An ABM program that reached half of inbound leads

The challenge

The business sold large, considered technology projects, with six-figure average deal sizes. Its point of difference was security: an Australian-based team with independent security certification, which mattered most to organisations in highly regulated industries.

With deals that size, every well-chosen account mattered. We had a broad market and a small sales team, so I needed to narrow the list to businesses that fitted our strengths, and spot the signs they were researching before they contacted us.

My approach

I started with our own data. I built reports in HubSpot to see where we had converted best in the past, by industry, company size, location, and revenue, and compared that with the wider market.

I then worked with management and our head of sales to agree on an ideal client profile:

• Businesses of 50 to 500 people
• Based in Sydney first, then Melbourne, Brisbane, and Canberra
• In regulated industries such as healthcare, education, government, and finance

Healthcare stood out as our strongest industry for both revenue growth and lead conversion. I broke it into sub-industries, including diagnostics, hospitals, aged care, larger medical centre groups, and health insurance, choosing the ones where we had relevant case studies to back up the conversation. We then identified around 10 to 25 target accounts per sub-industry.

To find the right people, I first cleaned up job title data in the CRM and built contact reports showing who we typically engaged with during deals. That pointed to the C-suite: CEOs, heads of technology, chief transformation officers, and heads of operations.

What I built

The program evolved over time. At some stages it leaned more on email nurturing and at others on sales-led outreach, while the building blocks below stayed the same.

Account and contact research. I researched each sub-industry’s accounts, used Firmable to find the right contacts, and added companies and contacts to HubSpot tagged as ABM. I then used HubSpot’s Breeze Intelligence to enrich each record with signals such as recent hires, funding, news, and whether they appeared to be in market.

Intent monitoring and scoring. Breeze Intelligence showed which companies were visiting our website. Each week I checked it and added new companies to the program if they matched our profile and had visited at least twice, going beyond the home page to services, case studies, or contact. Each account was scored by intent:

• Low intent: one visit, no action. Monitored only
• Medium intent: looked at key pages. Added to email nurturing
• High intent: several people returning to services and case studies. Passed to sales

I also set up HubSpot notifications at both account and contact level, so I knew when a target company or any of its people visited, and which pages they viewed.

LinkedIn ads. I built LinkedIn matched audiences for each sub-industry, with copy and creative tailored to each. Because the ads targeted the whole C-suite at an account, they reached the wider buying group as well as the person we had emailed. I A/B tested creative and copy, turned off weaker ads, and kept adding new versions.

Email nurturing. I planned, wrote, and designed an eight-email workflow: an introduction, services, case studies, testimonials, the team, FAQs, security, and blogs. Emails went out once every 21 days. I built one set of emails and used HubSpot smart content to tailor the copy and imagery to each contact’s sub-industry, based on the company data I had populated.

Every email ran a subject line A/B test. Once a result was statistically significant, I turned off the weaker version and wrote a new challenger. I also used HubSpot’s read, skimmed, and glanced data to see which sections held attention, then removed what wasn’t working, and moved the best-performing calls to action above the fold.

These contacts hadn’t signed up to hear from us, so I kept volume low and set clear exit rules. Anyone who bounced, unsubscribed, or didn’t open two or more emails was removed. Contacts who completed the sequence without engaging moved to the newsletter list for occasional updates.

Sales handoff. When an account showed high intent, I flagged it to sales with the pages they had viewed. I set up a HubSpot sales sequence that drafted the outreach email automatically but held it for approval, so our salesperson could personalise it in their own words. The sequence also created tasks to connect with the contact on LinkedIn, follow the company, and send a follow-up if there was no response.

Results

Around half of the business’s inbound leads had interacted with the program, through a LinkedIn ad click, the email nurture, or both.

Contacts identified through Breeze Intelligence, whose companies had already visited our site, saw:

• An open rate of around 21%, roughly double the fully cold contacts
• A click rate of around 1.6%, close to three times the cold contacts
• A click-to-open rate of around 7%

That open rate was slightly higher than our opted-in newsletter, which averaged around 19 to 20%, and the click rate matched it, from people who hadn’t asked to hear from us. Across all sends there were zero spam reports and the bounce rate stayed under 2%, well within the 3% commonly treated as healthy.

Sales could also see which target accounts were researching us, and what they were looking at, before anyone filled in a form.

Benchmark source: Folderly, Cold Email Statistics 2025 (bounce rate).

What I’d do next

One-to-one outreach from sales outperformed the email nurture. That told me the account list was right, and that the next step was going deeper: fewer accounts, knowing which events they attend, making sure sales is connected with every contact, and creating content and offers for them specifically.

I’d also shift the content from our own services and case studies to their industry, with something useful in every send. I had started planning an industry report built on original research. It would be promoted to target accounts on LinkedIn, with a download form that included a clear opt-in to follow-up emails. Everyone who opted in would get a nurture tailored to their industry, so the emails would go to people who had asked for them.