum transformed a standard sales pitch into a memorable story where the prospect was the hero. This approach builds rapport before the first conversation even happens.

Tactics and Implementation

This campaign was a masterclass in orchestrating multiple touchpoints to create a delightful experience. Here’s how GumGum pulled it off:

• The “T-Rex” Persona: The campaign was named after GumGum’s founder, Ophir Tanz, who adopted the persona “T-Rex” to engage with T-Mobile.
• Hyper-Personalized Creative: The centerpiece was a custom comic book titled The Unseen Adventures of Phil and T-Girl, starring Phil Schraeder as the superhero.
• High-Visibility Physical Ads: GumGum placed billboards on the route to T-Mobile’s headquarters, ensuring the campaign message was seen.
• Coordinated Digital Outreach: The physical elements were supported by personalized videos, a dedicated microsite, and targeted digital ads. This created a cohesive, multi-channel narrative that amplified the campaign’s impact.

Actionable Takeaways for You

This lets you apply the principles behind GumGum’s success, even on a smaller budget.

1. Find the Human Angle: Go beyond professional pain points. Use social media to discover a decision-maker’s personal interests or passions. This insight can be the creative spark for your campaign.
2. Be Bold and Creative: Don’t be afraid to use humor and personality. A creative idea, even on a smaller budget, will stand out more than a generic email.
3. Orchestrate Every Channel: Ensure your physical and digital touchpoints tell a single, unified story. Your goal is to create an immersive brand experience.

3. Terminus’ Account-Based Advertising Platform Implementation

Are your digital ads firing into the void? Terminus, a leader in the ABM space, shows how to turn that broad approach into a laser-focused strategy. Their own use of account-based advertising is a powerful example of practicing what you preach.

This strategy moves beyond simple retargeting. It involves proactively serving tailored ads exclusively to people within a predefined list of high-value companies. This isn’t just advertising; it’s a digital air-cover campaign. It builds awareness and influences buying committees before a sales rep ever makes the first call.

Strategic Breakdown

Terminus’s success with this model is rooted in its “surround sound” philosophy. The campaign isn’t about generating a single click. It’s about creating multiple touchpoints that build brand recognition with the entire decision-making unit.

The core strategy is to align digital advertising precisely with sales priorities. By targeting the same accounts the sales team is pursuing, marketing creates a unified brand presence. This warms up cold accounts and accelerates active deals.

Key Insight: The power of account-based advertising is in its precision. Terminus proves that by focusing your ad spend only on the companies that can buy from you, you eliminate wasted budget and ensure every impression contributes directly to your pipeline goals.

Tactics and Implementation

This campaign is a textbook case of leveraging technology for hyper-targeted digital outreach. Here’s how Terminus executes it:

• Tiered Account Lists: Not all accounts are treated equally. Terminus segments its target list into tiers. This allows them to allocate more ad budget to the highest-potential accounts.
• Multi-Channel Ad Orchestration: Decision-makers are targeted with consistent messaging across multiple platforms. This includes LinkedIn Sponsored Content and display ads served to specific company IP addresses.
• Aligned Messaging and Timing: The ad creative is tightly coordinated with sales outreach. If a sales rep starts a sequence on a specific pain point, the ads reflect the same value proposition.

Actionable Takeaways for You

This lets you implement a Terminus-style advertising strategy by focusing on alignment and technology.

1. Define Your Tiers: Work with sales to create a clearly defined Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Then segment your target account list into at least two or three tiers.
2. Develop Persona-Specific Creative: Don’t run one generic ad for everyone. Create variations of your ad creative and copy that speak directly to the different personas within the buying committee.
3. Connect Ads to Pipeline: Use an ABM platform to set up attribution tracking. This lets you measure how your ad campaigns influence key metrics like meetings booked and deals closed.

4. SAP’s Executive Briefing Center Program

How do you forge a true strategic partnership with your most valuable accounts? SAP masters this with its global Executive Briefing Centers (EBCs). This program is a premier example of experiential ABM. It creates an immersive environment where C-suite leaders co-create their future with SAP.

This approach elevates the conversation from product features to business transformation. By inviting key decision-makers for bespoke, in-person sessions, SAP demonstrates its commitment and expertise. This turns a potential vendor relationship into a trusted advisory role.

Strategic Breakdown

The power of SAP’s EBC program lies in its ability to create a controlled, personalized environment. This isn’t a one-size-fits-all product tour. It’s a curated workshop where every conversation is planned to address the account’s strategic needs.

The core strategy is to accelerate trust by facilitating executive-to-executive dialogue. When a CFO from a target account meets with SAP’s own finance leadership, the dynamic shifts. It becomes a peer-level strategic discussion, building incredible credibility.

Key Insight: The goal of an executive briefing isn’t to sell a product, but to sell a shared vision for the future. By focusing on co-creation and strategic alignment, SAP makes the purchasing decision feel like the natural next step in a partnership that has already begun.

Tactics and Implementation

This high-investment, high-return ABM play requires flawless execution. Here’s how SAP makes it work:

• Intensive Pre-Visit Discovery: Before an invitation, SAP’s team conducts extensive research to uncover critical business challenges and strategic goals.
• Customized, Role-Specific Agendas: The visit is tailored to the attendees. A session for a retailer might include a custom digital transformation roadmap. A healthcare system’s visit would feature industry-specific solution demos.
• Executive & Peer Alignment: SAP involves its own executives and experts who mirror the roles of the visiting team. They also connect them with existing customers who have solved similar problems.

Actionable Takeaways for You

This lets you adapt the principles of SAP’s EBC program, even without a fancy facility.

1. Create a “Briefing in a Box”: Develop a structured, high-value workshop for your top-tier accounts. Involve your own leadership to create a premium, consultative experience.
2. Conduct Pre-Mortem Planning: Before the meeting, get your team together. Ask, “If this meeting fails, why did it fail?” This helps you anticipate objections and align your agenda.
3. Secure the Next Step On-Site: Don’t let the momentum fade. Use the final minutes of the session to schedule the follow-up meeting while everyone is still in the room.

5. Metadata.io’s Automated Account-Based Campaign Orchestration

Tired of manually juggling dozens of ad campaigns? Metadata.io, a demand generation platform, showcases the power of automation. Their approach proves you can scale highly relevant advertising without drowning your team in manual work.

This strategy moves beyond static campaign setups. It uses AI to automatically launch, optimize, and allocate budget for paid campaigns across LinkedIn and Facebook. The system reacts to account engagement in real-time, ensuring your marketing dollars are spent on accounts that show genuine interest.

Strategic Breakdown

Metadata.io’s success is built on “always-on” campaign orchestration. Their platform creates a responsive ecosystem where an action in one channel triggers a reaction in another. It’s all tailored to the specific account’s behavior.

The core strategy is to let data and automation drive execution. This frees up marketers to focus on high-level strategy and creative.

Key Insight: The goal of automated orchestration is to make your ABM program adaptive. Metadata.io treats its campaigns not as a “set it and forget it” activity, but as a living system that intelligently shifts resources toward the highest-potential accounts based on real-time engagement data.

Tactics and Implementation

This approach is a model for modern, tech-driven account based marketing. Here’s how Metadata.io executes it:

• Signal-Based Triggers: Campaigns are automatically adjusted based on specific triggers. For example, when contacts from a target account visit the pricing page, the platform can increase ad spend for that account.
• Dynamic Creative and Audience Segmentation: The platform automatically matches different ad creatives to specific audience segments based on firmographic data and intent signals.
• Coordinated Sales and Marketing Plays: When a sales rep logs a call in the CRM, it can trigger a targeted air-cover campaign on LinkedIn to influence other decision-makers in that company.

Actionable Takeaways for You

This lets you implement an automated approach by focusing on integration and data-driven rules.

1. Start with a Clean Data Foundation: Your automation is only as good as your data. Ensure your CRM and marketing platforms are tightly integrated and your target lists are accurate.
2. Define Clear Automation Triggers: Map out your customer journey and identify key engagement signals. Define specific rules for what should happen when an account takes a certain action.
3. Audit and Optimize Continuously: Automation doesn’t eliminate human oversight. Review campaign performance weekly to identify what’s working. A thorough marketing automation audit can help you refine your strategy.

6. Adobe’s Account-Based Content Hubs

Tired of sending generic content that gets ignored? Adobe demonstrates how to create a magnetic content experience with dedicated, personalized content hubs. This strategy shifts from broadcasting a message to creating a curated resource center. It speaks directly to the unique challenges of a single account or industry.

This approach involves creating bespoke microsites populated with hyper-relevant content. Instead of hoping a prospect finds the right case study, you bring the most relevant assets directly to them. It’s a strategic move to position your brand as an indispensable thought leader.

Strategic Breakdown

Adobe’s success comes from treating content not as a lure, but as a destination. The goal is to build a high-value resource that key stakeholders will bookmark and share internally. This method is one of the most powerful account based marketing examples for engaging multiple decision-makers.

The core strategy is to prove your expertise by solving a small piece of their problem for free. By providing a hub of tailored information, Adobe establishes credibility and builds trust. This turns a cold audience into a warm, educated lead.

Key Insight: A personalized content hub transforms your value proposition from “Here’s what we sell” to “Here’s how we’ve already helped businesses just like yours.” It makes prospects feel seen and understood, creating an environment where a sales conversation feels like the logical next step.

Tactics and Implementation

This campaign excels at scaling personalization across high-potential accounts. Here’s how Adobe executes it:

• Vertical-Specific Curation: Adobe builds hubs for key industries like financial services. This hub features content on digital transformation in banking, data security, and compliance.
• Multi-Format Content Delivery: These hubs are rich media experiences. They contain a mix of video testimonials, whitepapers, interactive tools, and webinar recordings.
• Targeted Promotion and Sales Enablement: The hubs are promoted through channels like LinkedIn ads. Sales teams are then armed with engagement data, allowing for highly relevant follow-up conversations.

Actionable Takeaways for You

This lets you build a compelling content hub by focusing on relevance and user experience.

1. Start with Deep Research: Go beyond basic firmographics. Interview sales teams to identify the top three challenges for a specific industry. Your hub should answer those challenges directly.
2. Repurpose with a Purpose: You don’t need to create everything from scratch. Audit your existing content and identify assets that can be repurposed. A generic case study becomes powerful with an industry-specific introduction.
3. Track Engagement to Inform Outreach: Use marketing automation to track which assets a prospect engages with. This data is gold for your sales team. A follow-up call that starts with, “I saw you downloaded our guide,” is infinitely more effective.

7. Demandbase One-to-One Personalized Web Experiences

Are you treating your most valuable prospects like anonymous website visitors? Demandbase champions a strategy that turns your website into a unique, one-to-one conversation starter. They dynamically personalize the web experience. When a high-value account lands on your site, they see content made just for them.

This tactic transforms a generic digital storefront into a bespoke journey. By identifying the visitor’s company, the website can instantly adapt its messaging and imagery. It’s a powerful way to show a target account that you understand their specific industry and needs.

Strategic Breakdown

Demandbase’s strategy is built on the premise that relevance drives revenue. A generic website speaks to no one, but a personalized experience makes a key account feel seen. This is one of the purest forms of account based marketing.

The core idea is to use account intelligence to serve up a contextual experience in real-time. A visitor from a healthcare company might see HIPAA compliance messaging. A visitor from a large enterprise might see content on scalability and security.

Key Insight: Your website shouldn’t be a static brochure; it should be a dynamic sales consultant. By personalizing the experience, you immediately demonstrate relevance and begin building a relationship before a form is ever filled out, dramatically increasing engagement and the likelihood of conversion.

Tactics and Implementation

This strategy hinges on technology and a deep understanding of your target accounts. Here’s how you can put it into practice:

• IP and Account Identification: Use an ABM platform to identify visitors from your target account list based on their IP address or other signals. This is the foundation of personalization.
• Segmented Content Creation: Develop variations of your key website pages for your most important account segments. This could be based on industry, company size, or stage in the buying journey.
• Dynamic Content Delivery: The technology swaps out generic content for personalized versions when a target account is identified. This includes headlines, hero images, customer logos, and CTAs.

Actionable Takeaways for You

This lets you start implementing web personalization without rebuilding your entire site.

1. Start with High-Priority Segments: Don’t try to personalize for every account at once. Begin with your top-tier accounts or a key industry vertical to prove the concept.
2. Test Incrementally: Begin with simple changes. Personalizing the homepage headline is a high-impact, low-effort starting point. Monitor engagement metrics to see what resonates.
3. Coordinate with Other Channels: Align your personalized web experience with your digital advertising. If you run ads for the financial services industry, make sure the landing page reflects that same messaging.

7 Key Account Based Marketing Examples Comparison

Your Next Move: Turning Inspiration into Action

We’ve explored a powerful lineup of account based marketing examples. Each story, from GumGum’s clever T-Rex to Adobe’s strategic content hubs, carries a core truth. ABM thrives on relevance, creativity, and a deep understanding of the customer.

These campaigns didn’t succeed by accident. They were the result of a deliberate shift from casting a wide net toward precision-guided engagement.

Distilling the Core Principles of Winning ABM

What ties these diverse strategies together? Looking at the successes of companies like SAP and Metadata.io, a clear pattern emerges. Winning at ABM isn’t about having the biggest budget. It’s about mastering a few fundamental principles.

The most critical lessons from these account based marketing examples are:

1. Start with the Account, Not the Tactic: Every successful campaign began with an obsessive focus on the target account. They knew the company’s pain points, the key players, and what would make their solution relevant right now. Snowflake didn’t just send a generic gift; they sent a personalized kit that spoke directly to their target executives.
2. Orchestration is Non-Negotiable: ABM is a team sport. The seamless handoff between marketing’s air cover and sales’ ground attack is where the magic happens. Terminus showcased how aligning advertising with sales outreach creates a cohesive buyer’s journey. Your sales and marketing teams must operate from a single playbook.
3. Personalization Goes Beyond a Name: True personalization is about context. It’s showing your target account that you’ve done your homework. Adobe’s content hubs are a masterclass in this. They offer a curated library of resources for a specific industry. This approach positions you as a valuable partner, not just another vendor.

From Blueprint to Reality: Your Action Plan

Feeling inspired is great, but taking action drives revenue. You don’t need to replicate SAP’s entire program overnight. The key is to start small, prove value, and build momentum.

Here’s a practical path to turn these insights into your own ABM pilot:

• Step 1: Build Your Initial Target List. Identify five to 10 “best-fit” accounts. These should be companies that look like your most successful current customers.
• Step 2: Conduct Deep-Dive Research. Go beyond firmographics. Map out the key stakeholders and pinpoint their most pressing business challenges.
• Step 3: Choose Your “Play”. Based on your research, select a single, focused tactic. Could you create a one-to-one personalized landing page? Or a small, high-impact direct mailer? Pick one thing you can execute well.
• Step 4: Align with Sales. Sit down with the account executives who own these accounts. Share your plan, get their input, and coordinate your timing.
• Step 5: Execute, Measure, and Learn. Launch your pilot. Track engagement meticulously. Did they open the email? Did sales get a meeting? Document everything to build your business case for scaling up.

This approach lets you build a powerful ABM engine one campaign at a time. You’ll turn these account based marketing examples from inspiration into your own revenue-generating reality.

Ready to build an ABM program that delivers predictable, data-driven growth? At The Digital Bloom, we specialize in crafting and executing tailored ABM strategies for B2B tech companies, blending strategic acumen with technical depth to attract your ideal buyers and shorten your sales cycle. Let’s talk about how we can help you turn these examples into your own success story. Learn more at The Digital Bloom.