Let’s face it—a great ABM program has always been a heavy lift. The endless spreadsheets, the constant back-and-forth with sales to prioritize key accounts, and the gnawing pressure to prove it’s all worth it. For many B2B marketing teams, this has made developing a successful ABM strategy feel just out of reach.

Now, we’re all being asked to do more with less—and somehow “just use AI” on top of it all. It’s enough to give anyone a serious case of pipeline anxiety.

We get it because we’ve been there. At UserGems, ABM has been a top pipeline-driver since our earliest days. But the game-changer for us wasn’t a bigger budget. It was learning how to pair a disciplined strategy with AI to automate the soul-crushing work and let our team focus on what they do best.

This isn't another theoretical guide. This is the actual playbook we use to focus on the right accounts at the right time and drive revenue. Get ready to steal the plays that work.

The new rules: how to think about ABM and AI in 2025

The old way of doing account-based marketing was a heavy, project-based effort. Marketing teams would spend weeks building a static account list, and then the team would begin the slow, manual process of personalization. The result was often team burnout and a long, painful wait to see any real pipeline.

The new way is to think of ABM as an "always-on" GTM motion, not a quarterly campaign. The focus shifts from a static list to dynamic buying signals. It's less about the accounts you start with and more about the accounts that show intent right now. This creates continuous "account-based motion," where your team is always engaging the right accounts at the perfect time.

AI is your team's co-pilot, not an autopilot

Let's clear the air on AI. Many leaders are pressured to use it, but fear it's either a "spam cannon" or a complex tool that will replace their team. The key is to adopt the right mental model for an effective ABM program.

Think of AI as a co-pilot for every single rep.

• What AI excels at: Sifting through infinite buying signals and intent data 24/7 to find buying signals and doing the repetitive work reps hate—like drafting the first version of an email.
• What humans excel at: Strategy, building genuine relationships with decision-makers, adding the final 10% of authentic personalization, and closing the deal.

The goal isn't to create a hands-off system. It's about building a human-AI partnership that makes your team smarter, faster, and dramatically more effective.

Related → How AI Helps ABM Teams Prioritize, Align & Scale Faster 

3 Top-performing AI-powered ABM plays that generate 8-25% reply rates

While most outbound strategies get a 1% reply rate, three specific AI and signal-based campaigns deliver immediate pipeline and can dramatically shorten the sales cycle by engaging buyers at the moment of highest intent. As our CMO shared, they generate 70% of our own pipeline at UserGems and are the first ones we implement for every new customer. [*]

Playbook #1: Revive closed-lost opportunities

Your closed-lost opportunities are a goldmine, but they're often forgotten or placed on a generic, time-based nurture sequence. This approach is blind to real-time buying signals and misses crucial windows of opportunity in the buyer journey.

This play uses AI to continuously monitor your closed-lost accounts for new buying signals, ensuring you re-engage with the perfect message at the exact right moment.

• Step 1. Define your revival list: Start by creating an audience of accounts that were lost 6-24 months ago for reasons like timing, budget, or sticking with the status quo. These are good-fit accounts that may be ready to reconsider.
• Step 2. Let AI monitor for new signals: UserGems automatically monitors this list for high-intent signals that indicate renewed interest, such as a past champion joining the company, a new executive hire in a key role, a visit to your website's pricing page, or a new round of funding.
  
  • Summary example: "They were lost 9 months ago due to budget. A new VP just started, and they're hiring two managers that match your buyer persona."
• Step 3. Activate the AI co-pilot: When a signal is detected, AI instantly pulls the account into a revival workflow. It identifies the best contact to engage and automatically drafts a personalized email that combines the new signal with the original reason for loss noted in your CRM. This personalized messaging addresses their specific pain points.
• Step 4. Personalize and re-engage: Your sales rep receives the AI-drafted message. Their role is to add a final human touch and press "send," restarting the conversation with perfect context and timing.

• Step 5: Multi-thread the account: Use AI to identify other key contacts in the new buying committee to ensure your message reaches the right people from the start.

💡CASE STUDY: Gem-E, UserGem’s AI Outbound Agent, helped Sendoso identify and prioritize new and existing high-intent prospects, while crafting highly personalized emails. This helped Sendoso streamline their outreach while increasing responses.

Playbook #2: The past champion welcome wagon

Your biggest fans and most successful users inevitably change jobs. Manually tracking these moves is impossible, meaning you lose valuable relationships and warm pipeline opportunities slip through the cracks. This is a core challenge for any demand generation strategy.

This play automates the process of identifying when your past champions start new roles at your target accounts and provides a step-by-step framework for re-engaging them in a timely, human way.

• Step 1. Define your champions: First, identify who you want to track. A "champion" isn't just a former buyer. Group them into categories like key champions (power users, admins), end-users (high NPS scores), and key prospects (contacts from open or closed-lost deals).
• Step 2. Filter for high-priority moves: To eliminate noise, the AI automatically filters job changes to surface only the most relevant ones. This ensures your reps only see alerts when a champion moves into a company that fits your ideal customer profile (ICP) and into a role that matches your target persona.
• Step 3. Automate the warm welcome: When a champion makes a qualified move, they are automatically enrolled in a welcome sequence. The first email is a simple, human congrats message that focuses on them and their new role—not asking for a meeting.
• Step 4. Add a human touch: After the initial automated email, the best plays add a human touch to stand out. A few weeks after the first contact, send a relevant gift or record a personal LinkedIn voice message to build a real connection and increase response rates.

💡CASE STUDY: Learn how Tipalti started engaging previous customers and created $4M in pipeline with UserGems. 

Playbook #3: The customer's competitor

Your best customers provide the perfect blueprint for your next sale. Their direct business competitors face the same industry challenges, work with similar personas, and measure success in the same way. This makes them a high-priority, high-conversion segment for your ABM efforts. 

This play focuses on leveraging your success with a champion customer to establish deep credibility with their competitors. The key is to lead with your specialized industry expertise, making the prospect feel deeply understood before you ever ask for a meeting.

• Step 1. Build your "look-alike" target list: First, work with your customer success team to identify your best, most successful customers. Then, use UserGems to automatically map their top business competitors. This instantly becomes your high-priority ABM target list.
• Step 2. Extract the "secret sauce": Before any outreach, interview the customer success manager for your champion customer. What specific, non-confidential problems did you solve for them? What was the business impact? What industry trends are they focused on? This intelligence is the ammunition for your ABM campaign.
• Step 3. Demonstrate your expertise: Use the insights from step 2 to run targeted multi-channel "air cover" campaigns to the competitor accounts. This could be LinkedIn ads promoting a blog post or webinar on "how leaders in [specific industry] are tackling [specific challenge]" or a podcast featuring insights on trends in their space. You are establishing yourself as an industry expert.
• Step 4. The expert outreach: Now, your sales team engages. The AI-assisted outreach should lead with the industry-specific insights you've gathered, not a sales pitch. The message should make the prospect feel understood. 
  
  • For example: "Hi [Name], given your role at [Competitor Company], you're likely facing the unique challenge of [specific industry problem]. We've been doing a lot of work in the [specific industry] space on how to solve this. Is that a priority for your team right now?"
• Step 5. Offer a consultation, not a demo: Instead of pushing for a standard demo, the call-to-action should be more valuable. Offer a "20-minute industry trends briefing" or a "private strategy session" where you can share anonymized insights from your work in their specific vertical. You provide value and build trust long before you pitch your product.

Turn these plays into predictable pipeline

Knowing the right plays to run is one thing. Having a system that executes them consistently is how you achieve ABM success.

UserGems is the engine that powers these top-performing campaigns. We turn the manual, soul-crushing work of finding signals, identifying contacts, and drafting outreach into an automated process. This frees your team to focus on what they do best: building relationships and closing deals.

We know that every MarTech company promises to "boost your pipeline." It's a phrase that has lost its meaning. That's why we put a real promise behind our platform: we guarantee you'll generate as much pipeline as you spend with us, or you get your money back.

Ready to see how the best revenue teams are doubling their pipeline with the same headcount? Book a demo today.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

What is the main difference between traditional ABM and signal-based ABM?

Traditional ABM focuses on a static list of accounts, often chosen annually based on firmographics like size or industry. A signal-based ABM strategy is dynamic and "always-on." It continuously monitors all your accounts for real-time buying signals—like a past champion changing jobs or a new funding round—to tell you which high-value accounts to prioritize right now. The focus shifts from "who could be a good fit" to "who is showing intent today."

How much effort is required to set up these AI playbooks?

While any new GTM motion requires strategic thought, the goal of a platform like UserGems is to handle the technical complexity for you. Because the signals, data, and AI-powered workflows are pre-built, you can launch your first high-impact campaigns in weeks, not months. We focus on launching the top 1-3 plays first to ensure you see a fast time-to-value and can optimize your sales and marketing strategy over time.

How do you measure the success of these ABM plays?

While you can track leading indicators like reply rates, the most important metrics are tied directly to revenue. We recommend focusing on:

• Qualified pipeline generated from target accounts.
• Opportunity conversion rate (from first touch to open opportunity).
• Deal velocity for opportunities in your ABM plays.
• And ultimately, closed-won revenue attributed to the campaigns.

How does AI help in prioritizing which accounts to focus on? 

AI automates the process of account scoring by combining your ICP criteria with real-time buying signals. This allows your team to dynamically prioritize outreach and focus on high-value accounts that are showing the strongest intent. By concentrating efforts on prospects that are actively in-market, you can better predict your pipeline and focus resources on opportunities with higher potential, ensuring your team's decision-making is always data-driven.

Beyond email, how can these buying signals be used in a campaign? 

While email is a primary channel, the signals are most powerful when used in a multi-channel approach. For example, a "past champion" signal can trigger more than just an email; it can prompt a sales rep to connect on social media like LinkedIn, send a small, personalized direct mail piece to their new office, or even route them to customized landing pages with content relevant to their new role. The signal provides the context for a warmer touch on any channel.

How does a signal-based approach impact our existing team and tech stack?

This approach enhances your entire go-to-market motion. It provides clear, data-backed reasons for outreach that align all stakeholders, from the demand gen team to AEs. The signals help identify not just primary decision-makers but also key influencers within the buying committee. Furthermore, a platform like UserGems improves the ROI of your entire tech stack by feeding clean, prioritized data into your existing CRM and sales engagement tools through seamless integrations.

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