Day two of the B2B Marketing Exchange East event was all the nitty-gritty of account-based marketing (ABM), with experts and practitioners breaking down strategies to make ABM not just a buzzword, but a reality. From detailed discussions on aligning sales and marketing to exploring the power of personalization at scale, attendees dove deep into the mechanics of what makes ABM tick. It was a day when the whiteboards came out and frameworks were dissected — leaving everyone with actionable takeaways for creating more targeted and meaningful connections with key accounts.
But the day didn’t stop there. As conversations shifted toward buyer behaviors, the focus broadened to understand what drives decision-making. Whether exploring the subtle art of behavioral triggers or unlocking the secrets of intent data, the message was clear: Knowing who you’re targeting is just as important as knowing why they behave the way they do.
If you weren’t on-site in Alpharetta, here are two major points of discussion you missed:
Understanding The Top Reasons ABM Fails
Mason Cosby, Founder of Scrappy ABM, kicked off day two with his keynote, “Stop Scaling ABM — Start Stacking Signals,” by discussing the common reasons why ABM initiatives fail. Cosby identified three key challenges: Lack of data resources, misalignment between sales and marketing and a general lack of cross-functional collaboration and accountability.
Expanding on the misalignment discussion was Nadia Davis, Sr. Director, Revenue Marketing and MarOps at PayIt, who shared how misalignment impacts ABM’s success. In her keynote, “Mastering Revenue-Driven ABM: Strategies For Success,” she noted that data is a major thorn in alignment’s side, as it’s often siloed across different tools and platforms. Davis highlighted the importance of having a consolidated tech stack that can integrate data from various sources, such as Salesforce, LinkedIn and other marketing platforms, which is “crucial” for attributing success and providing a clear path to revenue.
On the topic of martech stacks, Cosby drilled into CRMs, in particular, which capture contact information and allow marketers to track contact engagement on website pages — but there are a lot of signals that get missed by that technology. He then pointed to himself as an example of missed signals, noting that he has “the least trackable marketing program of all time,” because he often opts to post on LinkedIn, go on podcasts and speak at events.
“There are a lot of signals captured through those programs,” Cosby explained. “It could be someone who engages with my LinkedIn content every single day that’s a right-fit customer, or it could be someone who scanned my QR code at a speaking engagement. And through those QR codes and engagement data, we can track who’s engaging. None of those are necessarily tracked in your CRM, but they are viable signals.”
Tapping Into Empathy & Neuroscience To Engage With B2B Buyers
Shifting over to buyer behaviors and human-centricity, Daniel Englebretson, Managing Partner at ShiftHX, emphasized the importance of adopting a human-centric approach when integrating AI into marketing and business operations in his session, “Orchestrating Human-Centric B2B Marketing: A Practical Blueprint For AI-Powered Team Success.” In his presentation, Englebretson highlighted three key pillars for effective human-centric marketing: Authenticity, relevance and meaningfulness. He noted that the goal is to ensure AI-powered content, decisions and interactions align with the company’s values and resonate with the target audience.
In a complementary keynote, Shirin Oreizy, Founder and CEO of Next Step, focused on the role of behavioral science and explored how an understanding of human psychology and irrationality can be leveraged to improve marketing and decision-making. She started her session, “Behavioral Science: The Human Insights Missing In B2B Marketing,” by highlighting the gap between people’s rational intentions and their actual behaviors.
“We’re not perfectly rational, and that’s a challenge we see in marketing our products and solutions,” said Oreizy. “When we don’t know what to do, we tend to fall back and give people more information and choices than expected. For example, if I gave you several handbooks about the efficacy of exercise, that’s not necessarily going to be enough to get you out of bed or stop you from bingeing Netflix. The good news is if you can find a way to understand all the ways that people are predictably irrational and document that through research, you can actually take advantage of that and lovingly nudge your users toward the behaviors that are in their best interests.”
At its core, Oreizy’s message focused on accounting for the emotional, environmental and social factors that influence human behavior, rather than relying solely on providing more information or choices. She emphasized that decision-making processes are shaped by deep-seated biases and heuristics that have evolved over thousands of years, often leading us to make predictably irrational choices.
To help eliminate some of those biases, Rob Volpe, an “empathy activist” and CEO of market research firm Ignite 360, focused on the power of empathy and building human-to-human connections in his session, “The Missing Link In Marketing: How Empathy Influences Buyer Behavior.”
Volpe emphasized the distinction between emotional empathy (feeling the feelings of others) and cognitive empathy (understanding others’ perspectives). For marketers, he said, cognitive empathy is the more relevant and applicable form, as it allows them to truly comprehend the mindset and motivations of their target buyers.
That’s a wrap on our day two coverage from B2BMX East! Check out the day one Campfire Keynote recap, and stay tuned for the day three recap coming tomorrow. To hear these insights in person, register now for the 2025 B2B Marketing Exchange West, which will take place in sunny Scottsdale in late February.