10 Things I learned in one day at the Global ABM Conference

How AI, empathy, and a hot cup of coffee are redefining B2B marketing.

It’s always great to be back at the Global ABM Conference — not just for the content, but for the people. There’s something special about being in a room full of friends, partners, and peers who genuinely love B2B marketing. You can feel the energy, the curiosity, and the shared drive to push our craft forward.

After a full day of keynotes, workshops, and conversations, one thing was clearer than ever:
Account-Based Marketing isn’t a niche tactic anymore – it’s the operating system for modern B2B growth.

Across every discussion, from AI to alignment to buyer groups, the same thread ran through it all: the future belongs to marketers who combine intelligence with empathy.

Here are the 10 lessons that stood out most.

1. ABM is the new operating system for marketing

Robert Norum, ABM and Demand Strategy Expert, Propolis

Robert’s opening keynote reframed ABM as the foundation that holds every modern marketing motion together.

“ABM isn’t a campaign or a channel – it’s the new operating system for marketing organisations.“

He broke it down into four layers of focus:

Account-Based Branding (ABB) for trust and awareness

Buyer Group Marketing (BGM) for complex stakeholder orchestration

Account-Based Engagement (ABE) for pipeline velocity

Account-Based Experience (ABX) for long-term loyalty

AI now fuels each layer, freeing marketers to focus on creativity, strategy, and empathy.
As Robert summed it up:

“AI isn’t replacing marketers; it’s amplifying them.“

2. The rise of contact-level precision

Dmitri Lisitski & Doug Madey (Influ2), Adam Woozeer (Quantexa)

This session hit a nerve: despite years of ABM maturity, 58% of marketers still struggle to drive engagement.
The reason? Too many still stop at the account level.

Forrester’s research revealed:

40% of companies without contact-level ABM expect slower growth

38% face revenue risk

37% see lower conversion rates

Adam Woozeer put it perfectly:

“We can’t stop at the account. We have to connect with the humans inside it.“

It’s clear that contact-level orchestration – where ABM meets empathy – is the new standard.

3. Scaling ABM without losing soul

Elena Shevchenko & Laura Matthews, UiPath

The UiPath team shared one of the most actionable case studies of the day.
Their challenge: scaling ABM from a handful of pilots to hundreds of accounts without diluting personalisation.

Their formula for success:

Personalise at industry or department level, not just job title

Hold joint planning workshops with sales before execution

Focus on engagement depth and pipeline velocity over vanity metrics

Make the voice of the customer central to content creation

The impact:

44% year-over-year growth in engagement

3× higher conversion rate from engagement to opportunity

Their advice was simple:

“Scale isn’t about volume. It’s about rhythm, trust, and focus.“

4. Alignment is a human practice

Paul Gibson (Demandbase), Lucy Waterer (The Access Group), Becks Powell & George Hardy (Riverbed)

Alignment has always been the ABM promise – but this panel turned it into something deeply human.

They talked about friction, humour, and the reality of working together under pressure.
Their golden rule: “No more handoffs, only hand-holding.”

The best teams, they said:

Share KPIs

Check in weekly

Celebrate small wins, not just big numbers

It was a reminder that alignment isn’t a process – it’s a relationship.

5. AI-Powered intelligence: curiosity meets speed

🔍 Dorothea Gosling, Executive Consultant, Inflexion Group

Dorothea’s session bridged strategy and automation.
She showed how AI can transform weeks of research into hours of insight – without killing curiosity.

Her mantra stuck with everyone:

“AI doesn’t replace curiosity – it accelerates it.“

By combining human interpretation with machine learning, teams can spend less time collecting data and more time understanding what it means.

6. The innovation story: hot coffee, not foam art

Veronica Kopec, Senior Marketing Director, ServiceNow

Veronica’s talk was a masterclass in creative restraint.

She opened with a story that had the whole room nodding:

“You order a hot coffee. Twenty minutes later, it arrives overdesigned – covered in foam art and sprinkles. You didn’t want art. You just wanted it hot.”

Her point was brilliant: marketers often over-engineer when simplicity would have landed better.

She shared three examples from her team’s playbook:

Turning a written manifesto into a podcast for time-poor executives

Creating a physical newspaper written from the customer’s future perspective

Hosting small, immersive events instead of big, generic ones

And the best anecdote: a CFO listened to their AI-generated podcast twice in one weekend.

“Innovation isn’t about doing more,” Veronica said. “It’s about doing what matters – beautifully and simply.“

7. The peace talks of sales and marketing

Inspired by the closing leadership dialogue

If you’ve ever tried to align sales and marketing, you’ll know it’s closer to a peace negotiation than a project plan.

The final session used humour and honesty to map out the emotional stages of alignment:

“Something feels off.”
“They don’t get it.”
“It’s not our fault.”
“Okay… maybe we should listen to them.”
“We’ve agreed… kind of.”

It got plenty of laughs because it was painfully true.

Like diplomacy, alignment is about structure, dialogue, and trust.
It takes regular check-ins, shared metrics, and a willingness to talk through tension before it escalates.

The takeaway:

“Alignment isn’t a milestone – it’s a living conversation. The best ABM teams don’t exchange updates. They broker understanding.“

8. When buying groups rule the journey

Marta George (Ping Identity) & Charlotte Graham-Cumming (Ice Blue Sky)

Marta George, Head of ABM at Ping Identity, shared how she turned a one-person ABM initiative into a scalable global success.

Her secret? Combining AI with empathy to master buyer group marketing.

Enterprise deals, she reminded us, aren’t won by personas – they’re shaped by networks of 10 to 14 people with shared but conflicting goals.

Ping Identity’s framework focuses on:

Mapping the entire buying ecosystem

Using AI for insight, not automation

Personalising around shared objectives, not just titles

Her most quotable line:

““We stopped marketing to personas and started co-creating with buying groups.“

It’s a model that shows what happens when strategy, technology, and storytelling truly align.

9. ABM as an experience, not a function

Jon Moger, VP EMEA Marketing, Genesys

Jon made a strong case for treating ABM as a company-wide mindset rather than a department-owned function.

He shared how Genesys united global and regional teams under one playbook that blends data, messaging, and sales collaboration.

“Whether you call it ABM or ABE doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is that you share the same rhythm.”

His formula: one language, one metric, one customer truth.
That’s alignment in practice.

10. Simplicity wins: less noise, more meaning

After a day of frameworks, AI tools, and creative experiments, the biggest insight was surprisingly simple: clarity is the new currency.

Marketers don’t need more channels or tools – they need sharper storytelling, tighter focus, and the courage to keep things human.

As Kasia Borowska reminded us earlier,

“Your customer doesn’t want foam art – they just want the coffee hot.“

It’s not about doing more. It’s about doing what matters most – with empathy, intelligence, and intention.

Final reflection

If I had to summarise the entire conference in one line, it would be this:

AI scales the work. Humans give it meaning.

ABM’s future isn’t just about technology or tactics – it’s about empathy at scale.
Use automation to power relevance, not repetition.
Use creativity to build connection, not noise.

That’s the true promise of ABM: where intelligence meets empathy (and where the coffee’s still hot).