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UnifyOutbound teardownsSnowflake

How Snowflake aligns ABM and SDRs on one account list and one messaging matrix

Outbound teardowns by October 2026

Company
Snowflake sells a cloud data platform that companies use to store, analyze and share their data, priced by how much they use.
Visit Snowflake ↗
Sales development
From 85 to more than 250 SDRs, as of 20231
Who picks accounts
Sales, committed for the quarter
CEO
Sridhar Ramaswamy

TL;DR

Snowflake’s SDRs and marketing worked from different lists. From 2021 sales picked the accounts first, and everyone worked that one list from one messaging matrix by industry and persona. A vendor case study reported a 75% rise in SDR-booked meetings, and by 2024 the team was checking whether those meetings became opportunities.

The lesson

Warming an account only pays if the people who will call it agreed to work it and say the same thing. Snowflake got that agreement before spending, then checked that warmed accounts got worked.

For your team

Pick one cohort sales will commit to for a quarter. Give it one message per industry and persona and one destination, and follow each account from engaged to opportunity.

What Snowflake did

The starting point

Snowflake ran a large SDR team and an ABM team side by side.

Lars Nilsson, Snowflake’s VP of global sales development, grew his team from 85 to more than 250 SDRs, who by a 2023 account produced 60 to 70% of the company’s pipeline.1 Alongside them, an ABM team that included Daniel Day built personalized campaigns for named accounts on Uberflip, a content platform.2

In September 2021 the CMO, Denise Persson, wrote that ABM “requires aligning all of your customer acquisition teams and resources in Marketing and Sales.” Her post set out three tiers of accounts, each nominated by a different part of sales.3

The problem

Marketing and SDRs worked from different lists.

In 2024, Travis Henry described SDRs leaving a meeting with ABM with one list of accounts, then getting different directions from their AEs. Hillary Carpio, who led ABM, asked what the point was of marketing engaging one set of accounts while SDRs went after another.5

Uberflip’s case study says Snowflake’s BDRs “were hosting content on their desktop, and these materials became outdated and irrelevant quickly.” An ABM vendor reported in 2021 that an AE or SDR would sometimes nominate an account and then not work it.2,4

The decision

Publicly described from 2021

Sales commits to the accounts first, and marketing and reps work them together, from one messaging matrix.

In 2021 CMO Denise Persson called for “coordinated tactics, based on messaging and timing, at targeted personas.”

The redesign

One list, one messaging matrix, one page per account.

Henry has described sales naming the accounts it wants first, then committing to that list for the quarter, in writing, with SDR managers and ABM holding it to that.5 Carpio said in 2021 that ABM and product marketing agree the message for each industry and persona, and SDRs build their sequences from it.6

The message went to one destination per account. Uberflip says the aim was to “get the content off of desktops to allow the marketing team to control the content journey.”2

How Snowflake ran one campaign at PepsiCo

Snowflake’s PepsiCo campaign · as Uberflip published it
Uberflip’s published image of Snowflake’s PepsiCo campaign: a display ad, the PepsiCo account page, a personalized article, an email signature, a retargeting ad, a sales email and a Slack alert, each numbered with a callout.

Tap any touch to see how it works

  1. 1Display ad

    Snowflake

    PepsiCo, consolidate all of your data for a single source of truth with Snowflake.

    Marketing

  2. 2Account destination

    Here’s a data experience just for you!

    Snowflake PepsiCo

    3Personalized content

    How can Snowflake help PepsiCo?

    PepsiCo: consolidate all of your data for a single source of truth at a small fraction of the cost

    Try Snowflake for free today!

    Rep’s contact card

    Contact your dedicated Snowflake resource

    Email now

    Built by marketing, shared by everyone

  3. 4Email signature

    PepsiCo, we’ve created a data experience just for you!

    Learn more

    Rep, from their own inbox

  4. 5Retargeting ad

    Snowflake

    Swipe right

    The cloud data warehouse

    Marketing

  5. 6Sales email

    The data warehouse built for the cloud

    PepsiCo

    Rep, through Uberflip’s Gmail extension

  6. 7Slack alert

    Flipbot

    A visitor from the account is viewing the page

    Domain
    Industry
    Revenue
    Size

    Back to the rep, when the account reads

Source: Uberflip customer story, undated, the PepsiCo campaign as Uberflip published it (original image; the rep’s contact card from a second image).What it shows: Uberflip’s seven touches for PepsiCo, redrawn as one montage without the timing between them.

For a selected set of accounts, marketing went first. An ABM vendor’s 2021 case study says: “First, the ABM team warms the account for 2-4 weeks. Then an SDR begins engaging the account directly,” while ABM moved on to the next account.4a

The book also splits the buying committee by title, with SDRs reaching senior directors and below and AEs reaching VPs and above.9

Under Nilsson, SDRs started discovery with a lower-level contact and worked up the account through referrals.1

  1. Sales names the accounts it wants and commits to the list for the quarter, in writing, with an owner and a launch date.

    The committed list

    Sales commitment, in writingThis quarter

    Fernhill Grocers

    • OwnerSam Ortiz, AE
    • Launch dateNovember 3
    • Held to it bySDR managers and ABM
  2. For a selected set of accounts, marketing goes first: ads and one page built for the account, for two to four weeks before an SDR engages.

    The warm-up

    Marketing goes first2 to 4 weeks

    Fernhill, warmed before the call

    • AdsPoint to Fernhill’s page
    • Account pageBuilt for Fernhill
    • SDR outreachNot yet
  3. SDRs begin engaging the account directly, with the message ABM and product marketing agreed for its industry and persona.

    Launch day

    To: Dana Whitfield, Fernhill GrocersLaunch day

    One message, one page

    Nina Park, the SDR, builds her sequence from the message agreed for Dana’s industry and persona. Her signature points to Fernhill’s page.

    • Senior directors and belowSDR
    • VPs and aboveAE
  4. Every account in the cohort is checked, touched or not: a working account has at least one logged SDR or AE activity in the past 90 days.

    The touch check

    The cohort, touched or not

    • Fernhill GrocersWorking
    • Ashgrove HealthWorking
    • Pinecrest MediaNot working

    Working means at least one logged SDR or AE activity in the past 90 days.

Source: Operations podcast, Apr 19, 2024 (publisher transcript); ABM vendor case study, Jun 14, 2021; Busting Silos (2023), Google Books snippet, PT177; Let’s Talk ABM, Oct 14, 2021; Busting Silos (2023), Google Books snippet, PT168; Busting Silos (2023), Google Books snippet, PT69What it shows: one fictional account through the motion: step 1 from Henry in 2024, step 2 from an ABM vendor case study and the 2023 book, step 3 from Carpio in 2021 and the book’s title split, step 4 from the book’s definition of a working account.

The result

Meetings rose, but they weren’t becoming opportunities, so Carpio changed the measure.

Carpio has said touches then improved but meetings were not becoming opportunities, so she changed the team’s main measure from SDR touches to opportunity conversion. Henry’s answer was to reach business-side buyers beyond data teams, such as asset management leaders at banks.5

  1. Jun 202175%quarter-over-quarter rise in SDR-booked meetings in ABM accounts
  2. Jun 20213xthe meeting rate in highly aligned one-to-one accounts
  3. Apr 20242–4xmeeting rates when ABM worked with SDRs, Carpio said
Source: ABM vendor case study, Jun 14, 2021; Operations podcast, Apr 19, 2024 (publisher transcript)What it shows: a vendor case study’s figures and Carpio’s own; each compares aligned accounts with others, and neither is a controlled test.

An ABM vendor reported the 75% rise after biweekly AE, SDR and ABM meetings began.4 Uberflip reports that a goal of tailored experiences for 30 accounts became “more than 1,500 one-to-one campaigns.”2b

What it took

It took a quarterly commitment from sales and someone on each team who owned their part.

Carpio named the 2021 stack: Uberflip for the pages, Intellimize to personalize them and 6sense for account data.6

Keep the committed list in view.

Turn the accounts sales committed to into an Audience, and see which ones show Signals.

Try for freeBook a demo

What to borrow

  1. Get the commitment before the warm-up. Sales names the accounts and is held to them for the quarter.
  2. Send every touch to one place. Ads, signatures and rep emails point to the same account page, so marketing controls what the account sees.
  3. Measure past the touch. Follow each warmed account to an SDR touch, a meeting and an opportunity. When meetings stop turning into opportunities, measure opportunities, as Carpio did.

How to build a version of this in Unify

Build it in Unify

From here on, the page describes our suggested version in Unify.

Snowflake joined account data from several vendors and counted an account as worked only once an SDR or AE logged activity on it. Unify combines your CRM, warehouse and product usage data with enrichment from 40+ sources, with warehouse tables synced in through a sync tool or the API.

One account, from signal to next step

Account
Kestrel Logistics, a freight company its AE committed to for the quarterThe Audience admits it on the SDR launch date your sales team sets in the CRM, November 3.
Signal
Four visitors read the data sharing page after the ads went live, and a Head of Data Platform started in SeptemberFrom website-visit and new-hire Signals.
Why it matters
Kestrel added two carrier partners this quarter, and the warm-up reached the people who would share shipment data with themAI Research adds this as account context on the rep’s task.
Next step
On launch day, Tessa Moreno, the SDR, calls Priya Natarajan, Senior Director of Analytics. The manual email waits for Tessa’s approval.From the SDR Play: below VP only. VP and above go to the AE’s Play.
Example data: the company and people are fictional. Features are Unify’s as documented, October 2026.

To start this week, have sales mark one committed cohort, its owners and its launch date in your CRM. Every row below reads those fields.

outbound motion
Do it in
Sales commits the accountsHeld for the quarter
An Audience on CRM fieldsSales sets the cohort, its launch date and the owner in Salesforce or HubSpot; the Audience reads them through two-way sync
One message per industry and personaAgreed before outreach
SequencesOne Sequence per industry and persona, written from the agreed message. AI Research adds account context on each task
Ads and an account pageBuilt and run by marketing
Your ad and web toolsUnify does not run them. Website-visit Signals show which cohort accounts the warm-up reached
SDRs follow the warm-upFor a selected set of accounts
A Play on the AudienceStarts when an account enters the Audience, which admits each account only once its CRM launch date arrives
SDRs below VPSenior directors and below
The SDR PlayAssigns the SDR, prospects director and senior director personas, 1 to 10 people per company, and enrolls them in a Sequence of calls, manual emails and action items the rep approves
AEs at VP and aboveThe executive conversation
The AE Play, split by titleSame Audience, VP and C-level personas only, owner set to the AE, manual steps. Our design
Accounts nobody workedNo logged SDR or AE activity in 90 days
Insights, plus a Slack alertInsights shows emails sent, replies and calls, so cohort accounts with no touch stand out. A Slack alert from the Play can flag them if your CRM syncs a last-contact date
From touch to opportunityThe measure Carpio moved
InsightsYour team creates opportunities in Salesforce or HubSpot; Insights > Pipeline generated follows the Play’s accounts to opportunity
Left: Snowflake’s model as its leaders and vendors described it, 2021 to 2024. Right: a proposed implementation using documented Unify building blocks (October 2026), with CRM configuration and people where noted.

The two Plays share one Audience and split it by title, so no person is in both.

Unify product demo, October 2026: a committed cohort, a Play that starts on launch day, research, people, a Sequence, and the touch check, in one conversation. A version of Snowflake’s flow, built from Unify’s documented features.

Put sales, ABM and SDRs on one account list in Unify

Start each SDR Play from the cohort sales committed to, with Sequences your reps approve

Build your versionBook a demo

Frequently asked questions

How does Snowflake coordinate ABM and SDR outreach?

Sales names the target accounts and commits to them for the quarter. ABM and product marketing agree a message for each industry and persona, and every touch, from ads to a rep’s email signature, points to one page built for the account. For a selected set of accounts, marketing warms the account first and an SDR follows.

How long does Snowflake warm an account before SDRs call?

There is no single rule for every call. A 2021 ABM vendor case study describes ABM warming selected accounts for two to four weeks before an SDR engages, and Carpio and Henry’s 2023 book describes a similar lead-in.

Who splits the buying committee between SDRs and AEs?

Carpio and Henry’s book, Busting Silos, sets SDR outreach at senior director and below and AE outreach at VP and above. Under Lars Nilsson, SDRs started discovery with a lower-level contact and worked up the account through referrals.

What results has Snowflake reported?

Snowflake staff and vendors report higher meeting rates where ABM and SDRs worked the same accounts, such as a 75% rise in SDR-booked meetings in ABM accounts in a 2021 vendor case and two to four times the meeting rate in a 2024 interview. These compare aligned accounts with others, so they are not controlled tests, and none isolates the warm-up. Carpio later found the extra meetings weren’t becoming opportunities and moved the team’s main measure to opportunity conversion.

How do I run a version of this in Unify?

Have sales mark the committed cohort and its launch date in your CRM and build an Audience from it. One Play assigns the SDR and prospects directors and senior directors; a second Play on the same Audience takes VP and above for the AE. Ads and account pages stay in your own tools, opportunities stay in your CRM, and Insights follows the cohort to opportunity.