Account-based marketing starts with knowing which organisations you want to engage and why they matter.
You've identified the accounts, researched their challenges and developed messages designed to get their attention. Perhaps you've grouped accounts by industry, created campaigns around common business priorities or built highly specific outreach for a handful of strategic opportunities.
But there's a question that's easy to overlook.
What happens when they click?
If every account arrives on the same generic webpage, much of the relevance you've worked to create can disappear.
Personalisation gives you a way to carry that knowledge into the destination experience. It doesn't have to mean creating hundreds of landing pages or rewriting your entire website. Often, a few carefully chosen changes can make the experience more relevant.
This guide shows you how to plan and launch your first personalised ABM campaign, using an existing webpage and the audience information you already have.
We'll use a fictional manufacturing campaign to make the process practical.
1. Start with the objective, not the personalisation
Before deciding which headlines to change or which company logos to display, think about what you're trying to achieve.
Are you introducing a new solution to an industry? Trying to engage a group of strategic accounts? Encouraging contacts already familiar with your business to take the next step?
These aren't the same challenges, and they won't necessarily benefit from the same approach.
A campaign aimed at introducing your solution to manufacturing organisations might benefit from industry-relevant messaging and imagery. A campaign targeting five strategic accounts may need more specific content, reflecting challenges those organisations are known to face.
The objective comes first. Personalisation is one way of helping you achieve it.
Example: An operations technology campaign
Imagine you're marketing a technology platform that helps organisations improve operational visibility and coordination.
Your campaign is targeting manufacturing companies operating across multiple production sites.
The central challenge is familiar: keeping production moving while managing complex operations, changing priorities and potential disruption.
Rather than sending every visitor to a generic product page, you want the destination to reflect that manufacturing context.
- Objective
- Encourage target accounts to explore the solution
- Audience
- Operations and IT leaders in manufacturing
- Business challenge
- Operational visibility and production continuity
- Campaign message
- Keep production moving with better-connected operations
- Destination
- Existing operations solution page
- Desired action
- Explore an operations continuity briefing
This gives you something concrete to work towards.
You're not personalising for the sake of it. You're making the experience more relevant to a specific audience and objective.
2. Choose the right level of personalisation
Not every campaign needs individual contact personalisation.
In fact, trying to personalise everything can add complexity without necessarily making the experience more useful.
ABM programmes commonly work across three levels: 1:Many, 1:Few and 1:1. Each has a different role.
- 1:ManyIndustry or audience
- 1:FewAccount
- 1:1Person
1:Many — Make the message relevant to an industry or audience
At this level, you're creating experiences for groups of organisations that share similar needs or challenges.
For our manufacturing example, the destination might focus on production continuity, operational efficiency and visibility across sites.
You don't need to know the visitor's name or organisation to make this useful. The campaign link can identify the audience segment and determine which version appears.
This is a sensible starting point when you're targeting a relatively broad group of accounts with a common proposition.
1:Few — Recognise the account
As you narrow your focus to smaller account groups, you may have more information about the organisations you're targeting.
Perhaps you know that Northstar Fabrication operates across several manufacturing sites and is exploring ways to improve coordination.
That knowledge can help shape the destination experience.
You might display Northstar's name and logo, reference multi-site operations and highlight a relevant briefing.
The important point is that the content reflects something meaningful about the account. Adding a logo to an otherwise generic message isn't automatically a better experience.
1:1 — Make it relevant to the person
At the most focused level, you may be engaging an individual stakeholder as part of a strategic account programme or active sales conversation.
Imagine Jordan is the Operations Director at Northstar Fabrication.
A personalised experience could acknowledge Jordan and focus on operational visibility, production continuity and the next step in a discussion about Northstar's requirements.
This can be particularly useful when there's already a relationship or a clear reason for the person to expect a tailored experience.
Which approach is right?
Choose the level that matches your campaign objective, the information you have and the value of the opportunity.
For a first campaign, starting with an industry or audience segment is often sensible. It gives you a manageable way to test the approach without requiring detailed contact information.
One platform for all your operations.
Bring your teams, processes and information together with a more connected approach to operations.
Explore the platform →3. Decide what deserves to change
Once you've chosen your audience, the next decision is what to personalise.
The temptation can be to change as much as possible. But a page doesn't become more relevant simply because more elements are different.
Think about the information a visitor needs to see to understand that your solution addresses the challenge that brought them there.
Four areas are particularly useful places to start.
The headline: Make the relevance immediate
The headline is often the first substantial message someone encounters.
A generic headline such as "One platform for all your operations" may describe the product, but it says little about why a manufacturing visitor should care.
Compare that with:
Keep production moving with better-connected operations.
The second headline connects the proposition to a recognised manufacturing priority.
It's not necessarily longer or more complicated. It's simply more relevant to the audience.
The imagery: Reflect the world your audience works in
Images help establish context.
A generic office photograph may be appropriate for a broad corporate page, but it does little to reinforce a message about manufacturing operations.
Relevant production or industrial imagery can make the connection more immediate.
Choose imagery that supports the message rather than simply decorating the page.
Supporting content: Give them a reason to continue
A visitor interested in production continuity may be more likely to explore a resource about improving operational resilience than a generic product overview.
You can use the same underlying page to highlight different resources for different audiences.
For example:
- Generic page:
- Product overview
- Manufacturing page:
- Operations continuity guide
- Northstar account page:
- Multi-site operations briefing
The underlying solution hasn't changed. The information you're choosing to emphasise has.
The CTA: Make the next step follow naturally
A generic "Book a demo" button isn't always the right next step for every visitor.
Someone early in their research might prefer to explore a guide, while a contact already engaged in an active conversation may be ready for a more specific discussion.
Make the CTA relevant to both the campaign objective and the visitor's likely stage of engagement.
Put it together
| Page element | Generic version | Manufacturing version |
|---|---|---|
| Headline | One platform for all your operations | Keep production moving with better-connected operations |
| Imagery | General business photography | Manufacturing operations |
| Resource | Product overview | Operations continuity guide |
| CTA | Explore the platform | Explore manufacturing solutions |
You haven't created a new proposition or changed the underlying product.
You've made it easier for a particular audience to see why the solution could matter to them.
4. Connect your audience to the right experience
Creating different versions of a page is only useful if the right people see them.
That's where targeting rules and audience information come in.
Marketing Guppy uses information supplied through your campaign links or supported audience data to determine which personalised content to display.
For example, a campaign targeting manufacturing organisations might use a link that identifies the manufacturing segment.
When someone follows that link, the relevant rule selects the manufacturing content you've configured.
- Campaign linkIdentifies the manufacturing segment
- Targeting ruleSelects the manufacturing content
- Existing pageManufacturing version, or the original page if no rule applies
The same underlying page can therefore deliver a different experience for someone arriving from a financial services campaign, a manufacturing campaign or a known account outreach programme.
What information do you need?
It depends on your approach.
For an industry campaign, the segment can be supplied through the campaign link. You don't necessarily need a contact database.
For account-level personalisation, you need reliable information identifying the account and the relevant content or rules.
For contact-level personalisation, you need appropriate information about the individual and a supported way of associating that information with their experience.
Depending on your setup, this information may come from uploaded audience data, campaign parameters or supported CRM and marketing automation integrations.
Marketing Guppy doesn't automatically know who every visitor is. Your campaigns and audience information provide the context needed for personalisation.
What if the information is missing?
Not every visitor will match a rule, and not every record will contain all the fields you want to display.
Your page still needs to work.
That's why fallback content matters.
If no personalisation rule applies, visitors should see the original page. If a field such as a name or logo is missing, the configured fallback should preserve a useful, coherent message.
A personalised experience should never depend on everything going perfectly.
5. Build your first personalised page
You've defined the objective, chosen your audience and identified what should change.
Now you can put the campaign together.
For this example, we'll start with one existing webpage and a manufacturing audience segment.
Step 1 — Connect your website
Marketing Guppy works with your existing webpages.
To enable personalisation, you'll need to add the Marketing Guppy script to the website, either directly or using a supported tag-management approach.
Once installation is confirmed, you can begin configuring the content that changes.
Step 2 — Select the page
Choose the existing webpage that will act as the campaign destination.
For our example, it's the operations technology product page.
There's no need to recreate it in a separate landing-page builder.
Step 3 — Choose the elements
Use the visual editor to select the elements you want to personalise.
Start with the headline, imagery, supporting resource and CTA.
Keeping the scope manageable makes it easier to create, review and test your first campaign.
Step 4 — Create the content variations
Write the manufacturing-specific content and choose the relevant imagery or resources.
Make sure the content is consistent with the advertisement or outreach message bringing visitors to the page.
This is also the point to prepare fallback text where required.
Step 5 — Define the audience rules
Configure the conditions that determine when the manufacturing content should appear.
For a campaign-segment approach, the relevant campaign context can be supplied through the generated link.
Check that the selected rules reflect how you actually intend to distribute the campaign.
Step 6 — Preview the experience
Before publishing, view the page using the different audience contexts.
Check the manufacturing version, the original page and any missing-data scenarios.
Look beyond the headline. Review imagery, resources, buttons and destinations to ensure the whole experience makes sense.
Step 7 — Publish and share
Once you're satisfied with the variations and targeting rules, publish the campaign.
Use the appropriate generated links in your advertising, email or other outreach channels.
Make sure each channel uses the link intended for its audience.
6. Check before you launch
Even a straightforward personalised campaign has several moving parts.
A final check helps ensure visitors see the intended experience and that the original page remains useful when personalisation doesn't apply.
Pre-launch checklist
Pre-launch checklist — Your first personalised ABM campaign
A little testing before launch is considerably easier than discovering a mismatched message after you've started sending traffic.
7. Measure what happens and improve the experience
Launching a personalised campaign is a starting point, not the finish.
The purpose of personalisation isn't simply to show different content. It's to make the experience more relevant and support the outcome your campaign was designed to achieve.
Return to the objective you defined at the beginning.
If you're encouraging manufacturing accounts to explore an operations continuity briefing, look at whether the campaign is generating that engagement.
Depending on the measurement tools and integrations available, useful indicators might include page activity, resource engagement, CTA interactions, subsequent sales conversations and opportunities.
Not all of these measures will necessarily be available within Marketing Guppy itself. Some may require your existing analytics, CRM or campaign reporting tools.
Look beyond the number of personalised views
It's useful to understand how many personalised experiences are being delivered, but that doesn't tell you whether the messaging is doing its job.
Try to understand what visitors do next.
Are they engaging with the content you've highlighted? Are they taking the next step you intended? Are there audiences where the message could be improved?
Avoid assuming that personalisation caused a particular result without appropriate comparison and measurement.
Improve one thing at a time
You don't need to rebuild the campaign every time you learn something.
Perhaps the headline is working well, but the resource isn't attracting much interest. Perhaps one audience needs a different next step.
Use what you learn to refine the experience.
Then, when you're confident in the approach, extend it to another audience, another campaign or a more focused group of accounts.
8. Where to go next
Start small. Make it relevant. Build from there.
Your first personalised ABM campaign doesn't need to be a complex programme involving hundreds of accounts and dozens of different experiences.
Start with one existing page, one clearly defined audience and a few meaningful content changes.
Make sure the experience reflects the reason someone arrived.
Test it carefully, launch it confidently and use what you learn to make the next campaign better.
That's how personalisation becomes a practical part of your marketing, rather than another project to manage.
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