An account-based campaign can reach hundreds of companies and still miss the people who influence the purchase. The sales team may see that a target account is active, but have no idea which topic prompted the activity or who should follow up. The best account based marketing tools help close that gap by connecting account selection, campaign activity, and sales follow-up.
Start with 6sense if deciding which accounts to prioritize is your biggest challenge. Consider Demandbase if you need to coordinate advertising, marketing, and sales across a large account list. AdRoll ABM is a strong fit for paid media-led programs, while HubSpot suits teams that want to run ABM from their existing CRM. LinkedIn Campaign Manager is a practical starting point for testing named-account advertising on a single channel.
Best account based marketing platforms at a glance
| Tool | Best for | What to verify before buying |
|---|---|---|
| 6sense | Predictive account prioritization | Whether buying-stage signals help reps choose a useful next action |
| Demandbase | Account intelligence and cross-channel campaigns | Whether sales and marketing can work from the same segments and signals |
| AdRoll ABM | Advertising-led ABM programs | How many target accounts you can reach and how spend is reported |
| HubSpot | CRM-led ABM for existing HubSpot teams | Which subscriptions and seats your workflow requires |
| LinkedIn Campaign Manager | Named-account advertising on LinkedIn | Whether your account list remains large enough to deliver after audience filters |
These are research-based picks drawn from official product documentation. The comparison focuses on account selection, audience activation, sales handoff, and measurement. LinkedIn is included as a specialist advertising tool for teams that already manage their account strategy and pipeline elsewhere.
What is account based marketing software?
Account based marketing software helps B2B teams market to a defined set of companies and the people involved in buying decisions. Instead of judging a campaign solely by the number of leads it generates, an ABM team asks whether it reached the right companies, engaged relevant buying roles, and helped move opportunities forward.
Full-featured ABM platforms can combine account identification, intent data, advertising, audience segmentation, and reporting. Specialist ABM tools may handle a single job, such as matching a company list to an ad audience. The distinction matters because a team with a clean target list and a reliable CRM may only need a way to reach more buyers. A team with thousands of accounts and limited sales capacity may get more value from better prioritization.
1. 6sense — Best for predictive account prioritization
6sense combines keyword and partner intent, account-level website identification, and predictive models that estimate buying stages. It also provides activation capabilities such as advertising and workflows. It’s a strong candidate when reps have more accounts than they can meaningfully pursue and need a reason to focus on a particular company this week. 6sense
Bring a sample of current customers, open opportunities, and cold prospects to the demo. Ask the vendor to show what moved an account up the list and which signals a rep can inspect. Then give those examples to a frontline seller and see whether they can choose an appropriate next step. A surge in topic research could warrant adding an account to a campaign, while a high-fit account with an open opportunity may call for a conversation with its owner.
Buying trade-off. Predictive scoring is most useful when your team agrees on what to do at each stage. If your immediate goal is running one campaign against a list you’ve already approved, a narrower tool may be sufficient.
2. Demandbase — Best for coordinating campaigns and sales follow-up
Demandbase is worth shortlisting when marketing and sales need to act on the same account segments. Its marketing product brings together buying-group insights and campaign activation, and its documentation explains how account lists, keywords, and other data inform intent signals. Demandbase also describes using those signals in advertising. Help Center
A useful demo starts with a target list that includes prospects, open opportunities, and existing customers. Ask Demandbase to build distinct segments, show how those segments inform campaigns, and demonstrate what an account owner sees when engagement changes. Check whether the team can explain why an account was prioritized and which action it should trigger.
Buying trade-off. Assign an owner for account definitions, keywords, and routing rules. If marketing and sales classify subsidiaries or existing customers differently, resolve those rules during the pilot so the same account doesn’t receive conflicting outreach.
3. AdRoll ABM — Best for advertising-led ABM programs
AdRoll ABM is the current name for RollWorks, which AdRoll rebranded in August 2025. Its offering combines multichannel advertising, account signals, and reporting. It fits teams that want their ABM marketing software to turn a named-account strategy into paid campaigns and show which accounts those campaigns reached. AdRoll
Use a real account list to evaluate reach before committing to a media budget. Ask how many accounts match, how many are eligible to receive ads, and how the platform reports account-level delivery. Include an exclusion list with customers and late-stage opportunities so you can verify that acquisition ads stay focused on the intended audience.
Buying trade-off. Compare platform fees and media spend separately. Ask whether minimum commitments, onboarding, or integrations add to the cost, and confirm how much reporting detail you’ll get at your planned spend.
4. HubSpot — Best for teams already running sales and marketing in HubSpot
HubSpot’s ABM tools let teams flag target companies, assign buying roles to contacts, and create account and contact segments. HubSpot also documents syncing eligible company audiences to LinkedIn Ads. Its ABM documentation lists Professional and Enterprise subscriptions for Marketing Hub and Sales Hub, with seats required for certain features. knowledge.hubspot.com
A team selling to regional healthcare groups could mark target companies, identify likely champions and decision-makers, and build a segment around known contacts. The account owner can then see where relationships are missing before marketing launches a campaign. This is a practical starting point when the team already maintains company and contact records in HubSpot.
Buying trade-off. Verify which features your existing subscription includes. If your business needs sophisticated account identification or third-party intent, ask which data sources you would add and how they would flow into the CRM.
5. LinkedIn Campaign Manager — Best for a focused account-targeting pilot
LinkedIn Company Targeting lets advertisers upload a list of companies, match them to LinkedIn Pages, and narrow targeting using professional demographics. Among the ABM marketing tools in this guide, it fits teams that already know which accounts they want and need to reach relevant roles through LinkedIn. Account-Based Marketing for LinkedIn Ads
For example, a cybersecurity vendor could upload a list of target manufacturers and run different messages for security leaders and IT operations teams. Check audience size after applying geography and role filters. A tightly defined audience can look right in a planning document and still have too little reach to support separate campaigns for each buying role.
Buying trade-off. Plan to track account ownership, opportunities, and follow-up in your CRM. Decide before launch how you’ll compare campaign engagement with the progress of the target accounts.
How to choose account-based marketing software
Match the purchase to your biggest bottleneck
If reps can’t agree which accounts deserve attention, test prioritization with 6sense or Demandbase. If account selection is already settled and reach is the problem, compare AdRoll ABM with LinkedIn Campaign Manager. If the recurring issue is that marketing and sales work from different lists, start by testing the workflow in HubSpot if you already use it.
Run a match test with your actual account list
Include parent companies, subsidiaries, regional domains, and a handful of accounts you know are difficult to match. Ask each vendor to show which records matched, which were excluded, and how it handled ambiguity. Track match rate and campaign reach separately. A company can match successfully while few of its relevant buyers are reachable through the channels you plan to use.
Agree on measurement before launching
Use an account-level funnel with four stages: matched accounts, reached accounts, engaged accounts, and accounts with qualified opportunities. Define engagement before launch and keep sourced pipeline separate from influenced pipeline. If your list is large enough, reserve a comparable group that doesn’t receive the campaign and track both groups over the same period. That gives you a better basis for judging whether the campaign contributed to any difference.
Test one sales handoff end to end
Give a rep an account alert and ask them to explain why it fired, who owns the account, and what they would do next. Check that the workflow handles existing opportunities and customers appropriately. If the rep still has to open several systems to reconstruct the account’s history, include that extra work in the buying decision.