Recently, Irina Chernova, Demand Marketing Manager EMEA & LATAM at NetApp, and Olga Bondareva, Founder of ModumUp - Innovative B2B Marketing Agency, shared a year-long ABM and Social Selling case study: 10 strategic accounts, around $20 million in deals, and 3x lead growth compared with the previous approach.

The session attracted 407 registrations from 44 countries and showed how the program worked step by step.

NetApp sells to enterprise accounts with long sales cycles and large buying committees. AI, DevOps, and cloud teams now influence deals alongside traditional IT roles.

For NetApp, ABM was not a standalone marketing program. It connected customer experience and sales alignment around the same accounts. The goal was to identify everyone who could influence a deal and reach them through NetApp employees, not only through marketing campaigns.

The pilot covered 10 accounts in finance, oil and gas, and telecom across EMEA. The account list was already defined. Social Selling helped the team find executives, engineering leaders, and users, match them with the right NetApp profiles, and use content, research, and events to start conversations.

The program began with Irina’s profile and later expanded to gated content, an executive profile, and BDR profiles tied to account goals. ModumUp supported profile strategy, content, coaching, and lead generation.

Phase 1: NetApp Insight

The team engaged relevant contacts before the event, posted during it, and continued conversations afterward. Attendance grew from around 600 to about 1,000. Social Selling helped widen the audience, although the result also reflected the wider event campaign.

Phase 2: Research-led outreach

People could receive IDC and NetApp research by commenting or sending a direct message. The campaign generated 79 responses, including 44 from target companies and eight SQLs. That means 18% of targeted responses moved into the sales pipeline.

Phase 3: Executive-led communication

An executive profile helped the team reach senior decision-makers directly. Relevant connections grew from 800 to 5,000. Average reactions per post rose from 34 to 85, while comments increased from 10 to 31. Many C-level contacts preferred direct messages.

Phase 4: BDR participation

This is where many Social Selling programs lose momentum: maintaining sales consistency is difficult.

ModumUp coached the BDRs and supported their content and outreach. One team member said LinkedIn helped him reach people he could not contact through cold calls because they already recognized his profile and understood why he was writing.

By the end of the project, NetApp had built at least one relationship at every buying-committee level across all 10 accounts.

The takeaway: start with ABM strategy before LinkedIn tactics, test the model on one profile, give each role its own goals and KPIs, and expand only when sales and executives remain involved.

Thank you to Irina for sharing the project and its results so openly 😊