Why Contact-Based Marketing is the Future of ABM

Marketers, can we agree on something? Anonymous traffic is the bane of our existence. Each time someone engages with your content—visiting your pricing page, reading a blog post—you’re left guessing who they are. Even the best ABM tools still target accounts rather than identifying the people within those businesses actively showing purchasing intent. 

Here’s the harsh reality:

• B2B customers expect personalized content to an even greater extent than B2C customers.
• But 35% of B2B marketers say their biggest challenge when using intent data is applying it to actionable outcomes.

This disconnect causes major pain points for ABM teams:

• Missed revenue opportunities from high-intent buyers slipping through the cracks. 
• Wasted ad spend on broad account targeting instead of laser-focused campaigns.
• Low sales adoption of marketing-qualified leads (MQLs). If sales doesn’t know who to talk to, why would they prioritize the lead?

It’s time to flip the script. 

Industry experts agree—but it’s time to think bigger 

Forrester’s 2025 report on intent data providers paints a clear picture of why intent marketing is a crucial design pillar of modern marketing strategies. Their analysis highlights significant wins for organizations leveraging intent data to prioritize accounts and improve campaign efficiency. 

Great start, right? But here’s the thing no one’s talking about yet—intent data at the account level doesn’t go far enough. While Forrester emphasizes targeting the right accounts, we believe the real goldmine lies in going deeper—to the contact level. 

That’s the next big evolution in intent data. And frankly, it’s a game-changer. 

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Breaking the trade-offs of traditional intent marketing 

Legacy ABM tools make marketers trade precision for usability. Sure, they’ll identify target accounts and give vague intent signals, like “someone at Company X visited your website.” But who? And what were they looking at? 

Cue frustration, wasted effort, and sales teams rolling their eyes. 

For example, imagine you run campaigns targeting tech companies about cybersecurity solutions. Your ABM tool tells you that one of those companies ended up on your campaign landing page—but it doesn’t tell you who. 

With contact-based data, you’d instantly know:

1. The specific individual who came to the landing page (e.g., a senior IT manager).
2. Their unique engagement history across channels.
3. Whether they’ve engaged with similar types of content or pricing information. 

Now sales reps know exactly who to call—and what to talk about. 

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Contact-based marketing: the missing piece 

Here’s the revelation that’s flipping ABM on its head: your funnel isn’t about anonymous accounts. It’s about the decision-makers and influencers within those accounts. 

That’s what makes contact-based marketing (CBM) a breakthrough. Instead of focusing on broad account intent signals, contact-based marketing pinpoints the exact people engaging with your content in real-time, even when they don't convert.

How does this solve the traditional tension of intent-based marketing? It clears up the ambiguity. With contact-level data, you can:

• Reveal high-priority leads by identifying the individuals behind key touch points.
• Deliver hyper-targeted ads based on specific contact behaviors.
• Bridge the gap between marketing and sales alignment with actionable, lead-level insights. 

To be clear, not all contact-based marketing providers are created equal. 

Many providers pass off persona-level analysis and buyer group predictions as contact-level recommendations. To quote the Forrester report, “These capabilities rely on mapping device IDs, hashed emails, and other anonymized persistent identifiers to power predictions of the individuals responsible for account-level signals. This does not typically include personally identifiable information (PII), but top performers can provide insight into the likely size of the potential buying group, as well as breakdowns of account-level intent by personas using predicted job level and department.”

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How Vector is redefining intent data 

True contact-based marketing tools deliver opted-in contact-level intent. And the best ones deliver this information for contacts on your site and contacts showing purchase intent through off-site research.

Vector takes this approach. It doesn't just identify accounts or make predictions through data triangulation; it de-anonymizes visitors down to true contact-level insights. This means ABM teams don’t just guess who’s interested—they know, with certainty. 

Here’s why our solution works where others fail:

• On-site de-anonymization: Vector reveals the contacts engaging with your pages, content, and ads.
• Off-site intent: See who is researching relevant topics that show purchase intent on third party sites.
• Hyper-targeting capabilities: Build campaigns that reach the exact right individuals with the exact right messaging at each stage of the buyer’s journey. 
• Seamless integration: Align demand generation and sales outreach by sharing contact data directly into CRM and sales platforms. 

And unlike traditional ABM tools, there’s no trade-off between usability and precision. You get both. 

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What’s in it for marketing teams? 

Still wondering how this impacts B2B marketing teams like yours? Here’s where the business value lies:

• Improved campaign ROI: Design hyper-targeted campaigns that convert faster. 
• Personalized engagement: Deliver the kind of tailored experiences buyers actually expect. 
• Higher sales adoption: Give your sales team real, actionable leads instead of vague account-level data. 

Marketers who thrive in modern demand generation understand the power of precision over prediction. Contact-level data isn’t just a “nice-to-have.” It’s transforming how AMB teams win. 

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The differentiator your team needs 

Contact-based marketing is the next big leap in enterprise demand generation. 

Forrester’s analysis validates the importance of intent data as a foundation for ABM success. But marketers who want to drive higher quality pipeline faster need to go deeper. Contact-level data delivers on the unrealized promise of intent marketing by solving ABM’s greatest challenge—personalized interactions with the real people behind the clicks. 

Our customers already use contact-level insights to drive better marketing outcomes and make smarter sales handoff decisions. We're here to help you do the same.

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