What has intent data got to do with Account-Based-Marketing?

Recently a Marketing leader asked me ‘What has intent data got to do  with Account Based Marketing?’ and it got me thinking – even today, ABM is a very misunderstood strategy. When Damien Seaman, well known B2B Insurance/Insurtech Content Strategist, and I ran a round table on this, it became clear;

You’d perhaps expect heads of Marketing, and Demand Generation at large and midsize SaaS organisations to be ‘on top’ of their Account based marketing strategies. But many freely admitted:

• We have those strategies in place but are not getting very far with them.
• We don’t even really understand the value this approach can drive, let alone how to get started.

But the evidence is in – ABM does work on many levels, not least of all with that critical Sales/Marketing alignment need to win large deals with big accounts faster

In my business, using an ABM approach to secure enterprise customers for large deals, you need a highly targeted 'spear fishing' approach, that begins with account selection.

For net new accounts, I usually use by far the best highly targeted paid channel Linkedin to drive initial contacts, and hubspot/Salesforce/Marketo/Eloqua to nurture via marketing automation, sometimes alongside Linkedin, Google, or Microsoft retargeting ads (to get your contacts when they are ‘in market’ – only 5% are at any one time).

But going back to that Marketing Executive’s question ‘How does intent data fit in to all this?

ABM requires marketing and sales to work as a unified unit rather than in silos. Intent data acts as a single source of truth that both teams can trust.

When I was part of the implementation of our Intent Platform 6sense, one of our biggest challenges was reconciling our Sales peoples ‘Target account/Pursuit list’ and the reality of what we in Marketing, were seeing:

• Sales may want to set up sales opportunities with fifty companies
• But how many of those fifty want to speak to us?

That, in a nutshell, is how intent data can help. Not only does it give you a highly granular view of what each contact at every account is doing in terms of engaging with your company – pages viewed, emails clicked, social media sites and partner sites visited...

But, it also gives you an outstanding ’30,000 ft’ arieal over view of those accounts. Where are they in the sales funnel? And not just net new, but existing prospects, opportunities being worked by sales, and even current customers, or returning ones:

• Prospecting: Identifying and researching companies that match your ideal customer profile to build a pipeline.

• Qualification: Evaluating a prospect's budget, authority, and needs to ensure they are a viable fit.

• Research: Deep-diving into the prospect’s business and mapping out their internal decision-makers.

• Presentation: Demonstrating your product via a tailored pitch that directly addresses the prospect's unique pain points.

• Proposal & Negotiation: Submitting a formal contract and working through pricing, terms, and legal adjustments.

• Closing: Securing final procurement approvals and getting the contract signed to officialise the deal.

• Onboarding & Retention: Handing the account to customer success to ensure seamless adoption and future growth.

Without strong, reliable, comprehensive intent signals, your Sales success at many of these stages will be severly limited, and without those, you cannot drive forward with an outstanding Account based marketing approach.

Additionally, most of the marketing suite of tools your use will work much more effectively on ABM campaigns if you understand intent data for your company.

For example, Clay – everyone has access to this tool. But only you have access to your own data. So if you combine your data with Clay, rather than tapping out on return on investment (diminishing returns), you will continually grow the effectiveness of Clay for your organisation, in terms of driving potential buyers at the top of your funnel, and securing sales contracts at the bottom.

Without good intent data, this will be impossible for you. Secondly, an 'arms race' has been going on with data tools like Clay, Apollo, and Zoominfo (along with a plethora of others, like Blitzap) for many years, which AI has escalated.

So in short, you will not only differentiate your self from all your competitors using ‘AI slop’ and be truly revolutionary in having unique to you contacts, but you will get larger and increasing financial returns on your marketing ABM marketing campaigns.

One question I get levelled at me a lot is ‘Hey Rudy, these are great insights, but how can I actually apply them in my business?’

And I get that – due to a strange brain, and even stranger upbringing, I have a passion for analysis.

But I know that most are not that interested in ideas, unless they result in actual money, usually the more money, the greater the interest.

So for that reason I recently attended a Demandbase workshop on how to use AI, to speed up and make more effective your ABM campaigns. And the results are proof that it is working now.

Not just from me but other attendees there, using it effectively, like the Head of Marketing at State Street Bank, and Fujitsu Global Brands.

The core message cut across all of it: in ABM, early adopters of AI will win, and the winners will be the ones who feed AI good context and good data — not the ones with the flashiest tool:

● You can cover 10× more accounts, with 10× more personalisation than was possible pre-AI.

● An ABM campaign that used to take six months can be stood up in roughly a month.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

What is the difference between intent data and lead scoring? Lead scoring is a rule that assigns points to behaviours. Intent data is the behaviour itself. A score is only as good as the evidence behind its rules, and most scores were set by assumption. Test the rules against won deals before trusting the score.

Do you need 6sense or Demandbase to use intent data for ABM? No. First-party intent from HubSpot, Marketo or Salesforce, joined to your CRM outcomes, is the most reliable intent data you will ever own. Third-party platforms add reach across the open web and are worth it once the first-party join is working. As John Blackmore put it, "6sense on its own is nothing super. When you pair it up with another tactic, it's one plus one equals three."

How much revenue does intent data add? In the cases above, intent directly sourced about a quarter of opportunities at one cybersecurity firm, lifted every tactic 10–20%, and sized at £0.5–1.5m a year of additional revenue across one portfolio through better hand-off and prioritisation. The honest answer is a range, and the floor is the number to budget on.

Why does ABM fail even with an intent platform? Because sales does not act on it, or because marketing never checked which signals predict revenue. Rocio Sasson's seven years of ABM at Checkmarx and my own experience at Tricentis point to the same cause: the tool was bought, the operating rhythm with sales was not.

Which intent signals matter most in B2B? Return visits on a later day, session depth and recent pricing or product-page views. Early email clicks help in the first week and fade by 30 days. Form submissions, brochure downloads and open counts predict little once you control for return visits.

How does AI change intent-led ABM? AI lets a team cover roughly ten times the accounts with the same personalisation and stand up a campaign in a month instead of six. It does not improve the underlying data. Teams with clean, joined first-party intent compound the advantage; teams without it produce more of the same noise.