I want to share something that came up in one of our LinkedIn Lives last week, because I think it's one of those conversations that a lot of teams need to have but rarely do.

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Our Portfolio CMO Simon Prince and Growth Manager Ronan O'Duffy hosted a session on the five conversations that need to happen before you launch an ABM (account-based marketing) campaign. And I think what made it so useful was how honest they were about where things tend to go wrong.

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Because most teams don't fail at ABM because they chose the wrong channels or wrote bad copy. They fail because they skipped the groundwork. They launched before they'd really stress-tested the plan.

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Here's what Simon and Ronan covered.

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1. Do you actually know the maths?

This sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised how often teams skip it or get it wrong.

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Simon's approach is to start with the revenue you need to hit and work backwards. Factor in your average contract value, calculate how many deals that means you need to close, then build up through your win rates to understand the pipeline required. From there, you can pressure-test whether your budget and team can actually deliver it.

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But the bit that really resonated with me was Ronan's point about channel benchmarks. If your team hasn't run cold email campaigns for a while, there's a real risk of building your whole plan on numbers that are wildly optimistic. The reality tends to look more like:

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• Cold email reply rates sit around 3–4%
• Of those replies, roughly half will be genuinely interested (and that's with solid targeting)
• LinkedIn connection rates top out at around 40%, with reply rates around 30%

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And there's a question worth asking before you even get to channel benchmarks: is cold email the right approach at all? If you're targeting 100 very specific accounts, the volume just isn't there to make it work. The maths will tell you that, if you look at it honestly.

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The numbers also shape how creative you need to be. A big addressable market gives you room to focus on one channel. A small, specific list means you'll need to layer channels and think more inventively about how to get in front of people.

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2. Are sales and marketing genuinely aligned?

This one comes up a lot in my conversations with clients, and I think it's one of the most underestimated challenges in B2B marketing.

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Agreeing on a revenue target is not the same as being aligned. Simon made that point clearly. Real alignment means having honest conversations about:

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• Which accounts you're actually going after, and whether they sit within what your team can realistically pursue given your budget, headcount, and sales cycle
• What each channel can deliver, and whether the people running it have the skills to do it well
• What the full go-to-market motion looks like, so marketing isn't generating activity that bears no resemblance to what's historically closed deals for sales

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Ronan also raised something I think gets overlooked far too often: the buying committee. In most ABM campaigns, you're not trying to win over one person. You need to understand who else is in the room, what they care about, and where they go to get information. That knowledge has to be shared between sales and marketing, not sit in one team's head.

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And the feedback loop matters just as much as the initial alignment. If deals are closing and marketing doesn't know why, that's a problem. Keep that communication tight.

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3. What's your front-end offer?

This was the part of the session I found most energising, because it's something I genuinely believe makes or breaks outbound campaigns.

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When you're running ABM, you're reaching out to people who have never heard of you. They have no reason to give you their time. So the real question isn't 'how do we get a meeting?' It's: what are we offering that's genuinely worth 20 minutes of someone's day?

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Ronan's framing was really clear: think of it as a painkiller offer. Something that solves a real problem for your prospect, that they'd normally pay for, offered for free in exchange for a conversation. Not a brochure. Not a demo. Something they actually want.

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A few examples of what that can look like in practice:

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• A pre-built target account list for someone who's trying to scale their outbound
• 20 bespoke ad creatives for a prospect who's actively looking for that kind of support
• A market feedback session or an expert introduction for enterprise SaaS, where you can't just give away part of the product

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The test Ronan uses is simple: would someone normally pay for this? If yes, you've probably got a lead magnet worth building. If it feels generic or easily replicated, it won't move the needle.

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And the mindset shift that matters most here: you're not trying to close anything at this stage. You're trying to open a conversation. That's it.

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4. Where does AI actually fit in?

I'll be honest, this is the question I get asked most often at the moment. And I think Simon and Ronan gave a really grounded answer.

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The short version is: automate the operations, not the relationship.

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• Good uses for AI: research, data enrichment, intent signal tracking, sequencing triggers. These are the things that take time but don't require human judgement
• Where to be careful: anything that requires genuine connection or creative thinking. The high-value activities that actually move deals forward still need a person behind them

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The example Ronan gave stuck with me. Using AI to find relevant posts for you to comment on is a brilliant use of the technology. Using AI to write those comments for you is something most people can spot a mile off. And it doesn't build any real relationship.

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Simon flagged something I've seen play out with clients too. Bringing AI in too early, before the basics are working, can actually slow a team down. The hallucinations, the overly complex workflows, the gap between expectation and reality. Get the fundamentals right first, then look at what can be automated.

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Their rule of thumb: the offer does the heavy lifting. Personalisation is the cherry on top, not the main event.

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5. How are you going to stand out?

Everyone has access to the same tools now. So the real question isn't which channels you're using. It's how you're using them differently to everyone else.

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Your typical lean-budget ABM channel mix will include some combination of:

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• Cold email
• LinkedIn content
• LinkedIn connection outreach
• Thought leadership ads
• Cold calling, where you have the resource for it

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But both Simon and Ronan made a compelling case for going old school with the creative layer. Direct mail. Personalised gifts. Real-life events. Things that feel genuinely human at a time when most outreach has been automated into oblivion. People aren't receiving that kind of thing anymore, which is exactly why it stands out.

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The example from the session that really stayed with me: there's someone out there creating a full 15-minute personalised film for each prospect. High production value. Comedy. A pitch at the end. It's completely unexpected, and every time one lands, the prospect tags half their network. Extreme, yes. But the underlying idea, that creativity cuts through where automation can't, applies at any scale and any budget.

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As Simon put it, the channel is just the distribution. What actually cuts through is the idea, the format, and the willingness to do something a little different.

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A quick recap

Before you launch an ABM campaign, make sure you've had these five conversations:

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• Get the maths right: revenue target, pipeline requirements, and realistic benchmarks for each channel
• Align sales and marketing properly: on accounts, skills, cadences, and who's in the buying committee
• Build a front-end offer: something genuinely valuable that earns that first conversation
• Work out where AI fits: automate the operations, protect the human touch
• Plan for creativity: how are you going to stand out when everyone's using the same tools?

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If you missed the live session, we'll be sharing the recording soon. And if any of this has sparked a question about your own ABM approach, just hit reply. We're always happy to have a think with you.