How to implement account based marketing workflows with Segment

Account based marketing (ABM) sounds great in theory—target the right companies, get bigger deals, waste less time. But actually wiring up the data so your sales and marketing teams are in sync? That’s where most folks hit a wall.

If you’re a marketer, ops person, or even an engineer who’s been told “we need to do ABM,” this guide is for you. I’ll walk through how to build real ABM workflows using Segment—not just the fluffy diagrams, but the practical steps, honest pitfalls, and some shortcuts to save your sanity.

Why Use Segment for ABM?

Let’s get this out of the way: you don’t need Segment for ABM. But if you have multiple tools (CRM, marketing automation, ad platforms, product analytics), Segment is one of the least painful ways to stitch them together.

  • It lets you track users and companies across your website, app, and other products.
  • You can send data to your CRM, email, ad tools—without a spaghetti mess of integrations.
  • You get a central record of each account and person, so you’re not guessing who did what.

That said, Segment won’t magically make your ABM program work. It’s just the plumbing. If your target account list is junk, or your sales team ignores the alerts, no tool will save you.

Step 1: Get Your Account and User Data in Shape

Before you touch Segment, get clear on what data you actually need. ABM falls apart if you can’t reliably answer “who is this person, and which company are they with?”

What You Need

  • A target account list. Usually from your CRM. Clean it up—no dead companies, duplicates, or missing domains.
  • Key company fields: Name, domain, industry, size, etc.
  • User-to-account mapping: How will you know that "alice@acme.com" works at "Acme Corp"?

Pro tip: Don’t overcomplicate your data model. Start with account domain as your unique key. If you can’t match users to accounts by email domain, you’ll be fighting fires later.

What to Ignore

  • Don’t bother with 50+ firmographic fields unless your sales team really uses them.
  • Fancy intent data and enrichment? Nice-to-haves, not must-haves for getting started.

Step 2: Track the Right Events and Traits

Now, you’re ready to set up tracking in Segment. The point isn’t to capture everything—just what you need for ABM campaigns and reporting.

Core Events to Track

  • Page views on your marketing site (especially key pages like pricing, demo, etc.)
  • Product usage events (e.g., signed up, invited teammate, hit key milestone)
  • Engagements with marketing (asset downloads, webinar signups)
  • Sales touches (meetings booked, email replies—if you can pipe these in)

Core Traits (Properties) to Collect

  • User traits: email, name, job title, account domain
  • Account traits: company name, domain, industry, plan/tier, status (target vs. not)

Don’t waste time tracking every button click. Focus on what actually signals intent or progress.

Step 3: Set Up Account and User Identification in Segment

This is where most teams get tripped up. Segment is user-centric by default, but ABM is all about accounts (companies).

You need to:

  1. Identify users as they sign up, log in, or take key actions. Use analytics.identify() with their email and any traits you have.
  2. Group users into accounts using Segment’s Group call. This ties each user to their company, using the domain as the key.

Example:

javascript analytics.identify('user123', { email: 'alice@acme.com', name: 'Alice Smith', title: 'CTO' });

analytics.group('acme.com', { name: 'Acme Corp', industry: 'Manufacturing', plan: 'Enterprise' });

Heads up: If you skip the Group call, you’ll have a hard time doing anything account-level—like triggering campaigns when two people from the same company sign up.

Step 4: Send Data to Your Destinations

Segment’s real value is shipping data to the tools your teams already use. For ABM, the usual suspects are:

  • CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, etc.): For sales outreach and reporting.
  • Marketing automation (Marketo, HubSpot, Customer.io): For nurture emails, alerts.
  • Ad platforms (LinkedIn, Facebook): For retargeting and account-based ad campaigns.
  • Analytics tools (Amplitude, Mixpanel): For product usage and cohort analysis.

How to wire this up:

  • In Segment, turn on the relevant Destinations.
  • Map key traits and events to fields in those tools.
  • Set up filters or transformations if you need to clean or enrich data.

Don’t try to sync everything. Start with the fields you really use in campaigns. More data = more debugging later.

Step 5: Build ABM Workflows Using Your Data

Now for the fun part—actually running ABM campaigns. Here’s what you can do once you have clean, connected data:

1. Alert Sales When Target Accounts Engage

  • When someone from a target account visits the site or signs up, trigger an alert (Slack, email, CRM task).
  • Use Segment to send this event directly, or route through your marketing automation tool.

What works: Simple, timely notifications—don’t overdo it or sales will start ignoring them.

2. Personalize Outreach and Content

  • Show personalized website content or emails based on account traits (industry, company size, etc.).
  • Use Segment to pass this data to your personalization tools.

What to skip: Overly complex dynamic content. It’s easy to break and hard to maintain.

3. Run Account-Based Ad Campaigns

  • Sync your target account list to LinkedIn or Facebook via Segment’s integrations.
  • Target the right companies with tailored ads.

Reality check: ABM ads work best as air cover, not primary lead drivers. Don’t expect magic.

4. Measure Account Progress

  • Track all touches and product usage at the account level.
  • Use analytics tools or your CRM to report on which companies are moving through the funnel.

Pro tip: Use cohorts or segments to track account engagement over time, not just individual users.

Step 6: Keep Your Data Clean (or at Least Usable)

Dirty data kills ABM faster than any tool problem. Here’s how to avoid the worst pain:

  • Regularly audit your account list—remove dead leads, merge duplicates, fill gaps.
  • Check your user-to-account mapping—make sure new signups are grouped correctly.
  • Set up alerts for sync errors in Segment or your destinations. Silent failures are brutal.

Don’t get sucked into endless data cleaning. Just fix what breaks your workflows, and keep moving.

Step 7: Iterate, Don’t Overengineer

Your first ABM workflow won’t be perfect. That’s normal. The trick is to start simple, see what actually gets used, and improve from there.

  • Get feedback from sales and marketing—are alerts useful? Are campaigns hitting the right people?
  • Add fields or events only as needed. More complexity means more ways to break things.
  • Document what you’ve built, even if it’s just a simple diagram, so others can understand and improve it.

The Honest Take: What Works and What to Ignore

  • Works: Clean data, simple workflows, tight feedback with sales/marketing, and only sending what’s needed.
  • Doesn’t Work: Tracking everything, chasing “AI-powered” intent signals before basics, over-personalizing content, ignoring the sales team’s feedback.
  • Ignore the hype: Segment is powerful, but it’s just a data router. It won’t fix your targeting, messaging, or list quality.

Keep It Simple, Ship, and Iterate

ABM isn’t magic—it’s just targeted marketing, powered by decent data. Segment helps you connect the dots, but don’t get lost chasing perfection. Start with the basics: map users to accounts, track a handful of signals, and plug it into the tools your teams actually use. Then, tweak as you go. The best ABM programs are the ones that actually ship, not the ones with the fanciest diagrams.

Now go build something that works.