Account-based marketing software helps B2B teams identify target accounts, engage buying committees, personalize outreach, and measure account-level engagement. The best ABM platforms combine account intelligence, intent data, campaign orchestration, and reporting to support more targeted sales and marketing strategies.
If your team needs better account data, buyer intent signals, and targeting support for ABM campaigns, ZoomInfo can help identify high-fit accounts and prioritize the right buyers.
What is account-based marketing software?
Account-based marketing software helps B2B sales and marketing teams target specific companies instead of broad lead pools. Rather than waiting for individual leads to qualify themselves, ABM starts with a defined list of target accounts and builds coordinated campaigns around those companies.
ABM software typically supports account selection, buying committee identification, campaign execution, sales follow-up, and account-level reporting. It is especially useful for companies with complex sales cycles, high-value deals, multiple stakeholders, or a strong need for sales and marketing alignment.
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What are the benefits of ABM software?
ABM software helps teams focus time and budget on accounts that are more likely to create pipeline, close revenue, or expand over time. It also gives sales and marketing teams a shared view of account activity, which can make outreach more timely and relevant.
Key benefits include:
- Better account targeting: Identify companies that match your ideal customer profile using firmographic, technographic, behavioral, and intent data.
- Stronger sales and marketing alignment: Give both teams access to shared account lists, engagement data, and campaign history.
- More relevant personalization: Tailor messaging by account, industry, role, buying stage, or pain point.
- Buying committee visibility: Understand multiple stakeholders inside an account instead of focusing on one lead.
- Account-level analytics: Connect account engagement to pipeline and revenue outcomes, not just clicks or form fills.
- Improved prospecting: Help sales teams find the right companies and contacts faster.
ALSO READ: What Does ABM Mean for the B2B Sales Funnel?
What are the types of ABM software?
ABM software often overlaps with sales intelligence, marketing automation, advertising, and revenue analytics tools. Some vendors offer broad ABM suites, while others specialize in one part of the workflow.
Predictive analytics and account intelligence
Predictive analytics and business account intelligence tools help teams identify companies that are likely to match their ideal customer profile. These tools may analyze CRM data, firmographics, technographics, intent signals, website behavior, and third-party data to recommend target accounts.
Advertising and retargeting automation
Advertising and retargeting tools help teams deliver account-specific ads across display, social, video, and retargeting channels. They are useful for building awareness with target accounts before, during, or after sales outreach.
Marketing automation and campaign orchestration
Marketing automation platforms help teams run email campaigns, nurture sequences, segmentation, landing pages, and campaign workflows. In an ABM strategy, these tools help connect campaign activity to account engagement and sales follow-up.
Sales intelligence and enrichment
Sales intelligence and enrichment tools help teams find accurate account and contact data, identify stakeholders, and update CRM records. Some platforms also provide intent signals, company news, org charts, and direct contact details.
Key features to look for in ABM platforms
The best ABM platform for your business depends on your sales cycle, target account list, campaign channels, data quality, and reporting needs. Use these features as a checklist when comparing vendors.
1. Target account identification
A strong ABM platform should help you find companies that match your ideal customer profile using firmographic, technographic, behavioral, and intent-based signals.
Look for filters such as industry, company size, revenue, geography, technology stack, growth indicators, intent activity, and similarity to existing customers.
Example: If your best customers are mid-market healthcare companies using a specific CRM, the platform should help identify similar accounts and prioritize them for campaigns.
2. Account scoring and prioritization
ABM works best when teams can separate high-priority accounts from lower-fit targets. Account and lead scoring ranks companies based on fit, engagement, intent, and revenue potential.
This helps sales and marketing teams focus their limited time and budget on accounts with stronger conversion potential.
Example: An account that matches your ICP, visits high-intent pages, and shows category-level research activity should receive a higher score than a company that only matches your industry filter.
3. Intent data
Intent data helps teams identify accounts that may be actively researching topics related to their products or services. This can help marketing prioritize campaigns and give sales a stronger reason to engage.
When evaluating intent data, check whether the platform provides account-level topic interest, buying-stage indicators, first-party website engagement, third-party research signals, historical trends, and workflow integrations.
Example: If several employees at a target account are researching “customer data platforms,” an ABM platform can flag that account for a campaign, sales follow-up, or buying committee review.
4. Buying committee insights
Most B2B purchases involve more than one decision-maker. A useful ABM platform should help teams understand the buying committee, including decision-makers, influencers, users, and technical evaluators.
This helps sales and marketing teams avoid over-focusing on one contact and tailor messaging by stakeholder priority.
Example: A CFO may care about cost control, while an operations leader may care about efficiency and implementation. ABM tools should help teams identify and engage both roles within the same account.
5. Multichannel campaign orchestration
ABM campaigns often span email, display ads, paid social, direct mail, events, website personalization, and sales outreach. A strong platform should help teams coordinate those touchpoints instead of managing each channel separately.
Look for orchestration features such as campaign workflows, audience segmentation, channel activation, ad management, CRM triggers, sales task creation, suppression rules, and journey-stage tracking.
Example: When a target account reaches a specific engagement threshold, the platform might trigger a sales task, add the account to a nurture sequence, and launch retargeting ads for stakeholders at that company.
6. Personalization capabilities
Personalization is one of the main benefits of ABM. The platform should help teams tailor messaging by account, segment, industry, role, buying stage, or pain point.
Basic personalization might include account-specific ad creative or segmented email campaigns. More advanced tools may support website personalization, dynamic landing pages, or role-based content recommendations.
Example: A cybersecurity vendor might show healthcare accounts messaging around compliance, while showing manufacturing accounts messaging around operational risk.
7. Sales and marketing alignment tools
ABM platforms should make it easier for sales and marketing teams to work from the same account view. This includes shared account lists, engagement data, campaign history, and follow-up recommendations.
Without alignment features, marketing may generate engagement that sales does not act on, or sales may pursue accounts that marketing is not supporting.
8. CRM and marketing automation integrations
An ABM platform should integrate with the systems your team already uses, especially your CRM and marketing automation platform. These integrations keep account data, campaign activity, lead routing, and pipeline reporting connected.
Before buying, confirm whether the platform integrates with tools such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics, or your sales engagement software.
9. Account-level analytics and attribution
ABM measurement should go beyond clicks and form fills. The platform should show how account engagement connects to pipeline, opportunities, revenue, retention, or expansion.
Useful reporting features include account engagement scores, campaign performance by account, pipeline influenced, opportunity creation, buying committee engagement, journey-stage progression, revenue attribution, and sales activity visibility.
Example: Instead of only reporting that a campaign generated 200 clicks, the platform should show whether target accounts engaged, moved into opportunity stages, or influenced revenue.
10. Data quality and enrichment
ABM depends on accurate account and contact data. If records are incomplete, outdated, or duplicated, the platform may target the wrong accounts, miss important stakeholders, or fragment engagement reporting.
Look for data quality features that support account matching, contact enrichment, deduplication, firmographic updates, and CRM hygiene.
Example: If a target account has multiple subsidiaries or duplicate records in your CRM, the platform should help unify those records so engagement and reporting are easier to interpret.
If data quality is a key part of your ABM evaluation, ZoomInfo can help teams enrich account and contact data, identify buyer intent signals, and prioritize outreach to better-fit accounts.
11. Fit for your ABM maturity level
Not every company needs the most advanced ABM platform. A team launching its first ABM program may need account selection, CRM integration, and basic campaign activation. A mature enterprise team may need advanced intent data, orchestration, attribution, and global account coverage.
Before buying, match the platform to your current ABM maturity, team size, sales motion, and budget.
Example: A small team running one-to-few campaigns may not need enterprise-level ad orchestration. A global team targeting named accounts across regions likely needs more advanced segmentation, reporting, and governance.
ABM platform feature comparison
| Feature | Why it matters | Best for |
| Target account identification | Finds high-fit companies | Building account lists |
| Account scoring | Prioritizes accounts by fit and engagement | Sales and marketing focus |
| Intent data | Flags accounts showing research activity | Timing outreach |
| Buying committee insights | Identifies stakeholders inside target accounts | Complex B2B sales |
| Campaign orchestration | Coordinates touchpoints across channels | Multichannel ABM |
| Personalization | Tailors messaging by account or segment | Higher relevance |
| CRM integration | Connects ABM activity to sales workflows | Sales follow-up |
| Analytics and attribution | Measures account engagement and pipeline impact | Proving ROI |
| Data enrichment | Improves account and contact quality | Better targeting |
Questions to ask before choosing an ABM platform
Before comparing vendors, align your team on what you need the platform to do. The best choice depends on your target accounts, sales cycle, team structure, and existing tech stack.
Ask these questions during evaluation:
- Does the platform support our target account selection process?
- What first-party and third-party data sources does it use?
- Can it identify buying committees, not just individual leads?
- Which channels can it activate natively?
- How well does it integrate with our CRM and marketing automation tools?
- Can sales teams see account engagement inside their workflow?
- How does the platform measure pipeline and revenue impact?
- What data cleanup or enrichment features are included?
- How long does implementation usually take?
- What support is available for ABM strategy, onboarding, and reporting?
Frequently asked questions
