Account-Based Marketing Statistics 2026: ROI & Adoption
81% of B2B marketers say account-based marketing delivers a higher ROI than their other marketing, in Momentum ITSMA’s 2024 benchmark. That number is what marketers report, not what they measure: Forrester found only 20% of ABM programs track lifetime value or post-sale results, and one in five organizations still has no real ABM process in place. A figure that still circulates in stat lists, “97% of marketers say ABM has a higher ROI,” appears with no date, sample or link. Meanwhile the top challenge has shifted from budget to staff. Here are the account-based marketing statistics worth knowing in 2026, each sourced inline with the year noted.
ABM ROI figures are what marketers report
81% of marketers report higher ROI from ABM than from their other marketing initiatives, in Momentum ITSMA’s 2024 Global Account-Based Marketing Benchmark, a survey of more than 300 B2B marketers sponsored by Demandbase (Momentum ITSMA, archived, 2024). The top benefits respondents named were growing existing accounts, customer loyalty and brand reputation, and 20% said they struggle to use intent data.
76% said the same in 2020, in the ABM Benchmark Study from ITSMA and the ABM Leadership Alliance (Demand Gen Report, archived, 2021).
Both are self-reported by people running ABM programs. Forrester’s 2024 State of ABM survey found that only about half of programs measure marketing lift, and only 20% track lifetime customer value and post-sale metrics for their target accounts (destinationCRM, reporting Forrester, 2025).
“97% of marketers say ABM has a higher ROI” has no traceable survey
“According to Alterra Group, 84% of marketers find that ABM provides significant benefits for retaining and expanding existing client relationships, and 97% say that it delivers a higher ROI than other marketing methods” is how Oracle’s 2016 ABM guide put it (Oracle, 2016). The guide gives no survey date, sample size or link.
The figure still circulates in ABM stat lists, credited to the same firm. We could not find the underlying survey. Where ROI has been tracked year to year with a named method, the share is lower: 76% in 2020 and 81% in 2024.
One in five companies doing ABM has no real ABM process
One in five organizations still has no sophisticated ABM processes in place, and Forrester says “a surprising percentage of firms continue to practice ABM in name only” (Forrester 2024 State of ABM survey, via destinationCRM, 2025). Nearly 20% have yet to define what ABM means inside their own company.
In Forrester’s previous survey, 26% were only loosely practicing ABM, “if at all” (Forrester, 2023). The share has come down, but slowly.
36% of respondents use sales engagement platforms for ABM and plan to keep doing so, up from a quarter in 2022 (Forrester, via destinationCRM, 2025). Customer data platforms, by contrast, have mostly been left out of ABM programs.
Staff, not budget, is now the top ABM challenge
Insufficient staff is the top ABM challenge, cited by 37% of respondents, and it didn’t appear in Forrester’s 2022 survey at all (Forrester, via destinationCRM, 2025).
Insufficient budget rose from 22% in 2022 to 35% in 2024. Data usability issues (22%, up from 19%), inability to measure performance (20%), inability to customize for target accounts (18%, up from 13%) and lack of sales buy-in (18%, up from 17%) follow (Forrester, via destinationCRM, 2025).
Firms that hit or exceeded their revenue targets were almost twice as likely to invest in ABM training, and Forrester found “a strong relationship between marketing and sales alignment on key ABM tasks and meeting or exceeding revenue or growth goals” (Forrester, via destinationCRM, 2025).
The account is a group, not a person
94% of companies sell to groups of three or more people, in a Forrester revenue operations survey, and buyers said a group of three or more made the decision 84% of the time when a purchase cost more than $5,000 (Forrester, 2021).
The typical B2B buying decision now involves 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers (Forrester, 2026).
Typical purchases involve 10 or more people and take close to a year, and buyers already have experience with nearly every vendor on their day one shortlist, in 6sense’s 2023 and 2024 buyer studies as summarized in its 2025 report (6sense Buyer Experience Report, archived, 2025). How those buyers research and shortlist is in B2B marketing statistics.
Target accounts have to know you before they’re in market
Only about 5% of potential B2B buyers are in the market at any given time, the “95:5 rule” from John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, 2025). An ABM program aimed only at accounts showing intent today is aimed at the 5%.
95% of the time, the winning vendor was already on the buyer’s day one shortlist, and four out of five deals go to the pre-contact favorite (6sense, 2025).
73% of B2B buyers actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach (Gartner, 2025). Personalization is the part of ABM that keeps a target account from tuning out.
66.1% of companies still spend more on acquiring customers than on keeping them (The CMO Survey, 2026), even though growing existing accounts is the top benefit ABM practitioners report (Momentum ITSMA, 2024). Budget trends are in marketing statistics.
Covering a buying group without adding headcount
ABM’s top problem is now staffing, and every target account means a dozen people to follow up with, schedule and keep track of. Carly does that coordination: it keeps every contact at a target account in its built-in CRM, sends personalized follow-ups from your own inbox until each one replies, and finds a meeting time that works for a whole buying group across companies and calendars. Carly connects to thousands of apps, so it works alongside the CRM and intent tools an ABM team already runs. Where the sales side of the motion stands is in sales enablement statistics.
FAQ
What percentage of marketers say ABM delivers a higher ROI? 81% in Momentum ITSMA’s 2024 benchmark of more than 300 B2B marketers, up from 76% in the 2020 ITSMA and ABM Leadership Alliance study. Both are self-reported, and Forrester found only 20% of ABM programs track lifetime value (Forrester, 2024).
Where does the “97% of marketers say ABM has a higher ROI” statistic come from? It is credited to “Alterra Group” and appears in Oracle’s 2016 ABM guide with no survey date, sample or link (Oracle, 2016). We could not find the original survey.
What are the biggest challenges in account-based marketing? Insufficient staff (37%) and insufficient budget (35%) lead, followed by data usability (22%), measuring performance (20%), customizing for target accounts (18%) and sales buy-in (18%) (Forrester State of ABM, 2024).
How many people are in a B2B buying group? The typical decision involves 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers (Forrester, 2026). For purchases over $5,000, a group of three or more decides 84% of the time (Forrester, 2021).
Related: B2B Marketing Statistics · Marketing Statistics · Sales Enablement Statistics · Lead Generation Statistics · CRM Statistics · Advertising Statistics
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