Don't mistake hyper-personalization for effectiveness. Running hundreds of tiny, account-specific campaigns is inefficient and hard to measure. A more successful approach is to group accounts by industry or shared pain points and run fewer, larger campaigns for better data and stronger engagement.

At Hightouch, selecting target accounts is a CRO-level decision, not just a marketing or sales task. This strategic process involves data science and research to ensure the entire go-to-market team focuses only on accounts with the highest propensity to buy, preventing wasted effort on poor-fit prospects.

Focusing solely on pipeline as an ABM metric is short-sighted. A more immediate and foundational measure of success is the increase in key contacts within a target account. Expanding the buying committee reach is a critical precursor to larger deals and should be celebrated as a win.

To build a business case for better analytics, split your pipeline into two buckets: high-intent sources (e.g., demo requests) and everything else. Analyzing the performance gap in win rates, velocity, and conversion reveals the dollar value of closing that gap through improved visibility.

To gauge the real impact of a campaign, isolate a small percentage of your audience (a "holdout group") from all marketing. The difference in conversion rates between this group and the targeted audience reveals your actual performance lift, moving beyond simple conversion metrics.

To find the real impact of your marketing, intentionally exclude a small percentage (e.g., 5-10%) of your database from all campaign activities. By comparing the conversion rate of this "holdout group" to the group that received marketing, you can calculate the actual performance delta and determine if your efforts generated a genuine lift.

To prevent ABM from degrading into generic "targeted demand gen," companies like Hightouch and Snowflake enforce strict limits on the number of accounts per rep (e.g., a maximum of 20). This guardrail ensures each account receives the intimate, personalized attention that defines a true ABM strategy.

Believing attribution fights are culturally damaging and unproductive, Hightouch's leadership team has banned them. Instead of arguing over credit, they measure marketing's success by tracking account progression through six defined, data-verifiable pre-opportunity stages, creating a shared view of momentum.

Moving beyond basic attribution, LinkedIn's new Conversion Lift Testing tool measures the causal impact of campaigns. It compares conversions between an ad-exposed group and a control group that saw no ads, allowing marketers to determine the true incremental value generated by their advertising.