Account-based marketing is a widely used B2B marketing strategy. This marketing planning aligns the marketing and sales teams. Even if your ABM is running smoothly, failing to measure success can quickly undermine it. There are a few things you should care about, such as key performance indicator (KPI) attribution and ROI frameworks.
What Is Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Success Measurement?
ÁBM (Account-Based Marketing) success measurement includes keeping track of specific KPIs. It focuses on high-value accounts, measuring engagement depth and revenue impact rather than just lead volume.
Using metrics like:
- Pipeline Velocity
- Average Deal Size
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
- Engagement
Within buying committees, to prove ROI and optimize personalized campaigns, aligning sales and marketing efforts for bigger deals and shorter cycles.
Core ABM KPIs That Indicate Success
Core ABM KPIs are the main players in measuring your strategy’s performance. The three main indicators are account engagement, pipeline, revenue, relation, and influence. Let’s break them down to acquire solid knowledge on how you can measure key performance indicators of your ABM success.
Account Engagement Metrics
Account engagement is the most important for the success of your account-based marketing. Most of the personalization and communication is built with the following indicators and how you implement them.
- Target account reach: Percentage of accounts actively engaging with your ABM campaigns
- Content interaction: Downloads, clicks, time spent on your online assets or website
- Event participation: Attendance at webinars, demos, or in-person events
- Digital footprint growth: Website visits, social engagement from your CIP or targeted account
The above aspects are the initial metrics that you can use to measure your KPIs of the ABM strategy.
Pipeline and Revenue Metrics
Pipeline and revenue metric involves pipeline velocity, deal size, win rate, etc, which are also among the most important things to follow through regularly.
- Pipeline velocity: Measure the speed at which target accounts move through stages
- Deal size growth: Average contract value compared to non-ABM deals
- Win rate: Conversion of engaged accounts into closed deals
- Revenue influence: Percentage of pipeline and revenue attributed to ABM campaigns
Where is your revenue going, and how much is your win rate? These are mainly measures of your success rate.
Relationship and Influence Metrics
For B2B and B2C or any kind of business that operates with its customers, relationships play a vital role in revenue. So you must know how your relationship status is with your customers.
- Decision-maker engagement: Number and quality of interactions with key stakeholders and ICP
- Account penetration: Depth of relationships across different departments and roles
- Influence score: How ABM activities impact buying committee decisions
- Customer advocacy: Referrals, testimonials, and expansion opportunities
Attribution Models for ABM Measurement
Attribution in account-based marketing is the impact of a touchpoint that influenced or played the most important role in closing the deal or conversion. Attribute models link marketing or sales activities to the account-level revenue. B2B marketing attributes in ABM strategy involve single touch, multi touch, and custom attributes. Let’s break down how they operate.
Single-Touch Attribution
Single touch attribution means that either the first touch or the last touch gets the only credit to convert the client or to close the deal successfully. In this model, only one touchpoint is focused on, so all the other touches get covered. As a result, understanding the complete process becomes difficult.
| Model | Operation | ABM Use Case |
| First-Touch | Credits the very first touchpoint that created awareness for the target account/contact. | Measures the effectiveness of top-of-funnel (TOFU) campaigns like targeted ads or organic content designed to initiate engagement. |
| Last-Touch | Credits the final touchpoint right before a key conversion (example, opportunity creation or deal close). | Measures the effectiveness of conversion-focused efforts like pricing pages, final sales emails, or demo calls that seal the deal. |
For example, if a potential customer comes to you and makes a deal by watching your Facebook ads, then the first touch becomes the single touch attribution here.
Multi-Touch Attribution
Multiple touch attribution represents every touch point that helped you close a deal successfully.
For example, a customer first
- Seen your LinkedIn ads
- Visited your website
- Donladed ebook
- Called you SDR
- Took a demo trial
- Booked an appointment
- Become your customer
| Model | Operation | ABM Use Case |
| Linear | Equal credit is given to every touchpoint ( example, a 10-touch journey = 10% credit per touch). | Provides a balanced view, ensuring all ABM nurturing efforts and stakeholders receive basic recognition. |
| U-Shaped | Highest credit to the First Touch and the Opportunity Creation touchpoint (example, 40% each). | Highlights the vital roles of initial awareness and formal pipeline entry in the ABM funnel. |
| W-Shaped | Highest credit to the First Touch, Lead Creation, and Opportunity Creation touchpoints. | Ideal for tracking transitions across major funnel stages. |
| Time Decay | Touchpoints closer to the conversion date receive progressively more credit. | Valuable for evaluating the impact of recent, aggressive nurturing or sales enablement activities. |
Not always does all attribution get equal credit, but a linear model gives equal credit. Let’s see the table below, and you will be clear about credit distribution.
| Model | Equal Credit? | Key Focus |
| Linear | Yes | All touches are treated equally |
| Time-Decay | No | Later touches were weighted more |
| U-Shaped | No | First & last touches emphasized |
| W-Shaped | No | Milestone touches emphasized |
Custom ABM Attribution
Customer ABM attribution is unlike first touch but somewhat similar to multi-touch. In this method, you distribute who to give how much credit for deal closure.
Like you can assign credit:
- First touch > 20%
- Webinar > 30%
- Sales call > 40%
- Final proposal >10%
Or you can give most credit to a single touch, like most weight = C-suite meeting. As its name is a custom ABM attribution model, you can build it according to your own priorities.
Building an ABM ROI Framework
Building an account-based marketing ROI (return on investment) framework requires three primary parameters. Such as quantifying the total program spend, accurately attributing pipeline influence, and calculating returns and efficiency.
Measuring the Total Cost
Before attempting to build a framework, you need to calculate how much money you are going to invest. Dont just calculate the must-spending or obvious costs, there will be some variable costs or unexpected costs as well. So you calculate them in two different categories.
- Infrastructure cost: Those are the fixed costs like tools, ads, content creation, employee costs, etc.
- Variable campaign cost: Assume you have a range of amounts of money for hiring an influencer, but you did not find anyone, and it costs you more than the amount you assumed.
For all of those, keep a maximum or minimum amount that will be your ABM campaign limit of cost. And plan every cost, you can’t do it exactly, but a rough average estimate would help you track expenses while spending.
Correctly Attributing Pipeline Influence
You have already gone through the three attribution models of ABM strategy. Tracking ABM ROI depends on accurate attribution, so you must know which marketing action generated awareness that pushed a conversion.
Without accurate attribution, you cannot measure ROI, and it will be incomplete and will not give you a complete picture of which investments are having the most impact.
Calculating ROI and Effectiveness
Calculating ROI is very straightforward once you calculate the investment and establish attribution.
ABM ROI formula is:
| ROI = (Revenue Influenced – Total Program Cost) / Total Program Cost * 100 |
With this formula, you can calculate how much profit was generated for every penny that was invested in your ABM campaign.
For example, imagine your company invests $150,000 in ABM for a quarter. The attribution model shows $900,000 in pipeline influenced, with $300,000 already closed.
| Pipeline ROI: {(900,000 – 150,000) / 150,000 * 100 = 500%} Closed Revenue ROI: {(300,000 – 150,000) / 150,000 * 100 = 100%} |
ABM ROI measurement matters because pipeline ROI highlights the potential future impact of ABM, while closed revenue ROI reflects the tangible returns realized in that quarter.
Conclusion
Measuring ABM success through a KPI stack as significant as your whole ABM campaign execution. Throughout this session, you have covered core KPI indicators, attribution models, and a strategy for building an ABM ROI framework. Now it’s your turn to implement your ABM campaign.
