Most business leaders are familiar with account-based marketing (ABM). For those that aren’t, the Salesforce staff explains, “Account-based marketing (ABM) is a B2B marketing strategy for high-value customer accounts. In ABM, you focus on each account as a ‘market of one,’ offering highly personalized 1-to-1 experiences and tailored content. Through a focus on building stronger relationships with high-value accounts, ABM can help B2B marketers who need to increase pipeline quality, retain top accounts for longer, and boost the revenue those accounts bring in.”[1]

It should come as no surprise that artificial intelligence (AI) can help develop personalized, targeted marketing ABM strategies. Nevertheless, many marketers have failed to understand fully or to embrace totally all of the benefits AI can offer. Sami McCabe, Chief Marketing Officer at Enterra Solutions®, explains, “The notion that AI will profoundly change the marketing industry is hardly a novel or unique insight. But I’ve been surprised by how slowly marketers, both in-house and agency-side, have responded to the revolution that’s happening at such a breathtaking pace in our industry.”[2]

AI and ABM

Loren Shumate, a Global Vice President of Marketing at QAD, asserts, “ABM is no longer a subset of marketing. It is marketing.”[3] If she is correct — and I believe she is — then elevating ABM activities with the best AI solutions should be a no brainer. Marketers have been using AI for targeted marketing activities for years. So, it should come as no surprise that AI can significantly enhance account-based marketing by enabling precise account targeting, hyper-personalized content creation, and real-time engagement at scale. AI automates data analysis, identifies high-value accounts through predictive analytics, and personalizes communication to match individual account needs, driving greater efficiency and conversion rates for B2B businesses.

The staff at TOFU Technologies uses the following diagram to show how ABM turns traditional marketing on its head.

They suggest there are three types of ABM strategies:[4]

• One to Many: “This is closest to traditional marketing and requires the least amount of investment as only minimal personalization is required. Efforts are directed at a large group of accounts with similar characteristics.”

• One to Few: “This approach targets a smaller group of accounts that share more specific similarities or interests.”

• One to One: “This offers the highest level of personalization, creating customized campaigns for individual high-value accounts.”

The TOFU Technologies staff concludes, “The choice of which ABM strategy to use depends on a company's resources, target audience and objectives. Naturally, the highest level of personalization requires the most intensive resource commitments, but also generally leads to the highest ROI for key accounts.” Achieving the highest ROI is not as easy as it may sound. Shumate argues, “The promise of account-based go-to-market (GTM) has always been clear: Align marketing and sales around the highest-value accounts; deliver personalized engagement; [and] drive measurable revenue impact. But as the strategy has matured, a new reality has emerged: execution complexity, organizational inertia and outdated success metrics continue to undermine the outcomes ABM is designed to deliver.”

McCabe agrees. He notes, “Most agencies are building tools to create content faster or measure campaigns better. That's not where the real opportunity is. … The fundamental shift isn't about generating press releases with ChatGPT or analyzing sentiment with machine learning. It's about moving from ‘what happened’ to ‘what's going to happen’ to ‘what should we do about it.’ Real AI advantage comes from systems that can predict market responses before you launch a campaign. That can simulate competitive scenarios and prescribe optimal actions. That can automatically adjust strategy based on real-time signals.”[5]

Concluding Thoughts

Freelance writer Chuck Kapelke reports, “Account-based marketing has been a tough sell in the past few years.”[6] There are reasons that ABM has been a tough sell until now. Some marketers believe that focusing narrowly on specific accounts can mean missing out on opportunities with other potential customers, restricting overall market reach. There have also been concerns about a possible misalignment between sales and marketing teams. Lack of high-level buy-in has also been a drawback. Finally, it has been challenging to measure account-level engagement and ABM's true impact. McCabe reports a study by Jasper found only 49% of marketers can measure true ROI.[7] “Think about that for a second,” McCabe writes, “We're in full AI adoption mode while more than half of us are completely blind to whether it's moving the needle on business outcomes. We're witnessing mass AI adoption with measurement blindness.”

McCabe adds, “Most teams are obsessing over efficiency metrics (content speed, deployment velocity, etc.) instead of tracking what actually matters: incremental revenue and customer lifetime value improvements. The pattern is clear: everyone's deploying AI for faster content generation and campaign optimization, but when you ask about business impact, the conversation shifts to ‘productivity gains’, not revenue growth. The real competitive advantage will go to organizations that can prove their AI investments drive measurable business value.” The latest AI-powered ABM solutions can do that. That may be one reason Kapelke reports, “The tide may be turning [on ABM adoption], with 87 percent of marketers saying they expect their organization's ABM budget to increase in the next 12 months, with an average bump of 9 percent, per a recent study.”

If you haven’t considered bolstering your ABM efforts, now is the time.

Footnotes

[1] Staff, “What is Account-Based Marketing?” Salesforce.

[2] Sami McCabe, “Velocity & Defensibility: Why I sold my company after just five months,” LinkedIn, 6 August 2025.

[3] Loren Shumate, “The next era of ABM is strategy-led and AI-enabled,” MarTech, 28 August 2025.

[4] Staff, “How AI Changes the Game for Account Based Marketing,” Tofu Technologies.

[5] Sami McCabe, LinkedIn Post.

[6] Chuck Kapelke, “How AI Is Reshaping Account-Based Marketing,” ANA, 25 June 2025.

[7] Sami McCabe, LinkedIn Post.