2021 was an incredible year for innovation in ABM! This year we hosted the first ever 2021 ABM Leadership Awards. We received a plethora of submissions, highlighting some exceptional, forward-thinking ABM-ers. From true ABM visionaries, to those geeking out on ABM data, creative thinking ABM artists, the ABM engineers behind the scenes and those ABM allies that helped it all happen; we have seen some extremely creative and innovative account-based strategies and programs in 2021.

It’s time to take a look at some of the bright minds that dreamed these programs up and the learnings that promise to make ABM in 2022 even more innovative!

ABM Visionary

Whether starting big or small, these ABM Visionary winners put overarching strategy at the helm of their ABM efforts to ensure success and scalability in the future, turning pilot campaigns into staple programs at their organizations.

Misty Duran, Sr. Program Manager and Team Lead at SAP Concur, has been pioneering new and creative paths for her team since 2012. With a strong emphasis on integrated marketing within the past years, Misty was able to pivot her focus to experience campaigns, aligning direct mail to virtual events, and drove continuous growth in attendance and conversion to pipeline beyond SAP Concur’s standard benchmarks.

Diangelo Tyler, Digital Marketing Director at Renewal by Anderson, was able to execute on his vision by testing a pilot ABM program in preparation for scaling it nationally across the Renewal by Anderson network. Diangelo is an idea hunter – always on the lookout for the next tactic that can drive meaningful experiences for the customer and success for the business. Few ideas survive his sharp evaluation.

Erin Pak, Senior Demand Generation Manager at Flexential, has a forte of seeing the high-level vision, down to the nuts and bolts of the entire program journey, from upper funnel to transaction. While the world went to virtual events, with a heavy focus on webinars in the last years, Erin wanted to focus on a different form of conversation. She debuted FlexTalk, a more fireside chat-style conversation, focused on both current affairs and upper funnel ideas.

Lyuda Grigorieva, Enterprise ABM Marketing Manager at Asana, joined the team in 2021. With no existing process, tools or tech at her disposal, Lyuda was able to launch campaigns across more than 10 channels in two quarters. She single-handedly proved the initial impact and value that ABM can bring to an organization at Asana.

ABM Nerd

It’s all about the data! These ABM nerd marketers put a heavy emphasis on data in their ABM campaigns—it’s all about the numbers and how to show them!

Daniel Dong, Sr. Enterprise Growth Marketing Manager at Samsara, was the founding member of Samsara’s new ABM Growth Team. Daniel ran some of the largest digital channels, aggregating and building the data tables needed to target the right customers for success, filling the gap for events and other best performing pipeline generation channels that weren’t happening at the time.

Elizabeth Alden, Director of Paid Media at BusinessOnline, is a true data warrior. Elizabeth’s hidden talent is finding the most granular piece of data that makes all the difference in the success of a campaign, helping her team see some amazing success metrics in 2021.

Eric Shaffer, Chief Product Officer at MeritB2B, is no stranger to the ABM data arena, and has been working with large tech brands looking to implement cross channel ABM programs over the years. His goal is to always be innovating and driving towards the next generation of ABM solutions.

Jessica-Karin Felix, Senior Manager, Global Strategic Accounts Marketing at Qlik, wanted to go all in on virtual events in 2021 to help drive adoption and brand awareness within the accounts. Jessica was able to help the account teams at Qlik to apply ABM within their strategic accounts and uncover new customers and grow Qlik’s existing customer base.

ABM Ally

These marketers truly understand sales and marketing alignment. They have worked alongside their sales team to execute winning ABM programs seamlessly.

Michael Globits, Director, AMER ABM at Salesforce, quickly realized that the standard marketing playbook would need to change with the pandemic, and was able to rewrite their ABM rules. Michael led a Halloween themed program in coordination with the sales team, to deliver 500 holiday bags to 6 pediatric hospitals so they could celebrate Halloween in 2021!

Jennifer Leaver, Senior Global ABM Manager at Bazaarvoice, was able to quickly shift from a live event and in-person meeting marketing and sales strategy to a fully digital one. Jen needed new ways to provide her sales counterparts with account intelligence and the insights they needed to acquire and grow key accounts. As a result, she built a best-in-class marketing technology stack that would pick up on people’s digital behavior and serve those insights up to sales. She took a crawl-walk-run approach to test assumptions and get buy-in from the sales team, piloting each phase with a select group of reps to ensure it would succeed before rolling out to the wider sales teams.

Murray Vince, VP Business Development at Ideovee Business Solutions LLC, spent 2021 focused on his clients in need of coaching and support implementing ABM. Murray spent time identifying his clients ABM gaps and then equipping them with the tools and people they needed to complete their ABM approach.

Piyush Advani, Account Based Marketing Lead at Tata Communications, took the saying “work smarter not harder” to heart with ABM in 2021. By using account-specific propensity data Piyush and his team were able to point clients at the accounts where they would win biggest and fastest. They were successful in executing the campaign by placing their focus on identification of relevant stakeholders, creating a compelling narrative, and integrating digital targeting.

ABM Artist

Sometimes all you need is a little creativity! These marketers thought outside of the box when it came to the design, copy, and execution elements of the creative for their ABM campaigns—true artists.

Tom Higgins, Product Marketing Manager at Voxpopme, got creative with his team to develop an entirely personalized landing page for their ABM initiatives. The landing page was customer-branded and highly customized with qualitative data points from proprietary research.

Matt Cooper, Sr. Demand Generation Manager at PROS, focused on solidifying business targets by identifying key accounts to create and expand PROS outreach, enabling better alignment on target accounts for the Sales and Marketing teams.

Ashley Davis, Art Director and ABM Creative Team Lead at Salesforce, spent 2021 focusing on rolling out a turnkey direct mail campaign that engaged over 600 key contacts. Ashley and her team created a suite of kits with interchangeable opportunities for personalization. Each kit included multiple print-on-demand pieces, allowing senders to easily incorporate account logos, customize the direct mail letters, and quickly go to market.

Carmen Goldstein, Head of Global Strategy & Campaigns Growth Marketing at Unity Technologies, established and operationalized the first lifecycle ABM programs for the Games and the Industrial sector at Unity in 2021. Carmen developed a dynamic opportunity-sizing model, utilizing components such as sales revenue and product mix targets, account behavior forecasts, and phases within a game development cycle or the level of integration of digital transformation in a company.

ABM Engineer

But how does ABM work?! These marketers have employed a sophisticated, robust set of martech tools to execute their ABM programs in a thoughtful and scalable way.

Nick Robinson, Marketing Director at SAP North America, focused specifically on content and ABM list diversity in 2021. Nick spent time honing their segmentation, targeting, positioning, and messaging to earn better results.

Juan Martinez, Account Based Marketing, Government, Large Utilities and Transportation at Autodesk, focused on providing a customized, personalized, and targeted pilot campaign to decision-maker and influencer level customers. Juan then expanded his efforts to scale this program by utilizing his martech stack and focusing on personalization, tracking time on site, and content consumed by prospects.

Rachael Foster, Head of Global Field Marketing at Nexthink, led a team in 2021 to build ABM from the ground up. As part of this work, Rachael designed and launched a global target universe and account strategy, guided the selection of ABM Accounts, and launched a fully integrated global ABM program across 1:1, 1:few, and 1:many.

Lorena Harris, Senior Strategist and ABM Practice Leader at The Pedowitz Group, has led more than a dozen large-scale strategic ABX transformations since 2020. Lorena focused on implementation of ABX tech, and building strategic muscle memory around ABX core concepts: communication, personalization and orchestration.

The programs these finalists were able to execute in 2021 are impressive. It’s clear to us at ABMLA that ABM takes a village, and every team member can play an integral role in the success of these programs.

Join the ABM Leadership Alliance at our webinar on January 27 for a chance to look back on these ABM wins of 2021, and meet winners: Jennifer Leaver, Nick Robinson, and Erin Pak from the 2021 ABM Leadership Awards. We’ll dive into top programs, wins/losses, how we see ABM taking shape in the future, and setting our sights on 2022!