How To Build A Scrappy ABM Program in HubSpot

Replace expensive tools with solid strategy and steal this account-based playbook.

👋 Hey, I’m Stuart – welcome to the 158 new readers who joined since the last ConnectedGTM newsletter. Today’s playbook was created by Mason Cosby, founder of Scrappy ABM.

Account-based marketing is everywhere.

But, too many teams are spending big on ABM, only to find the return doesn’t measure up.

🤯 Did you hear about the company spending $910k on their ABM tech stack alone?

Today, B2B marketers are faced with a fundamental challenge.

Who are the best-fit customers that will return the highest profit?

Answering that question has nothing to do with technology.

All of that has to do with strategy.

So whether you call it ABM, ABS, ABX…whatever…

As Mason put it…when done well, account-based marketing is a holistic growth strategy that:

→ generates the highest profit

→ from the best customers

…because it's specifically designed to do that.

Today, we’re covering how to start your own scrappy ABM program in HubSpot.

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The 4 D framework for building an effective account-based marketing program in HubSpot

Mason's method is all about simplifying your ABM strategy down to first principles and prioritizing function over form and impact over adherence to the status quo.

Here's why it works:

• Focuses on fundamental strategy rather than fancy tech

• Emphasizes personalization and relevance by stacking signals

• Uses HubSpot's existing tools - no need for expensive add-ons

Let’s breakdown the 4 core elements of a scrappy ABM program.

1. Data - Identify Your Targets and Triggers

The foundation of any good ABM strategy is knowing who you're targeting and why you’re reaching out.

Step 1: Target Accounts

For any effective marketing it’s critical to have a clear ICP. Developing clear and documented criteria for what constitutes a target account will make this step significantly easier. You might consider account attributes such as:

• Industry

• Company size

• Location

• Technology stack

• Growth stage

Once you have your criteria, you can use HubSpot’s native Target Accounts functionality to denote the companies you will target in your campaigns. Out of the box this functionality provides a simple way to track:

• Activities, deals, and interactions with designated target accounts.

• Buying role assignments with labels for specific roles like Decision Maker, Budget Holder, or Blocker to enhance segmentation and targeting.

• ABM performance with built-in reports and dashboards for account engagement, open deal values, and missing decision-makers.

Mason’s Insight 🧠: If you require more flexible account tiering beyond Tier 1,2,3, consider using custom properties to allow easy list filtering.

Step 2: Triggers

Targeting criteria alone do not answer the question: Why are we reaching out?

Mason’s Insight 🧠: What often happens in ABM, is companies build a target account list and then run them through a one-size-fits-all outbound sequence.

The goal is to marry the target account list with a reason to reach out. eg. A trigger.

Example triggers could include:

→ First-party website engagement - Using tools like RB2B, Warmly, or Factors.ai to de-anonymize website traffic.

→ Content downloads - Tracking whitepapers or guides downloaded by target accounts in HubSpot.

→ Email opens and clicks - Monitoring engagement with your email campaigns in HubSpot to identify high-interest accounts.

→ Social media engagement - Identifying contacts at target accounts that engage with your posts via likes, shares, or comments.

→ Search intent data - Track accounts researching relevant topics across the web.

→ New tech adoption - Monitoring companies adopting complementary technologies to identify integration opportunities.

→ Key personnel changes - Identifying leadership changes, like a new CMO or CTO, that may trigger a shift in strategy.

→ Hiring patterns - Tracking accounts with increased job postings for roles related to your solution, indicating scaling needs.

→ Regulatory changes - Tracking regulatory changes that may drive compliance needs for your target accounts.

→ Public statements or press releases - Monitoring announcements about company goals or challenges to align your solution with their needs.

2. Distribution

This is where the rubber meets the road so to speak and we start to make contact with our target accounts. Distribution refers to the channels and tactics which we use to reach those accounts.

Mason’s Insight 🧠: In HubSpot the vast majority of your distribution tactics can be list based. You can build list based chat flows, list based popups, list based emails, list based outbound sequences, list based ad campaigns. So if you have great triggers and great targets based on the data in your HubSpot portal, you can use active lists to enroll contacts in specific distribution campaigns.

As always the specific distribution channels you choose should be based on a deep understanding of your target customers, their preferred consumption methods and the channels they are already in, so you can meet them where they are.

3. Destination

Where is our distribution pushing contacts to?

This could be:

• a highly personalized ABM landing page

• a meeting scheduling link

• a dedicated webinar

• an interactive tool or calculator

• a curated playlist of videos

• an event registration page

The most important part is that this destination is highly specific to both the target account, and the target contact enrolled in your campaign and aligns with the next step content that prospect needs given their stage in the account progression model.

4. Direction

Put simply: how do we know what’s working.

And true to form, Mason has a simple, to the point solution.

The “Destination” for a campaign becomes the measure of success.

The purpose of every activation play you might run in your ABM program is to identify who we're going after and why are we reaching out? Once you've identified those two things, you should have clear next step content.

Then you measure success by tracking if they actually engage with or did the intended action based on the destination?

Short-term metrics:

- Meeting bookings
- Content engagement
- Website revisits

Long-term metrics:

- Account progression (awareness → engagement → opportunity)
- Pipeline generated
- Closed-won deals

The direction must also align with the definitions documented in your account progression model, which will enable you to create a closed loop account-based marketing program where your metrics show the efficiency of your system.

How to get started building a scrappy ABM program in HubSpot

You don’t need a massive budget or complex tools to start seeing results with account-based marketing.

Mason recommends 🧠 : Start with an activation campaign low in your funnel and close to revenue such as a closed-lost campaign.

This playbook will show you how to automatically re-engage closed-lost accounts with a personalized offer.

Why start an ABM program with closed-lost accounts?

They already told you:

1. Who was in the buying committee

2. Who the influencers were

3. What problems they think you can solve for them

4. Why they didn't move forward with you

We can use these insights to reengage. Here’s how it works step-by-step: