Scrappy ABM

Mason Cosby
  • 4.7 (15)
  • Marketing
  • Updated Weekly

Welcome to Scrappy ABM – your source for groundbreaking approaches to ABM that don't break the bank. ABM shouldn't cost $200K in technology to even get started. If you want to get started with ABM or make your program better without a massive budget, you're in the right place. Each week, you'll hear from some of the brightest minds in the marketing world who are redefining ABM, achieving incredible results with untraditional methods, limited resources, and a whole lot of creativity. This isn't a show about how much you can spend on fancy tech or overhyped tools. Instead, it's about celebrating creative problem-solving and the scrappiness it takes to get ABM right. We'll dive into how these marketing leaders built robust ABM strategies with limited resources, revealing the actionable insights that led to their biggest wins. So, if you're a marketer ready to challenge the status quo, or an entrepreneur looking to scale your business through efficient and effective marketing strategies, Scrappy ABM is the show for you. Get ready to discover ABM strategies that are lean, impactful, and utterly transformative. Remember, it's not about the budget, it's about the mindset. Let's get scrappy!

  1. 1d ago

    A List and a Custom Swag Piece Is Enough to Be ABM (with Cindy Dubon from Goldcast) | Ep. 282

    Most ABM programs stall on the list. Cindy Dubon has a fixed budget and a rule about it: don't spend a dollar on an account you aren't desperate to win. On this episode of Scrappy ABM, Mason Cosby talks with Cindy Dubon about how she built a tiered target account list at Goldcast, and why tier A comes down to whether a company already gets what she's selling. ㅤ Cindy walks through the firmographic and technographic signals she uses, how she separates preferences from requirements when tiering, and why she can hand sales five hundred accounts instead of six thousand. ㅤ She also breaks down the quarterly virtual event her team works like a trade show booth, where they're the only booth on the floor. Gifting boxes go only to target accounts. Reps ask attendees what questions they want put to the speakers. SDRs walk out with meetings booked before follow-up even starts. ㅤ 👤 Guest Bio Cindy Dubon is Director of Demand Generation at Goldcast, the AI-first B2B video and events platform acquired by Cvent in December 2025. She joined Goldcast in late 2024 after demand gen roles at DroneDeploy, Perceptyx, and Greenfly, and she managed the SDR team directly out of marketing. She co-presents Goldcast's annual Webinar Benchmark Report and markets to an ICP she belongs to herself, having been a customer before she was an employee. ㅤ 📌 What We Cover Why the target account list starts with customer lookalikes instead of dream logosThe firmographic and technographic filters that qualify an account: employee count, an actual marketing team, and investment in tools like Marketo, HubSpot, or SalesforceHow tiers A through F work, and why geography lowers a tier rather than removing an accountPreferences versus requirements as a tiering frameworkMapping webinar topics to funnel stage, and why "vibe coding" became "vibe coding for webinars"Running a quarterly virtual event like a trade show where you're the only booth on the floorThe AI summer camp gifting box that only target accounts received, and the social posts it generatedWhy Cindy tells her SDRs exactly which messages she would never respond toThe insider intel you get from relationships that no third-party intent provider will ever surfaceWhy she believed she needed 6sense to do ABM, and where that belief came from ㅤ 🔗 Resources Mentioned GoldcastCvent6senseMarketoHubSpotSalesforceClayCindy Dubon on LinkedIn ㅤ Resources: Scrappy ABM: Visit for more ABM tips and strategies. Connect with Mason on LinkedIn for a conversation about ABM. ㅤ If you enjoyed today's episode and found valuable insights for your business, be sure to subscribe to the Scrappy ABM podcast for more expert discussions. Don't forget to leave a review and share this episode with your team or fellow marketers!

  2. Aug 13

    $250 of Tacos, 10 Target Accounts, 4 Booked Meetings (with Jim Gilkey from Scrappy ABM) | Ep. 281

    Twelve events, roughly $30,000 to $40,000 all-in, and a plan that fell apart at the first conference. ㅤ On this episode of Scrappy ABM, Mason Cosby sits down with Jim Gilkey to break down what happened when the pre-booked meeting play stopped working. When you're not a sponsor you don't get the registration list. Vendor-class tickets can lock you out of the attendee directory entirely, and the event app often doesn't open until the day before. ㅤ The fix came from reading the target account list differently. At one conference, about 10% of a 350-account list was sponsoring the event, so Mason and Jim stopped chasing attendees and started walking the show floor. They cover the plays that came out of it: logo-printed lattes at Forrester B2B, a plate of buffet food at Gartner that turned into a CMO meeting, and a $250 taco night that produced four booked meetings. Even with the original plan dead, the year still produced over 40 opportunities. ㅤ 👤 Guest Bio Jim Gilkey is Head of Sales at Scrappy ABM and the only seller on the team, as he points out in the first 30 seconds. Before joining, he spent nearly four years at Terminus across enterprise sales, customer success, and account management, and he started his career as a Salesforce BDR. He also hosts Account Based Beverages, a short-format ABM interview show he launched in 2022. He's based in Indianapolis. ㅤ 📌 What We Cover Why a $30,000 to $40,000 event budget bought a plan that didn't survive the first conferenceThe structural problem: no sponsorship means no registration list, and vendor tickets can hide the attendee directoryNobody reads event app messages, including the people sending themThe shift from attendees to sponsors, and the 350-account list where 10% were sponsoringThe opening line at a booth: "Hey, do you have a marketer here that is helping run the show?"Logo-printed lattes, a plate of lunch at Gartner, and the $250 taco night that booked four meetingsWhy targeting sponsors lets you go where your ICP is, from ed tech to HR tech, instead of only marketing conferencesNetworkers, offerers, and setters, plus why the setter should hold the first meetingBuilding measurement layers so a weak offer doesn't get an entire channel killed ㅤ 🔗 Resources Mentioned Events: B2BMX, SaaStr, Demand & Expand, ANA, Gartner, Salesforce Connections, Forrester B2BTools: LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ChatGPT, Claude, CanvaData AxleTaco night landing page ㅤ Resources: Scrappy ABM: Visit for more ABM tips and strategies. Connect with Mason on LinkedIn for a conversation about ABM. ㅤ If you enjoyed today's episode and found valuable insights for your business, be sure to subscribe to the Scrappy ABM podcast for more expert discussions. Don't forget to leave a review and share this episode with your team or fellow marketers!

  3. Aug 6

    Accounts Don't Buy, People Buy (with Amanda Oles from Stensul) | Ep. 280

    Most advice on building a target account list assumes you have the time to build one properly. Amanda Oles has a second answer for everyone else, and it starts with the accounts that already know who you are. ㅤ Mason Cosby and Amanda work through both paths on Scrappy ABM: the fully structured ICP approach for when ABM is your whole role, and the two programs to run when it isn't. Pipeline acceleration and closed lost. Her case is that those two lists define themselves, so you skip signals and orchestration and get straight to doing. ㅤ From there they get into channels for long enterprise sales cycles, why Stensul's most influential combination is trade show plus email plus paid social, the two-minute pitch rule that makes customer dinners convert, and how Amanda knows she has momentum before pipeline shows up. Her closing lesson: simple is better. ㅤ 👤 Guest Bio Amanda Oles is Director of Revenue Marketing at Stensul, the governed creation platform for enterprise marketing teams. She stepped into the role in 2025 after two and a half years leading demand generation there, and came up through demand gen at Datto and WordStream. Her programs sell into large, highly regulated enterprises where sales cycles run long and compliance limits what marketing can say. She's active in the ForgeX ABM community. ㅤ 📌 What We Cover Why sales and marketing "need to be like best friends" before a target account list existsThe two programs Amanda recommends when the company treats ABM as a tactic: pipeline acceleration and closed lostUsing AI to analyze the past 100 Gong calls instead of relying on philosophical intent at the account levelGetting target contacts into Salesforce and tagged so the motion can scaleStensul's most influential channel combination: trade show plus email plus paid socialMason's split of digital for existence and in-person for accelerationThe two-minute pitch rule at customer dinners, and using an anchor customer to fill the roomOwning your own account score instead of being married to a platform's versionWhy the procurement one-pager came out of finding where deals stall the longest ㅤ 🔗 Resources Mentioned StensulForgeXMarketo, Salesforce, GongInflu2 study presented at Gartner on ABM success metricsAmanda Oles on LinkedIn ㅤ Resources: Scrappy ABM: Visit for more ABM tips and strategies. Connect with Mason on LinkedIn for a conversation about ABM. ㅤ If you enjoyed today's episode and found valuable insights for your business, be sure to subscribe to the Scrappy ABM podcast for more expert discussions. Don't forget to leave a review and share this episode with your team or fellow marketers!

  4. Jul 30

    Your ICP Isn't Real Until It Shows Up in the CRM (with Christy Behnke from Terryberry) | Ep. 279

    Most target account lists get built backwards. Someone writes an ICP, sales adds the logos they've always wanted, and nobody checks it against a single closed deal. On this episode of Scrappy ABM, Mason Cosby talks with Christy Behnke, VP of Marketing at Terryberry, about where that list should actually come from. ㅤ Christy starts with Salesforce reports on closed won and closed lost, and pays close attention to the stage where lost deals fell out. From there she grades accounts A through D, loops in product to see where the roadmap is headed, and tests messaging on 10% of the target account list instead of half of it. ㅤ The conversation also covers content mapped to funnel stage, ChatGPT ads as a new test channel, and why she treats ABM as part of demand gen rather than a separate program. Plus the measurement that happens before the MQL, her 25% of contract value rule for acquisition cost, and what she wishes she'd known before her first ABM campaign. ㅤ 👤 Guest Bio Christy Behnke is VP of Marketing at Terryberry, an employee recognition and engagement company founded in 1918 and headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She's built ABM at multiple organizations, with prior revenue marketing leadership roles at SMG (Service Management Group), Omnigo Software, and Rittal North America. At Terryberry she led the migration onto HubSpot and pulled the company's ABM launch forward to March, grading the ICP and building the target account list from CRM data. ㅤ 📌 What We Cover Why pulling closed won and closed lost comes before anything else in building a target account listWhat the stage a deal died at tells you about product fit versus a test segment worth runningICP grading with A, B, C, and D tiers, and why a bloated C tier is a signal to investigateMapping the product roadmap against firmographics when there's no historical closed won dataUsing content syndication and 10% of target accounts to test messaging without risking budgetWhy ABM is a play for demand gen rather than a separate programThe Engagement Maturity Map, and mapping content to top, middle, and bottom of funnelTop-of-funnel measurement, cost per lead, the 25% of contract value rule, and three to one CAC ㅤ 🔗 Resources Mentioned Salesforce (closed won and closed lost reporting)HubSpot, including the smart content feature for personalized landing pagesForrester and Gartner analyst reportsChatGPT ads, Bing, and Google paid searchTerryberry's Engagement Maturity MapChristy Behnke on LinkedIn ㅤ Resources: Scrappy ABM: Visit for more ABM tips and strategies. Connect with Mason on LinkedIn for a conversation about ABM. ㅤ If you enjoyed today's episode and found valuable insights for your business, be sure to subscribe to the Scrappy ABM podcast for more expert discussions. Don't forget to leave a review and share this episode with your team or fellow marketers!

  5. Jul 23

    20K in Sends, a Million in Pipeline (with Jess Annadurai from Supermetrics) | Ep. 278

    Most product-led companies decide ABM isn't built for them and move on. On Scrappy ABM, Mason Cosby makes the opposite case with Jess Annadurai, Senior Global Marketing Director at Supermetrics, who ran customer expansion as the entry point instead of new business. ㅤ Supermetrics is a PLG company with a land-and-expand motion, and Jess treats its existing customer base as the strongest target account list it owns. She walks through how she, the VP of Sales, and the Director of Customer Success in North America picked accounts, why they started with an advocacy approach, and how a "meet your manager" campaign moved booked meeting rates from under 1% to 13-14%. ㅤ The conversation stays specific: product signals for targeting, gifting that feels personal instead of a $25 gift card, $150K to $200K in pipeline per send, and roughly 9X ROI on year-one spend. Jess also shares what didn't travel when she tried to take a US playbook global. ㅤ 👤 Guest Bio Jess Annadurai is Senior Global Marketing Director at Supermetrics, where she's spent just over three and a half years, first as North American head of marketing and then across a global remit covering demand, field, partner, and customer marketing. She was an active 6sense power user around 2018 and has worked both sides of the ABM world, as a practitioner buying the tools and as a marketer at an ABM vendor before moving to the data side of martech. ㅤ 📌 What We Cover Why a PLG customer base is the best target account list you already own, and how much context it hands you for freeHow Jess, the VP of Sales, and the Director of Customer Success agreed that customer education was the real gapStarting with an advocacy approach: 10 customer case studies, and the new use cases and retention lift they uncoveredSegmenting customers by whether they had an account manager, then running two different motionsThe "meet your manager" campaign, with personalized gifting instead of gift cardsBooked meeting rates going from under 1% to 13-14%$150K to $200K in pipeline per send, ~$35K total gifting spend for the year, and roughly 9X ROIA small agency at ~$10K that expanded to $140K within six monthsWhy gifting norms differ by region, and what Jess would scale differently next time ㅤ 🔗 Resources Mentioned Supermetrics6sensePostal (now Sendoso)Looker StudioGoogle SheetsConnect with Jess on LinkedIn ㅤ Resources: Scrappy ABM: Visit for more ABM tips and strategies. Connect with Mason on LinkedIn for a conversation about ABM. ㅤ If you enjoyed today's episode and found valuable insights for your business, be sure to subscribe to the Scrappy ABM podcast for more expert discussions. Don't forget to leave a review and share this episode with your team or fellow marketers!

  6. Jul 16

    Your ABM List Is Just Brand Awareness With Extra Steps (with Mahsa Malekyar) | Ep. 277

    Most ABM target lists start the same way: sales names the accounts they want, marketing runs campaigns at them, and everyone hopes volume closes the gap. On this episode of Scrappy ABM, Mason Cosby sits down with Mahsa Malekyar to pull that approach apart. Her point is blunt: an account that will eventually need your tool is not the same as an account that needs it right now, and if you can't tell the difference, you're buying brand awareness and calling it ABM. ㅤ The conversation covers where free intent data already lives inside the tools you own, why in-person conversations are the trust signal that digital can't manufacture, and how to capture qualitative event conversations without asking a salesperson to open a spreadsheet. Mahsa also names the mistake she'd undo from her first ABM program, and it isn't a channel or a tool. ㅤ 👤 Guest Bio Mahsa Malekyar, PMP, brings over a decade of marketing and project management experience, with prior leadership roles at First Onsite Property Restoration and Charter Communications. She builds ABM and event marketing programs with a marketing operations lens, and she's a self-described HubSpot power user who is very clear that HubSpot is not paying her to say so. ㅤ 📌 What We Cover 🔸 Why "who sales is targeting" is a fine starting point for ABM and a bad finishing point 🔸 The three questions that separate a real target from good brand awareness: do they need it now, will they need it in three months, are they looking at contract signing 🔸 Free and low-cost intent data sources: HubSpot's intent tracking, the Apollo.io website pixel, Microsoft Clarity, and Google tracking 🔸 Why ABM campaigns have to establish or expand trust, not just educate, and where in-person events come in 🔸 The event follow-up sequence: take the photo, ask to text it, get the number, then retarget with messaging tied to what they actually talked about 🔸 Content that earns the follow-up: templated guides and industry data benchmarks instead of "let's book a call" 🔸 How to measure conversations you can't put in a dropdown: dedicated event Slack channels, voice notes from the floor, and one person turning the dump into next steps 🔸 Why getting salespeople to use spreadsheets is a losing battle, and what to build instead 🔸 Mahsa's answer to what she'd do differently in her first ABM program: collaborate across sales, customer success, and product before the list is final ㅤ 🔗 Resources Mentioned 🔸 HubSpot (CRM and intent tracking) 🔸 Apollo.io (enrichment, outreach, website pixel) 🔸 Microsoft Clarity 🔸 Canva (post-event photo collages) 🔸 Slack (event channels and voice notes) 🔸 Wispr Flow (AI voice-to-text) 🔸 Freeman (research on media mistrust referenced by Mahsa) ㅤ Resources: Scrappy ABM: Visit for more ABM tips and strategies. Connect with Mason on LinkedIn for a conversation about ABM. ㅤ If you enjoyed today's episode and found valuable insights for your business, be sure to subscribe to the Scrappy ABM podcast for more expert discussions. Don't forget to leave a review and share this episode with your team or fellow marketers!

  7. Jul 2

    Why "Sales, Please Go After Google" Is How ABM Fails (with Ed VanderBush from LiveRamp) Ep. 276

    Most people are three to five years into account-based marketing. Ed VanderBush has been doing it for over a decade, and he's watched the whole thing move from a concept Bev Burgess was talking about in the early 2010s into an integrated mindset across a marketing team. On this episode of Scrappy ABM, Mason Cosby sits down with Ed, Senior Manager of Account-Based Marketing at LiveRamp, to get into what actually moves ABM forward when you don't have an unlimited budget. ㅤ They cover the three inputs Ed uses to build a target account list, why "sales, please go after Google" is how programs fail, and how framing existing content beats building bespoke assets for every account. Ed also walks through going from "the ABM guy off in the corner" to an integrated ABM motion, plus the accidental CIO deal acceleration he hammered out with a seller over Slack in under 20 minutes. ㅤ 👤 Guest Bio Ed VanderBush is Senior Manager of Account-Based Marketing at LiveRamp, the data collaboration and identity platform. He happened into ABM by accident at LexisNexis in the early 2010s, picking up a project a colleague had to hand off, and it turned into the last decade-plus of his career. At LiveRamp he built the ABM function from the ground up and now runs it as part of the integrated marketing team. He's based in southwest Ohio. ㅤ 📌 What We Cover 🔸 The three inputs Ed uses to build a target account list: sales priorities, signals that validate them, and whether marketing actually has a story to tell 🔸 Why "sales, please go after Google" is the wrong way to pick accounts, and the rocket-ship example of saying no when you have zero resources for a segment 🔸 Building a first ABM program off existing CRM data and existing content instead of creating everything bespoke 🔸 Why framing an asset for the audience beats custom reports, and the client who built a one-off report for a single CIO 🔸 Customer stories as Ed's favorite content, and how a recognizable logo closes more than a stronger but unknown one 🔸 Industry groups and subject matter experts as a sourcing channel that never shows up cleanly in a dashboard 🔸 The "Anatomy of the Deal" conversations Ed ran to mine internal stories and build early evangelism 🔸 The accidental deal acceleration: spotting a CIO engage with an ad, then closing the loop with the seller over Slack 🔸 The Kroger coupon mailer that taught Ed what relevancy and value actually mean ㅤ 🔗 Resources Mentioned 🔸 Bev Burgess, an early voice in account-based marketing referenced from the practice's infancy 🔸 LiveRamp, the data collaboration and identity platform where Ed leads ABM 🔸 LexisNexis, where Ed first picked up account-based marketing 🔸 BambooHR, the recognizable customer story Mason credits with lifting close rates 🔸 Salesforce and Slack, the tools behind the accidental deal acceleration story 🔸 Kroger, the personalized coupon example behind Ed's lesson on relevancy ㅤ Resources: Scrappy ABM: Visit for more ABM tips and strategies. Connect with Mason on LinkedIn for a conversation about ABM. ㅤ If you enjoyed today's episode and found valuable insights for your business, be sure to subscribe to the Scrappy ABM podcast for more expert discussions. Don't forget to leave a review and share this episode with your team or fellow marketers!

  8. Jun 25

    7 Hours of ABM in a Day, Distilled to 15 Minutes | Ep. 275

    For almost a year, the Scrappy ABM team has run a full-day workshop called ABM in a Day, with over 900 marketers coming through it. In this solo episode, host Mason Cosby pulls the best of the best from that workshop's survey feedback and condenses roughly seven hours of material into about 15 minutes. ㅤ The thing marketers rated most helpful was a clear structure and system for their ABM program. Mason walks through the two core frameworks behind that structure: the account progression model and the 4D framework. Then he gets into the best customer profile, a look-back method for finding the accounts you actually want more of. ㅤ If you're heading into H2 and trying to figure out where to make an impact in the second half of the year, this one hands you a starting exercise you can run with a sheet of paper today. ㅤ 📌 What We Cover Why a clear structure and system ranked as the most helpful takeaway from ABM in a DayThe account progression model: awareness, initial engagement, meaningful engagement, marketing qualified account, sales qualified account, opportunity, and a re-engagement stageThe paper-and-pen exercise: write down every program you run, then map each one to the stage that matches its primary intentThe 4D framework: data, distribution, destination, and directionWhy targets without triggers turn "ABM" into targeted cold outbound, and how a champion tracking play creates a real reason to reach outMatching direct vs indirect channels to where an account sits in its journey, plus weaving problem, product, and proof content across the modelThe BCP (best customer profile) and the look-back questions behind it: happiest by NPS, longest-tenured, most profitableHow the overlap of BCP and ICP creates the TAP (target account profile) ㅤ 🔗 Resources Mentioned ABM in a Day workshop: Next live session on July 28th. Podcast listeners can use code 75OFF to join for $50.Free ABM template: The exact program-build template Scrappy ABM uses with every client, available behind a quick form fill. ㅤ Resources: Scrappy ABM: Visit for more ABM tips and strategies. Connect with Mason on LinkedIn for a conversation about ABM. ㅤ If you enjoyed today's episode and found valuable insights for your business, be sure to subscribe to the Scrappy ABM podcast for more expert discussions. Don't forget to leave a review and share this episode with your team or fellow marketers!

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4.7
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About

Welcome to Scrappy ABM – your source for groundbreaking approaches to ABM that don't break the bank. ABM shouldn't cost $200K in technology to even get started. If you want to get started with ABM or make your program better without a massive budget, you're in the right place. Each week, you'll hear from some of the brightest minds in the marketing world who are redefining ABM, achieving incredible results with untraditional methods, limited resources, and a whole lot of creativity. This isn't a show about how much you can spend on fancy tech or overhyped tools. Instead, it's about celebrating creative problem-solving and the scrappiness it takes to get ABM right. We'll dive into how these marketing leaders built robust ABM strategies with limited resources, revealing the actionable insights that led to their biggest wins. So, if you're a marketer ready to challenge the status quo, or an entrepreneur looking to scale your business through efficient and effective marketing strategies, Scrappy ABM is the show for you. Get ready to discover ABM strategies that are lean, impactful, and utterly transformative. Remember, it's not about the budget, it's about the mindset. Let's get scrappy!

Information

  • Creator
    Mason Cosby
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    282
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Scrappy ABM, LLC
  • Show Website
    Scrappy ABM

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