What you need to know:

• B2B agency Green Hat hires Scott Caulfield, pictured, to head ABM out of Sydney.
• CEO Andrew Haussegger thinks 'ABM 2.0' is in similar place to marketing automation in 2010, with major growth, and technology risks, ahead.

Account-based marketing (ABM) used to mean treating individual customers and prospects as ‘markets of one’. I.e. highly personalised marketing to a single business or account.

But Green Hat suggests that has changed. Instead of manually running ABM approaches managed by a marketer working hand-in-glove with a sales executive chasing one enterprise account, like a bank or a telco, technology – such as ‘revetech’ and ‘dark funnel’ systems – is enabling firms to take a one-to-many ABM approach.

Green Hat founder and CEO Andrew Haussegger thinks that development puts account-based marketing on the cusp of a boom, but warned businesses not to make the same mistakes that led to wasted martech investments.

“ABM today reminds me of the mainstream introduction of Marketing Automation around 2010. There was a lot of excitement as marketers sought to do more by automating, and especially move away from mass marketing,” he said.

“However, a lot of time and money was wasted as many implementations did not deliver on the promise. The advent of the new generation ABM 2.0 feels the same.

“There’s lots of promise but strategy, planning and considered implementation is critical – especially given the heightened expectations set with the sales leaders and chief experience officers As Australia’s largest B2B agency, we have gone to ABM early, got the ‘scars on our back’ from the trenches and are working with our clients in this important area.”

Find out more about ABM 2.0, and get to grips with ‘revtech’ and ‘dark funnels’ via the 2022 Green Hat/BBN/AMI B2B Outlook Report.