Think you’re too small for ABM? Think again (Exit Five Newsletter #140)

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Hello and welcome to the Exit Five Weekly Newsletter - read by 32,000 B2B marketing professionals around the world. Exit Five is a membership site designed to help you build a successful career in B2B marketing. Join 5,000 other members at exitfive.com.

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💻 What Marketing Channel Drives the Most Revenue in 2025?

Hands down, the most important asset any B2B Marketer has is the website. Here’s why:

91% of marketing leaders that responded reported that the website drives more revenue than any other marketing channel in Webflow’s 2025 State of the Website report.

They also found that even though it’s the money maker – it can also be a marketer’s biggest frustration:

• Only 17% think their marketing tech stack for the website meets all their needs
  
  
• 93% of marketing teams feel restricted when making website updates by developers/other teams
  
  
• 58% believe that they will need to completely overhaul their tech stack to improve user experiences on the website

Get a copy of the report to see how they’re solving key challenges that impact the website and where they’re investing in 2025.

🏆 Forget the Traditional Inbound Playbook – ABM *Can* Be Your First Move

Most B2B companies follow a predictable playbook: start with inbound marketing to generate some early leads, then gradually layer in account-based marketing (ABM) over time.

And when she first joined UserGems as employee #5, Trinity Nguyen tried to do the same – but she realized pretty quickly following the HubSpot inbound marketing playbook wasn’t gonna work.

So she turned to ABM.

And 6 years later, she’s CMO and her team has it down to a science. Here’s exactly how they use ABM to scale:

Strategic Account Selection

UserGems has a total ICP of about 15,000 companies. Their deals are typically in the $25-30K range. And every quarter, they choose 500-600 accounts to target based on buying signals like:

• Past champions joining new companies
• Recent funding rounds
• Hiring patterns, etc.

Each company gets a score in Salesforce based on signals and fit and the team grabs the first 500 to tackle that quarter. Then, they get into creative.

Personalized Creative

Once they've chosen their target accounts, the team creates multiple versions of creative for each one - a mix of highly personalized messaging and templatized approaches with company logos:

• They create different versions based on what they think will resonate with each account
• Some creative is completely tailored to the specific company
• Others follow a one to many template but incorporate the company's logo, for example

How exactly do they do this for 500 accounts? Canva, baby. Yep. It’s all made by real people.

Marketing-Led ADR Outreach

Unlike most companies where SDRs sit under sales, User Gems takes a different approach—ADRs (Account Development Reps) report directly to marketing.

Trinity believed so strongly in this structure that she negotiated it into her contract before joining as Head of Marketing. The goal? Full alignment between outbound efforts and demand generation.

Here’s how it works in practice:

• The team used to have regular "prospecting hours" every Friday
• ADRs would review their account list and select specific prospects
• They'd look for the same buying signals that marketing used to prioritize accounts
• Then build personalized sequences for each target

Since September, they’ve streamlined this process with AI, automating account research, prospect selection, and even email drafting. This allowed them to double ADR capacity, grow pipeline by 26%, and decrease spend by 27%—all while half the team was out on parental leave.

By keeping ADRs under marketing, UserGems eliminates the usual friction between sales and marketing, ensuring a more strategic, data-driven approach to outbound.

Multi-Channel Execution

UserGems doesn't rely on a single channel to reach target accounts - they coordinate campaigns across multiple touchpoints:

• Personalized email outreach
• Direct calls to key decision makers
• LinkedIn outreach and targeted LinkedIn ads
• Digital ads that specifically name the prospect's company
• Retargeting throughout the entire sales process

The Takeaway: ABM doesn't have to be the "advanced" strategy you layer in later - it can be your core marketing motion from day one.

The key is having a systematic approach to account selection, creative development, and coordinated outreach across channels.

P.S. What do you think of SDRs/BDRs/ADRs reporting to marketing? Agree with Trinity? Thinking of writing an article on this soon and would love your take.

Also if you want the full episode with Trinity, just reply to this email and I'll send it over :)

📺 UPCOMING EVENTS

🔥 The Ultimate Roast of B2B Emails | A One-Day, Virtual Event

Email is still king in B2B marketing.

It’s one of the few (maybe the only) channels we have where you can actually own your audience and reach them with the push of a button.

That’s why our next virtual event is all about B2B Emails, baby! On March 19th, we’re hosting the Ultimate Roast of B2B Emails – a one day virtual event where top B2B Marketing experts will show you what makes a great email in 2025.

Here’s how it’s going to work:

• We’re breaking down every major type of email in B2B, from newsletters to lead nurturing sequences – we’re going to cover it all.
  
  
• Each session is hosted by EXPERT operators (like Alex Liberman of Morning Brew & storyarb and Amanda Natividad of SparkToro) who will share their email secrets.
  
  
• We’ll do LIVE TEARDOWNS of real examples submitted for roasting from the audience and they’ll share tactical ways to improve.

If you came to the Ultimate Roast of B2B Websites last year, you know how much fun this is going to be – so sign up now to get it on your calendar so you can join us.

Can’t make it live? Register anyways and you’ll get the recordings afterwards. Don't miss out!

Sign Up for The Roast!

🏢 OPEN ROLES

Who's hiring right now?

🔥 HOT JOB OF THE WEEK: Overjet is hiring a Head of Growth Marketing to lead all marketing demand generation and conversion activities. If you know how to build and scale demand gen, run paid and organic growth, and turn marketing into revenue, this one’s definitely worth a look.

Interested? Apply here.

Other open roles on the Exit Five job board this week:

• ATSG is hiring a Manager, Content & Brand
• Overjet is hiring a Head of Product Marketing
• Clara is hiring a Contract Social Media Strategist
• Neara is hiring a Demand Generation Manager
• Great Question is hiring a Senior Demand Generation Specialist
• ThoughtMetric is hiring a Director of Marketing
• EcoInteractive is hiring a Marketing Coordinator
• Baymard Institute is hiring a Product Marketing Manager
• CardFlight is hiring a Head of Growth Marketing
• Ceros is hiring a Senior Product Marketing Manager
• Neuron7 is hiring a Content Marketing Director. Fully remote, US Only.
• Databox is hiring a Lifecycle Marketing Manager
• Mutiny is hiring a Content Lead
• Drivepoint is hiring a Content Marketing Manager

See all open roles

Have an open role and want to make sure the best B2B marketing talent sees it?

Just reply to this email and we'll send over more info on how you can post it on our job board + get it in front of 25k+ marketers.

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