30+ Contact-Level ABM Stats That Show How B2B Marketing Is Changing

Even though ABM adoption is on the rise, many programs are falling short. And we have data to help explain why.

After years of account-first tools and tactics, marketers are realizing something: the real impact of ABM happens at the contact level.

So we partnered with Forrester to understand what’s actually happening on the ground: what’s working, where teams are getting stuck, and why contact-level ABM is becoming the new standard for go-to-market teams.

Here are our key takeaways from the research, highlighting how ABM is evolving and what teams are doing in response.

The fact that over half of marketers struggle to engage the right people with their ABM programs indicates a gap between identifying the right accounts to target and actually making an impact with the right individuals within them. 

One of the biggest reasons behind this gap is the lack of precision from ABM tools. 

Traditional ABM tools help you find relevant accounts and show ads to people it assumes you want to reach. But they miss the most essential part of good marketing—the actual human you're trying to influence.

If you don’t know exactly who your ads are being shown to, it’s hard to deliver messaging they’ll care about.

Here’s an example of why missing the "who" can cost you.

Say two competing SaaS products are targeting a similar ICP. Both companies want to reach junior and senior-level marketers who manage email marketing programs.

Company 1 is using a traditional ABM tool that lets you target based on company and titles, while Company 2 is using a contact-level ABM solution (like Influ2) that lets you choose the exact people you want to reach.

Company 1’s ABM tool gives them a list of suggested accounts and lets them target by role and account-level intent signals.

Company 2 syncs its contact list to its contact-level ABM tool and sees exactly who they’re targeting (by name). Beyond persona-level messaging, they create specific ad journeys based on:

• Sales stage: They show different ads to people who Sales is prospecting vs those who are in open opportunities.
• Engagement: When someone clicks on their ads, they start showing them new content.
• Context: They can show different ads to people who attended a webinar than to those who haven’t.

Since Company 2 has more control over how they target (because they know exactly who they’re targeting), their messaging is more likely to resonate with each individual. 

Company 1’s messaging might resonate with some of their audience. But since they don’t know exactly who’s being reached or who the account-level signals came from, their message will be irrelevant to a large chunk of people who see their ads.

Nearly half of marketers say they’re still missing the resources to identify the right buyers. In other words, they can tell Sales someone at an account is showing intent, but not who.

The problem stems from their tools. ABM platforms typically can only show you the person behind the intent if they happen to fill out a form or if they have some form of website de-anonymization.

And even then, the data is shaky since de-anonymization tools rely on cookies and IP data, which tend to be less reliable.

If you can’t tell who your intent signals came from, Influ2 can help by giving you contact-level signals from social, search, content, and ads. 

Our approach is different from traditional ABM platforms because we start with the contacts you want to reach (synced from your CRM). Then we monitor how they engage with your ads and relevant topics and show you exactly who engaged with what.

Those signals get sent directly to Sales, so they don’t have to spend time doing detective work to figure out who to contact.

Only 10% of marketers say they’re fully aligned with Sales on audience targeting. Two-thirds say they either frequently or occasionally encounter misalignment between the leads marketing generates (MQLs) and the contacts the sales team is actively pursuing.

That disconnect leads to wasted time and missed opportunities.

We saw the same pattern in our Sales & Marketing Alignment Report. But when Marketing targets the same people Sales is pursuing, teams convert 65% more prospects into pipeline.

If you’re part of the 63%, here’s a playbook to keep your sales and marketing team aligned.

Sales doesn’t just need to know who to engage—they need to know when. Even if someone is the perfect fit for your product, if the timing isn’t right, it won’t matter. 

Contact-level ABM gives you an opportunity to jump in when your brand or their pain points are top of mind.

Here’s an example of how that plays out in Influ2. 

One of the signals we provide is search. You tell us which contacts you want to reach (from your CRM) and what keywords are relevant to your business. It could be your brand name, competitors, or pain points you solve, for instance.

When your tracked contacts search for those topics, we show you who they were and what they searched for, even if they don’t click through to your site. Those signals get passed to your sales team on the channels they’re most likely to see them (e.g., your CRM or Slack).

You can learn more about how it works here.

Contact-level ABM is shifting from experimentation to structured adoption. Marketers are recognizing that account-only targeting doesn’t deliver the level of precision or insights that salespeople need to take action.

GTM teams are bought in on the idea of ABM as a strategy, but they’re looking for a better way to implement it. Going forward, the most successful ABM programs will focus on people, not just the accounts they work for.

ABM used to be a strategy reserved for big enterprise teams with the budget for heavy-duty tools. But over time, the playbook spread—more companies adopted ABM, and the category went mainstream.

Sounds great on paper. But in reality? ABM technology hasn’t evolved fast enough to support the shift. So instead of precision, we’ve landed in saturation.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of bad ABM. The irrelevant emails that aren’t meant for us. The ads that speak to pain points we don’t have. But because we happen to work at the right company, the system assumes we’re the right person. 

The fact that nearly three-quarters of marketers see contact-level precision as essential to future success shows that people realize ABM can’t deliver its full potential if it’s only optimized at the account level.

Showing ads to the wrong people or sending irrelevant emails doesn’t just mean your brand is getting ignored. Marketers feel it has measurable business consequences. According to our data:

• 40% say it stunts pipeline growth
• 38% say it results in lost revenue
• 37% say it causes lower sales conversion rates
• 28% say it impacts brand reputation
• 25% say it creates difficulty with KPI/quota attainment
• 25% say it stagnates deal velocity

Treating everyone in an account the same comes at a cost. That doesn’t mean you need to run 1:1 ABM campaigns. That’s not realistic for most companies. 

However, it does mean tailoring your messaging to each person’s role, stage in the buying journey, intent signals, and other criteria. These are all things you can do at scale (with the right tools).

If your ABM program is showing symptoms like stalled pipeline, lower conversions, or unclear revenue impact, contact-level ABM is calling your name.

Start here: The Contact-Level ABM Framework: Drive Revenue with Precision Targeting

Marketers can only measure what their tools allow them to. And when it comes to contact-level ABM, that usually means activity-based metrics like email opens or content downloads. 

Those metrics can be interesting, but they don’t connect your effort to what really matters—business results. 

Here’s the full list of how marketers say they measure the impact of contact-level ABM:

• 47% track engagement metrics
• 37% track conversion rates
• 36% track ROI
• 36% track account penetration
• 31% track influenced revenue
• 31% track pipeline velocity

Influenced revenue is one of the most direct ways to prove that contact-level ABM is making a measurable impact on the business. Yet only one third of marketers are doing it—because most ABM tools don’t make it possible.

But Influ2 does.

Pipeline and revenue are the clearest indicators of success, but contact-level ABM drives impact far beyond that. 

When we asked marketers where else contact-level strategies make a difference, here’s what they told us:

• 58% of marketers believe contact-level ABM improves customer retention
• 49% of marketers say contact-level insights help allocate resources more effectively
• 47% of marketers expect stronger internal alignment through contact-level ABM
• 43% of marketers say contact-level ABM can strengthen their performance
• 42% of marketers say contact-level ABM makes campaigns more cost-efficient
• 35% of marketers felt that going contact-level creates a unified buyer experience
• 26% of marketers believe contact-level ABM provides a better customer experience

Teams see contact-level ABM as the connective tissue across the entire GTM motion.

Whether you’re launching ABM for the first time or trying to improve your current program, going contact-level might be what you need to get everyone aligned and invested.

So, what’s stopping marketers from implementing effective contact-level ABM programs?

Data and technology are at the top of the list. Forty-two percent of the marketers surveyed said they had limited access to accurate and actionable contact-level data.

That ties directly to the second-most cited barrier: 33% of marketers report that they lack the technology to support individual-level engagement.

It’s not a mystery why these numbers are so high. Most ABM platforms were built for accounts, not contacts. And marketers are feeling the constraints. 

The good news is that contact-level ABM solutions like Influ2 can solve that. For instance, Influ2 has two-way integrations with CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot.

When we detect intent signals, we pass them to your CRM. And when changes happen to contacts in your CRM (e.g., they progress through sales stages, change roles, new fields are added, etc.), that gets passed to Influ2, so marketing’s targeting stays aligned with the sales team’s priorities.

Not only does this help with data hygiene, but it also reduces situations where Sales and Marketing target different people.

Here are some of the other barriers marketers mentioned that prevent them from implementing effective contact-level ABM:

• 30% had difficulty integrating marketing and sales processes
• 29% had difficulty integrating marketing and sales tools
• 22% faced internal resistance to shifting from account-based to a contact-level approach

If you want your ABM program to succeed, you need to adapt to the way people actually make buying decisions.

• They ignore irrelevant outreach.
• They change their priorities midway through the sales process.
• They don’t care how well you’ve targeted the account if your message doesn’t speak to their individual needs.

Contact-level ABM was made for that reality. It brings GTM teams’ focus back to the people who actually make decisions. And that’s the way ABM was meant to work, but technology just limited our ability to execute it properly.

Want to see how Influ2 brings ABM to the contact level? Let’s talk.