The Account-Based Marketing Newsletter Playbook
Get practical tips to create an account-based marketing newsletter that builds relationships and drives results with your most valuable target accounts.
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Bruce is a creative explorer, blending art, entrepreneurship, and technology to create projects that inspire and involve people in surprising ways. A co-founder of Letterhead and Head of Marketing.
One of the biggest challenges in any ABM program is knowing which accounts are actually ready for a sales conversation. You can spend months targeting a company with no way of knowing if your message is resonating. This is where your newsletter becomes more than just a communication tool—it becomes an intelligence-gathering engine. Every open, click, and reply is a signal of engagement and intent. A well-tracked account-based marketing newsletter gives you a direct view into which companies are showing interest and what topics they care about most, allowing your sales team to prioritize their outreach with precision and context.
Key Takeaways
- Personalize Your Outreach at Scale: Your ABM newsletter succeeds when it feels like a one-on-one conversation. Use segmentation and dynamic content to deliver insights tailored to each account's specific industry, challenges, and the roles of key decision-makers.
- Unify Your Teams and Technology: An ABM newsletter isn't a solo marketing effort. Create a seamless workflow by aligning your sales and marketing teams on shared goals and integrating your newsletter platform with your CRM for a constant flow of data and insights.
- Focus on Account-Level Engagement: Success in ABM is measured by influence, not just clicks. Track how entire accounts interact with your content over time to identify buying signals and connect your newsletter efforts directly to pipeline growth and revenue.
What is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?
Think of traditional marketing as casting a wide net to catch as many fish as possible. Account-based marketing, or ABM, flips that idea on its head. Instead of broadcasting your message to a massive audience, you hand-pick a list of high-value companies—your "dream accounts"—and create marketing campaigns specifically for them. It’s a focused, strategic approach where your sales and marketing teams work together from the start to go after the accounts that matter most to your business.
This shift from a one-to-many to a one-to-few (or even one-to-one) model allows for incredibly personalized and relevant communication. You're no longer just generating leads; you're building relationships with key decision-makers inside the companies you want to work with. By treating each target account as its own market, you can tailor your messaging, content, and outreach to address their specific pain points and goals. This makes your marketing feel less like an advertisement and more like a helpful conversation.
Moving from mass marketing to targeted accounts
The core idea behind ABM is a move from volume to value. Instead of chasing thousands of individual leads, you concentrate your efforts on a select group of companies that are the best fit for your product or service. This is a fundamental change in mindset. You’re not just looking for anyone who might be interested; you’re identifying the specific organizations you want as customers and then figuring out the best way to engage them. This targeted approach means every piece of content and every interaction is designed with a particular account in mind, making your outreach far more effective.
Why ABM is a game-changer for B2B
For B2B companies, ABM is particularly powerful because it aligns sales and marketing teams around a common goal: winning specific, high-value accounts. When both teams collaborate on strategy and execution, communication improves, and resources are used more efficiently. This synergy leads to a much higher return on investment compared to broader marketing tactics. In fact, many ABM leaders report that their programs generate more revenue than older marketing methods. By focusing on the accounts with the highest growth potential, you can shorten sales cycles and build stronger, more profitable customer relationships from the very beginning.
How Newsletters Power Your ABM Strategy
Account-based marketing is all about focus. Instead of casting a wide net, you’re concentrating your efforts on a select group of high-value accounts. But how do you build meaningful relationships with those key accounts without an introduction? This is where a strategic newsletter program comes in. It’s the perfect vehicle for delivering the targeted, valuable content that an effective ABM strategy is built on. A newsletter allows you to nurture entire buying committees at once, keeping your brand top-of-mind with multiple stakeholders.
By combining the precision of ABM with the personal, direct nature of a newsletter, you can create highly tailored campaigns that speak directly to your target accounts. Think of your newsletter not as a mass broadcast, but as a curated briefing designed specifically for the people you want to reach. It’s your chance to consistently show up in their inbox with relevant insights, proving your value long before you ever ask for a meeting. This approach transforms your outreach from a cold pitch into a welcome conversation, helping you build the trust needed to turn target accounts into lasting partners. It's a long-term play that positions you as a helpful expert, not just another vendor.
Reach decision-makers directly in their inbox
One of the biggest challenges in ABM is simply getting the attention of the right people. Decision-makers are busy, and their calendars are guarded. A well-crafted newsletter cuts through the noise and lands your message in a space they check every day: their email inbox. Unlike a social media post that can be easily missed, an email sits there, waiting to be read. This gives you a direct and reliable line of communication to the key players within your target accounts.
When you deliver valuable, non-promotional content consistently, your newsletter becomes a welcome arrival rather than an interruption. You’re not just sending another marketing email; you’re delivering industry intelligence and helpful advice. This helps you build a relationship with subscribers and establish your brand as a credible, authoritative voice in your field, making it far more likely that your message will be heard when it’s time to talk business.
Personalize your outreach at scale
Personalization is the heart of ABM, but personalizing outreach for dozens or hundreds of accounts can feel daunting. Newsletters provide the framework to do this effectively and at scale. With the right strategy and tools, you can move beyond simple mail-merge fields and deliver content that is genuinely relevant to each account. You can use dynamic content blocks to swap in specific case studies, industry statistics, or articles based on an account’s vertical or known pain points.
This level of customization makes your audience feel seen and understood. An integrated email and ABM strategy allows you to establish personalized connections with your target accounts and deliver content that truly resonates. Instead of sending a generic update, you’re providing a solution-oriented resource that speaks to their unique challenges. This nurtures the relationship throughout the buyer’s journey, making every touchpoint feel like a thoughtful, one-on-one interaction.
Track engagement with precision
An ABM newsletter strategy isn’t just about sending great content—it’s about learning from it. Every time you send a newsletter, you get a wealth of data back that can inform and refine your entire ABM program. You can see which accounts are opening your emails, which links they’re clicking, and what topics are capturing their attention. This isn't just vanity metrics; it's valuable intelligence.
By tracking engagement at the account level, you can identify which companies are showing the most interest and are ready for a sales conversation. These insights allow you to continuously refine and optimize your strategy, ensuring you’re always delivering the most impactful content. This data-driven feedback loop helps you focus your resources where they matter most, turning your newsletter into a powerful tool for identifying and accelerating opportunities within your target accounts.
Key Ingredients for a Winning ABM Newsletter
An effective ABM newsletter isn’t just another email blast—it’s a strategic tool designed to build relationships with high-value accounts. Think of it as a personalized briefing, tailored specifically for the key players you want to reach. To make it work, you need to combine sharp strategy with thoughtful execution. It’s about delivering the right message to the right person in a format that’s both engaging and easy to digest. When you get these core components right, your newsletter becomes a powerful engine for driving conversations and closing deals. Let’s walk through the essential ingredients that turn a standard newsletter into an ABM powerhouse.
A content strategy built for individuals
With ABM, the days of one-size-fits-all content are over. Your newsletter needs to feel like it was written specifically for the person reading it. This means moving beyond just using a contact’s first name and company. Your goal is to craft personalized email campaigns that truly resonate with each individual in your target accounts. Think about their specific role, their likely challenges, and what solutions they’re looking for. When your content speaks directly to their world, you stop being just another email in their inbox and start becoming a trusted resource. This approach shows you understand their needs and are invested in their success.
Relevant, industry-specific insights
To truly capture an account’s attention, you need to prove you understand their industry. Generic advice won’t cut it. Instead, focus on providing insights that are directly applicable to their market. This requires a deep understanding of their pain points, challenges, and goals. Use your newsletter to share relevant case studies, data points from their industry, or commentary on trends affecting their business. When you tailor your content to address their specific needs, you demonstrate expertise and build credibility. This is how you provide real value and make your newsletter a must-read for key decision-makers.
Clear CTAs and value propositions
Every ABM newsletter you send should have a clear purpose. What do you want the reader to do next? Whether it’s booking a demo, downloading a whitepaper, or reading a new case study, your call-to-action (CTA) needs to be obvious and compelling. This is a core part of designing customer experiences for the high-value accounts you’ve identified. Frame your CTA around a strong value proposition that answers the reader’s question: "What's in it for me?" Make it clear how taking the next step will help them solve a problem or achieve a goal. A direct and valuable CTA is essential for moving accounts through the sales funnel.
Clean design and strong visuals
The design of your newsletter has a huge impact on whether your message gets read or ignored. For busy executives, less is more. Aim for a minimalist aesthetic that puts the focus squarely on your content. Use plenty of white space to make the text easy to scan and incorporate engaging visuals like charts, custom graphics, or high-quality images to break up text and illustrate key points. Following newsletter design best practices ensures your email looks professional and is easy to read. A clean, visually appealing layout respects your reader’s time and makes your content more impactful.
Flawless mobile experience
Most of your recipients will open your newsletter on their phones, so a mobile-first design is non-negotiable. If your email is difficult to read or interact with on a small screen, it will likely be deleted in seconds. To create a great mobile experience, use a single-column layout, large fonts, and buttons that are easy to tap. Whitespace is your friend here, as it prevents the design from feeling cramped. By designing an email with skimmable content and strong visuals, you make it easy for your audience to get the key takeaways, even when they’re on the go.
How to Create Content That Converts
In account-based marketing, your newsletter isn't just another email blast—it's a strategic conversation with your most important prospects. Generic content simply won't work. The goal is to create and deliver messages so relevant and tailored that they feel like they were written just for the person reading them. This isn't about tricking anyone; it's about showing your target accounts that you understand their unique challenges and are equipped to help them succeed. When you shift your focus from a wide net to a sharp spear, every piece of content you create has the potential to build trust, demonstrate expertise, and guide high-value accounts closer to a partnership.
This means moving beyond surface-level personalization. It requires a deep dive into the specific needs, goals, and industry context of each target account. The content you share should act as a solution, a piece of advice, or a critical insight they can't easily find elsewhere. By consistently providing this level of value, your newsletter becomes a welcome arrival in their inbox, not just another piece of marketing noise. It positions your brand as a thoughtful partner invested in their success long before any sale is made. This approach transforms your newsletter from a simple communication tool into a powerful engine for building high-value relationships and driving revenue.
Plan content that delivers real value
Before you write a single word, you need a deep understanding of the accounts you're targeting. What are their biggest business challenges? What industry trends are impacting their work? Your content should directly address these points. With an integrated email and ABM strategy, you can establish personalized connections and deliver highly relevant content that nurtures relationships throughout the buyer’s journey. Think less about what you want to sell and more about what they need to know. Offer them exclusive industry reports, case studies from similar companies, or a personalized invitation to a webinar that tackles their specific pain points. This value-first approach builds credibility and makes your brand an indispensable resource.
Use dynamic content for a personal touch
Personalization in ABM goes way beyond using a contact's first name. This is where dynamic content becomes your best friend. It allows you to tailor specific sections of your newsletter—like images, headlines, or calls-to-action—based on the recipient's industry, job title, or company. For example, a tech company might see a case study about a SaaS client, while a manufacturing firm sees one relevant to their supply chain. By combining the precision of ABM with the reach of email, you can create highly personalized campaigns that speak directly to your target accounts. This level of detail shows you’ve done your research and are genuinely invested in their success.
Build effective personalization templates
Creating unique content for every single contact isn't scalable, but you can still achieve deep personalization with smart templates. The key is to design a flexible newsletter structure with designated blocks for customized content. You can create marketing assets and design customer experiences to target specific accounts you’ve identified as high-value. For instance, your template could have a standard section for company news but a customizable block where you insert a paragraph referencing a target account’s recent milestone or a relevant industry article. This approach allows you to maintain brand consistency and efficiency while still making each send feel personal and timely.
Test and optimize your approach
Your ABM newsletter strategy should be a living, breathing thing. What resonates with one account might not work for another, so it's crucial to constantly test and refine your methods. Use A/B testing to experiment with different subject lines, content formats, and calls-to-action to see what drives the most engagement. More importantly, analyze your performance at the account level. Are the key decision-makers opening your emails? Are they clicking through? Use the insights from your email performance data to continuously refine your strategy, ensuring you’re delivering the most impactful content. This data-driven feedback loop is what turns a good ABM program into a great one.
Segmenting Your Audience for Maximum Impact
An account-based marketing strategy is only as good as its targeting. Sending the same generic newsletter to every contact on your list won’t get you the results you’re looking for. The magic of ABM happens when you treat your target accounts as a market of one. Segmentation is how you make that happen, allowing you to deliver hyper-relevant content that speaks directly to the needs of different groups within your target accounts. By breaking down your audience into smaller, more specific groups, you can create personalized newsletter experiences that resonate and drive action.
Target by company size and industry
Not all companies are built the same, and your content shouldn't assume they are. A startup in the fintech space has vastly different challenges than a Fortune 500 healthcare corporation. Start by grouping your target accounts by firmographics like company size, revenue, and industry. This allows you to create distinct newsletter streams with content tailored to their specific world. For example, you can design customer experiences with case studies from their industry or address common pain points for businesses of their scale. This shows you understand their unique context and aren't just sending another mass email.
Segment by buying stage and intent signals
Understanding where an account is in their journey is critical. Are they in the early awareness stage, just learning about potential solutions, or are they showing strong signals that they’re ready to make a purchase? Use intent data to identify accounts actively researching topics related to your product. You can then segment your newsletter list to send top-of-funnel educational content to those just starting their search and more product-focused, bottom-of-funnel content to those showing high intent. This ensures you’re meeting them exactly where they are with information that’s immediately useful.
Focus on specific decision-maker roles
Within any target account, you’ll find multiple stakeholders involved in the buying decision, and each one has different priorities. The CFO is focused on ROI, the Head of IT is concerned with integration and security, and the Marketing Director wants to see how your solution drives growth. Segmenting your contacts by their job title or role allows you to craft personalized campaigns that speak their language. Send the CFO a newsletter highlighting financial benefits and case studies, while the Marketing Director receives content focused on campaign performance and strategy. This role-based personalization makes your outreach far more compelling.
Prioritize your most important accounts
While every account on your target list is important, some have the potential for a much higher impact on your business. It’s smart to tier your accounts and dedicate your resources accordingly. You might create a top tier for your highest-value prospects, who receive a completely bespoke newsletter experience. A second tier could receive a semi-personalized version, while a third tier gets a version with lighter customization. This tiered approach helps you focus your most intensive efforts where they’ll generate the greatest return, ensuring you’re tailoring your marketing efforts to the accounts that matter most.
Keep your contact data clean
Your segmentation strategy is completely dependent on the quality of your data. Inaccurate or outdated information can lead to sending the wrong message to the right person—or the right message to the wrong person. Regularly audit and clean your contact lists to remove duplicates, update job titles, and verify email addresses. Use the insights from your newsletter performance to continuously refine your strategy, noting which segments are most engaged. Clean data is the foundation of effective personalization, ensuring your carefully crafted messages actually reach and resonate with your target accounts.
Best Practices for Design and Delivery
Your ABM newsletter content can be perfectly tailored to an account, but if the email itself is a mess, your message will get lost. The design and delivery of your newsletter are just as critical as the words inside it. A clunky, hard-to-read email that shows up at 3 a.m. isn't going to build the relationship you’re aiming for. Instead, you want to deliver a clean, professional, and seamless experience that makes it easy for busy decision-makers to engage with your content.
Think of your newsletter's design as the packaging for your valuable insights. It should be professional, on-brand, and easy to open on any device. Likewise, your delivery strategy ensures that this carefully crafted package arrives at the perfect moment to be seen. By focusing on a few key best practices for layout, branding, mobile experience, and timing, you can make sure your hard work pays off and your newsletter makes the right impression every single time. This isn't about flashy design trends; it's about clarity, consistency, and respect for your reader's time and attention.
Create a clear layout and visual hierarchy
When it comes to newsletter design, less is more. Your goal is to guide your reader’s attention to the most important information, not overwhelm them with visual clutter. Focus on a minimalist email newsletter design layout that uses whitespace, clear headings, and a logical flow. A strong visual hierarchy tells the reader what to look at first, second, and third. Use bold headlines for key sections, keep paragraphs short, and use bullet points to break up text. This makes your content scannable, which is essential for busy executives who are likely skimming their inbox. Don’t force them to hunt for the value; make it obvious from the moment they open the email.
Maintain consistent branding
Your ABM newsletter is a direct touchpoint with a high-value account, and it needs to feel like it comes from you. Consistent branding builds trust and recognition. Your newsletter should reflect your brand’s identity and values, using the same logos, color palette, and typography that appear on your website and other marketing materials. This creates a cohesive experience and reinforces your brand every time you hit send. When a recipient can instantly recognize your content in a crowded inbox, you’ve already won half the battle. A strong brand identity ensures your newsletter looks professional and reinforces the credibility of your message.
Ensure your design is mobile-friendly
Most emails are opened on a mobile device, so a mobile-first design isn't just a nice-to-have—it's a necessity. If your newsletter requires pinching and zooming to read on a phone, it’s going to be deleted. A clean design that avoids clutter and excessive elements is crucial, especially for mobile users. Use a single-column layout, large fonts, and buttons with plenty of space around them for easy tapping. Before you send anything, test it on multiple devices to ensure everything renders correctly. A seamless mobile email experience shows that you respect your reader’s context and have designed the experience with them in mind.
Find the right send time and frequency
There is no single "best" time to send an email. The right send time and frequency depend entirely on your target accounts and the habits of the decision-makers you’re trying to reach. The key is to test, measure, and adapt. Start with an educated guess—for example, mid-morning during the work week—and then pay close attention to your analytics. Use the insights from your email performance data to continuously refine your strategy. Look for patterns in open and click-through rates for different segments. An A/B test can help you optimize your send times and find the sweet spot that gets your newsletter seen by the right people at the right moment.
The Right Tech for Your ABM Newsletters
Your ABM newsletter strategy is only as strong as the technology that supports it. Juggling disconnected tools creates friction, slows you down, and makes it nearly impossible to personalize and measure your efforts effectively. The right tech stack works in harmony, creating a seamless flow of data from your CRM to your newsletter platform and back again. This integration is what allows you to move from theory to execution, turning your account lists into highly engaged audiences. When your tools communicate properly, you can automate tedious tasks and focus on what really matters: creating valuable content that resonates with your target accounts.
Integrate with marketing automation
Think of your marketing automation platform as the engine of your ABM newsletter program. It’s what takes your carefully crafted content and segmented lists and handles the delivery at scale. By connecting your newsletter tool with your marketing automation software, you can trigger sends based on specific actions, nurture leads within target accounts, and ensure a consistent experience across all your channels. This combination allows you to apply the precision of ABM to the broad reach of email, creating personalized campaigns that speak directly to the challenges and goals of each account.
Sync seamlessly with your CRM
Your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is the single source of truth for all your account data. It holds the rich details you need for deep personalization—from company size and industry to the specific roles of your contacts and their history with your brand. A seamless sync between your newsletter platform and your CRM is non-negotiable. This connection allows you to pull real-time data to populate dynamic content fields, segment your audience with precision, and push engagement data back to the account record. This gives your sales team valuable context for their conversations and makes your ABM tactics much more effective.
Use analytics to track what works
You can’t refine your strategy without clear data on what’s working and what isn’t. Generic email metrics like overall open rates are a start, but for ABM, you need to go deeper. The right technology provides account-level analytics, showing you how specific companies are engaging with your content. Are the decision-makers at your top-tier accounts clicking through? Which topics are resonating most with a particular industry? Using these insights to continuously optimize your approach is key. This data-driven feedback loop helps you double down on successful content and adjust your messaging for maximum impact.
How Letterhead supports your ABM strategy
A dedicated newsletter platform like Letterhead brings all these critical functions together, acting as the command center for your ABM communications. Instead of wrestling with generic email tools, Letterhead is built to handle the business side of newsletters, streamlining everything from planning and building to delivery and monetization. It integrates with your existing tech stack, ensuring your CRM and marketing automation tools are always in sync. With powerful, built-in analytics, you can track performance at the account level and gain the insights you need to prove ROI. This unified approach removes the complexity, so your team can scale your ABM newsletter program without friction.
How to Measure Your Newsletter's Success
Measuring the success of your ABM newsletter isn't the same as tracking a standard marketing email. While open and click rates are still part of the picture, they don't tell the whole story. In an account-based strategy, you’re playing a long game focused on building relationships with high-value accounts. Success is less about individual clicks and more about overall account engagement and influence. Are you reaching the right people within your target companies? Is your content resonating enough to be shared internally? Are your newsletters helping to warm up accounts for your sales team?
To answer these questions, you need to shift your perspective from individual-level metrics to account-level insights. It’s about connecting the dots between the content you send and the actions your target accounts take. This means looking at how engagement trends over time and, most importantly, how it impacts your pipeline and revenue. By using the data from your email performance, you can continuously refine your ABM strategy to ensure you’re delivering relevant and impactful content. This data-driven approach helps you prove the value of your newsletter program and make smarter decisions about where to invest your time and resources.
Track key engagement metrics
While traditional metrics like open and click-through rates provide a baseline, you need to look deeper. Pay attention to metrics that signal high intent, such as reply rates, content downloads, and webinar registrations that come from your newsletter CTAs. These actions show that your content is not just being seen but is actively compelling your target audience to engage. Also, track unsubscribe rates within your target accounts. A low unsubscribe rate suggests your content is valuable and relevant. Use these engagement signals to understand what’s working and what isn’t, allowing you to fine-tune your content strategy for specific segments and accounts.
Analyze performance at the account level
This is where the magic of ABM analytics happens. Instead of just looking at individual subscriber activity, you need to roll up those metrics to the account level. Is there a spike in engagement from multiple contacts at one of your target companies? That’s a powerful buying signal. An effective account-based marketing approach involves designing experiences for specific, high-value accounts. Your analytics should reflect this by showing you which companies are most engaged. This view helps you identify accounts that are warming up, allowing your sales team to prioritize their outreach and tailor their conversations based on the topics that have captured the account’s interest.
Connect your newsletter efforts to revenue
Ultimately, the goal of your ABM newsletter is to contribute to the bottom line. To measure this, you need to connect your newsletter platform with your CRM. This integration allows you to track how newsletter engagement influences pipeline velocity, deal size, and win rates. Are engaged accounts moving through the sales cycle faster? Are they closing at a higher rate? By creating highly personalized campaigns that speak directly to your target accounts, you can significantly improve engagement and drive conversions. Attributing revenue to your newsletter efforts proves its ROI and secures its place as a critical component of your marketing mix.
Develop a smart A/B testing strategy
Optimization is key to long-term success. In ABM, A/B testing isn't about finding a single message that works for everyone; it's about discovering what resonates with specific segments of your target accounts. Since you’re working with a smaller, more defined audience, your tests should be highly strategic. Test different subject lines, sender names (e.g., a sales rep vs. a generic company name), content formats, and calls to action for different industries or job roles. Creating your ABM strategy involves understanding the unique needs of your target accounts, and testing is how you validate your assumptions and continuously improve your approach for maximum impact.
Build an ABM Newsletter Program That Lasts
Launching an ABM newsletter is a great first step, but the real magic happens when you build a program that can grow and adapt with your business. A sustainable strategy isn’t about one-off campaigns; it’s about creating a consistent, valuable channel that strengthens relationships with your most important accounts over the long haul. This means putting systems in place that support your efforts, from team collaboration to the technology that powers it all.
Align your sales and marketing teams
An ABM newsletter can’t succeed in a silo. For your program to have a real impact, your sales and marketing teams need to be perfectly in sync. This partnership ensures that the content you create is directly informed by what sales is hearing on the ground and that your newsletter efforts are actively helping to move deals forward. True alignment means establishing shared goals and metrics from the very beginning.
Set up regular meetings where marketing can share engagement data and sales can provide feedback on account conversations and evolving pain points. When marketing understands an account’s specific challenges, they can tailor newsletter content to address them directly. This collaborative loop turns your newsletter from a simple marketing message into a powerful sales enablement tool that builds trust and nurtures long-term customer relationships.
Keep content relevant as you scale
As your list of target accounts grows, maintaining a personal touch can feel daunting. The key is to scale your relevance, not just your volume. You don’t need to write a completely unique newsletter for every account. Instead, focus on creating a flexible content system that allows for easy personalization. This is where an integrated email marketing and ABM strategy truly shines.
Start by building a library of content modules—like case studies, industry insights, or product updates—that can be mixed and matched. Use dynamic content blocks to pull in account-specific details like company names or relevant contacts. This approach allows you to deliver highly targeted messages that resonate with each account’s unique context, nurturing them effectively through their buyer’s journey without overwhelming your content team.
Integrate your technology stack
Your ABM newsletter program is only as strong as the technology that supports it. A disconnected set of tools creates manual work, data silos, and missed opportunities. To build a lasting program, you need an integrated tech stack where your newsletter platform, CRM, and other marketing tools communicate seamlessly. This integration is what makes deep personalization and automation possible.
When your systems are connected, you can automatically pull contact and account data from your CRM to personalize your newsletters. More importantly, you can push engagement data—like opens, clicks, and content views—back to your sales team. This gives them a real-time view of an account’s interests and intent. Using the right account-based marketing software automates these crucial steps, freeing up your team to focus on strategy instead of data entry.
Stay on top of privacy and compliance
In account-based marketing, trust is your most valuable asset. Violating that trust with unwanted emails is the fastest way to damage your brand’s reputation and get your messages sent straight to the spam folder. A sustainable ABM program is built on a foundation of respect for privacy and a commitment to compliance. This means only contacting people who have opted in or where you have a clear, legitimate reason to do so.
Always be transparent about why you’re reaching out and make it easy for contacts to unsubscribe. Familiarize your team with key regulations like the CAN-SPAM Act in the U.S. and GDPR in Europe. Adhering to these rules isn’t just about avoiding fines; it’s about building a reputable program that ensures your carefully crafted messages are welcomed, opened, and valued by your target accounts.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How is an ABM newsletter different from my regular marketing newsletter? Think of it in terms of audience and purpose. Your regular newsletter is likely built for a broad audience, sharing company news and content with a wide net of subscribers. An ABM newsletter is a strategic tool designed for a very specific, hand-picked list of companies. The content is hyper-focused on their unique industry challenges and business goals, and its primary purpose is to build a relationship and influence key decision-makers within those target accounts.
This sounds like a lot of work. Can a small team realistically pull off an ABM newsletter strategy? Yes, absolutely. The key is to start small and be smart about your resources. ABM is about quality over quantity, so you don't need to target hundreds of companies at once. Pick your top 10 or 20 highest-value accounts and focus your efforts there. By using flexible templates and dynamic content, you can create a personalized feel without writing every single email from scratch. A focused, high-touch approach with a few key accounts will always outperform a generic blast to thousands.
How do I get the information I need to personalize content for my target accounts? Your best resource is your sales team. They are on the front lines talking to these companies and understand their pain points better than anyone. Beyond that, your CRM is a goldmine of information about past interactions. You can also do some light research on LinkedIn to see what topics key contacts are talking about or check their company's press releases for recent news you can reference. This shows you've done your homework and are genuinely invested in their world.
What's the most important metric to track for an ABM newsletter? While open and click rates are useful, the most important metric is account-level engagement. You want to see if multiple contacts within a single target company are interacting with your newsletter over time. This indicates that your message is resonating and possibly being shared internally. This collective engagement is a much stronger buying signal than a single click from an unknown contact and shows your strategy is successfully warming up the entire account.
What’s the first step to get my sales team on board with this kind of newsletter program? The best way to get buy-in is to frame it as a tool that makes their job easier. Schedule a meeting and present it as a partnership. Ask them to help you identify a few key accounts they’re struggling to connect with. Then, work with them to create content that addresses that account's specific needs. When they see the newsletter as a way to warm up their leads and provide valuable conversation starters, they’ll become your biggest supporters.