7 ABM campaign examples that fire on a signal, not a calendar

The ABM campaigns that produce meetings start when something happens at the account. A buying window opens when fit, relevance, and a named person’s engagement line up, and it starts closing within days. A campaign scheduled for the third week of the quarter reaches the account on your schedule. A play that fires on the signal reaches the people while the moment is live.

Here are seven ABM campaign examples built that way. Each one names the signal that fires it, who it reaches, what runs, and the number to watch. The standing campaign is still the container; these are the micro plays inside it, which is step three of our ABM playbook(opens in a new tab).

TL;DR

• Write every play as four lines: the signal, the people it reaches, the action across ads and outreach, and the number to watch.
• Fire plays on identified people. A company visiting pricing is timing evidence, and the play starts when the visitor has a name.
• Each play runs ads, outreach, and the sales handoff together, aimed at the same names.
• The standing campaign keeps accounts warm so the play lands on a known name.
• Measure plays with meetings. Pipeline arrives too late to tell you which play worked.

How to read these examples

Every play below follows the same shape. The signal is the thing that happened, and it has to be specific enough to act on. The who is the named people the play reaches, which usually means the person who triggered it plus the rest of the committee. The play is what fires across channels. The number to watch tells you within weeks whether the play is working. The ABM timing window(opens in a new tab) explains why the clock on all of these runs in days.

1. A named contact visits pricing

Signal. An identified person at a target account visits the pricing or integrations page, especially twice in a week.

Who. That person, plus the two or three roles on the committee who haven’t shown up yet.

Play. The visitor joins a retargeting audience with creative about the thing they looked at. The missing roles get the broader “why now” creative. The account owner gets an alert naming the person and the page, with a draft note ready to send. ABM retargeting done at the person level(opens in a new tab) covers the audience mechanics.

Number to watch. Meetings booked within 14 days of the visit.

2. The buying committee starts forming

Signal. Three or more identified people from the same account engage within a fortnight. One visitor is curiosity. Several is a committee.

Who. Everyone engaged, and the roles that are still missing. If three practitioners are researching and no executive has appeared, the executive is the target.

Play. Multithread. Ads to the missing roles with the business case rather than the feature; outreach from a senior seller to the senior missing role; the account moves up a tier so it gets rep time this week. What a buying group is(opens in a new tab) covers which roles usually need to be in the room.

Number to watch. Buying-committee coverage: how many of the required roles are engaged a month later.

3. A champion changes jobs

Signal. A known user or former champion moves into a target account, or into an account that looks like your customers.

Who. The mover, then their new team once they’ve landed.

Play. A first-90-days sequence that treats them as someone who already knows the product: ads that reference the use case rather than the category, outreach that offers to set them up fast, and a hold on the rest of the account until the mover has settled. Everyone sends the “congrats on the new role” email in week one; the useful version arrives in week four with something specific.

Number to watch. Meetings from job-change accounts, compared with the same play run on a random new hire. If the mover wasn’t a heavy user, this play doesn’t outperform.

4. Something changes in the account’s world

Signal. A funding round, a new marketing or revenue leader, hiring for the roles you sell to, or a public incident that maps to your product.

Who. The people whose job just changed because of the event, by name. A new CMO audits everything in their first 90 days; the team hiring for the role you sell to is about to need you.

Play. Relevance messaging that reads the event through your lens: “you’ve added 50% more data engineers this year, which usually means infrastructure complexity is scaling” rather than “I saw you’re hiring.” Ads carry the theme; outreach carries the specific. Timing matters: after an outage, wait for the postmortem rather than reaching out mid-incident.

Number to watch. Reply rate and meetings against the same accounts before the event. Relevance decays over months, so the play has a shelf life.

5. Competitor research

Signal. Identified people at a target account read comparison pages, visit a competitor’s site, or research the category off-site.

Who. The researcher, plus the economic buyer at the account.

Play. Comparison creative to the researcher that names the competitor and the difference, with the vs page as the destination. The economic buyer gets the proof story instead. Sales gets the alert with the competitor named, so the first call doesn’t start with discovery.

Number to watch. Pricing-page visits and demo requests from the researched accounts within two weeks.

6. Closed-lost, 90 days on

Signal. An opportunity closed lost a quarter ago, and someone from the account is back on the site or engaging with ads.

Who. The original committee, minus anyone who’s left, plus whoever is new.

Play. A what-changed sequence: the thing they objected to and what’s different now, delivered to the people who raised it. Ads go only to the identified returners; this is the wrong play for a cold account list. The rep who worked the deal gets first right of refusal.

Number to watch. Reopened opportunities from closed-lost accounts, and time from the return visit to the reopen.

7. Event and webinar attendance

Signal. Named people from target accounts register for or attend your event, your webinar, or a conference you’re at.

Who. The attendees and the colleagues they report to.

Play. Surround sound for two weeks: the attendees see follow-up creative on LinkedIn, Google, and Meta, their colleagues see the air cover, and the rep follows up with the session they attended rather than a generic thanks. When we ran this ourselves, the surround-sound play turned $15K into 41% more pipeline(opens in a new tab).

Number to watch. Meetings per attending account in the 30 days after the event.

Running seven plays without seven calendars

None of these work as one-off campaigns. They work as standing rules: when the signal fires on an identified person, the audience updates, the outreach drafts, and the rep gets a handoff with the evidence. Three things make that run.

Write the rules down. Signal, who, play, number, for each. A play that lives in someone’s head fires when they remember it.

Keep the handoff simple. The playbook’s answer is a weekly list of the top 15 contacts per rep, with the reason each one is on it and the context loaded somewhere the rep can use it. Nobody opens another dashboard.

Keep the air cover on. The broad campaign is what makes the triggered play land on a name that already recognises you. ABM strategy that drives pipeline(opens in a new tab) covers how the two fit together, and how we built our own program around signals(opens in a new tab) shows what it looks like in practice.

How Vector runs these plays

Vector lands every signal on one timeline per account with the named person attached wherever a real one has been identified. Audiences are built from those people and rebuild themselves as the signals change, so the pricing-page visitor is in the retargeting audience the same day and out of it when they go quiet. Audiences sync to the LinkedIn, Google, and Meta accounts you already run, and the sales handoff carries the evidence behind it.

When a play produces a deal, the account’s story shows the touches on the way there, by contact and by date, so you can see which plays did the work. If your ABM campaigns still fire on a calendar, see how Vector handles ABM(opens in a new tab).

Book a demo →(opens in a new tab)

Frequently asked questions

What is an example of an ABM campaign?

A retargeting play that fires when an identified person at a target account visits your pricing page: that person joins an audience with creative about what they looked at, the rest of the committee sees the broader message, and the account owner gets an alert naming the visitor. The number to watch is meetings within two weeks.

What makes an ABM campaign signal-based?

It starts when something happens at the account, such as a named contact visiting pricing, a champion changing jobs, or a funding round, rather than on a date in the marketing calendar. The play then runs ads, outreach, and the sales handoff together, aimed at the same named people.

How many ABM campaigns should you run at once?

As many standing plays as you can write down as signal, who, action, and number. Seven is a workable set for most programs. They run as rules inside one broad campaign rather than as seven separate calendars.

How do you measure an ABM campaign?

By meetings with named contacts at the accounts the play touched, within a few weeks of the signal. Pipeline arrives too late to tell you which play worked, and account-level engagement does not tell you whether the play reached the committee.

Do signal-based plays replace always-on ABM campaigns?

No. The broad campaign keeps accounts warm so a triggered play lands on someone who already recognises you. Plays without that air cover read as cold outreach with better timing.