The Unseen ICP: How Sysdig & Inverta Unlocked Growth by Looking Beyond the Usual Metrics

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Every B2B company wants to find its Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). We pour over firmographics, technographics, and buying signals, hoping to pinpoint the perfect targets. Yet, despite these efforts, our industry lacks any formalized methodology for defining our ICPs. 

This is the challenge Sysdig faced. Recognizing this gap, they partnered with Inverta, a leading B2B marketing agency known for its strategic approach. Inverta, in turn, tapped into the unique capabilities of AlignICP to help Sysdig dig deeper and uncover the hidden attributes of their most profitable customers. The result was a powerful new framework that transformed their go-to-market strategy.

The Blind Spots of Standard B2B Martech Tools

The modern B2B marketing tech stack—your CRM, marketing automation platforms, and ABM tools—are very capable, but they all have a foundational weakness. They assume you already know who your best customers are.

Think about it: Account-Based Marketing (ABM) platforms are designed to help you find more accounts that "look like" your most profitable customers. Their AI models and fit scores build on a client's pre-existing, and often incomplete, understanding of their ICP. These tools find look-alikes, but they don't help you answer a more fundamental question: "Are we looking at the right accounts to begin with?"

To clarify, here's a look at what most ABM fit models consider versus the critical metrics they often leave out:

As the chart shows, traditional fit models are great at finding new accounts based on attributes like closed won accounts, firmographics (industry, size) and technographics (tech stack). But they completely miss the key signals that identify leading and lagging customer lifecycle insights—from closing a deal to retaining and growing that account.

The Agency's Dilemma

This gap presents a significant challenge for marketing agencies. Without a deep, evidence-based understanding of a client's most profitable customers and who the optimal targets are, how can an agency run campaigns that are truly efficient and effective? How do they build a target account list that doesn't just generate leads but creates a qualified pipeline that actually converts, retains, and grows?

Inverta knew that if they took Sysdig's existing ICP definition, they would likely be optimizing for the wrong thing. They'd be building campaigns to acquire customers who might never turn into pipeline, convert into a closed won opportunity, or even become a profitable customer. This is why Inverta pulled in AlignICP to discover data-driven full-funnel ICP segments.

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Inverta's foresight led them to a different path: they leveraged AlignICP's AI-enabled segmentation analysis to discover Sysdig's segment attributes that predict long-term success while surfacing insights into segment acquisition performance. With those insights and Rich Copenhagen, Senior Director of Business Operations at Sysdig's understanding of their business, we were able to help Sysdig build a much smarter, higher-value target account list.

A New Approach to Defining the ICP

AlignICP's methodology goes beyond surface-level data. We analyze the entire customer lifecycle, connecting pre-sale data (like the source of the lead) with post-sale metrics (like NRR and churn). This holistic view allows them to uncover what actually makes a customer "ideal."

Here's how AlignICP's taxonomy redefines the target account list:

• Ideal (Strong Acquisition & Retention): These are the true "unicorns"—accounts that not only have a high win rate but also demonstrate strong retention and growth. They are the perfect dual fit for both your sales and customer success teams.
• Acceptable (Strong Acquisition, Weaker Retention): These accounts are a good initial fit, converting at a high rate and contributing to pipeline. However, they may be less likely to grow or have a higher churn risk. This segment represents a "message-market fit"—you can sell to them, but retaining them could be more challenging than “ideal fit” customer segments.
• Avoid: These are the accounts that, based on historical data, have a low return on investment. They are not worth pursuing because they have a low likelihood of converting, retaining, or expanding.

Check out The Definitive Guide to Data-Driven ICPs for a detailed breakdown of the process

With this new framework, AlignICP prepared a data-rich analysis for Inverta. Inverta's team then dissected the insights, identifying the specific attributes of each segment. They didn't just stop there; they also assessed the total addressable market for each category, ensuring that Sysdig's revenue goals were realistic based on the number of potential "Ideal" accounts in the world.

The Transformative Outcome

The results were transformational. By focusing on this new, more comprehensive set of metrics, the composition of Sysdig's target account list was fundamentally changed. The new list was smaller, more focused, and significantly more efficient.

This strategic shift allowed Inverta to help Sysdig achieve a massive win: an increase in marketing-sourced opportunities sizes by 36%.

This wasn't just about driving more leads; it was about driving better, higher-quality leads. As Rich, a key leader at Sysdig, puts it, “What I love about working with Inverta is they stepped back and asked, ‘Are we optimizing for the right thing?’ That was really eye-opening for me. We were looking at these companies with no consideration for whether they retain and grow.”

This collaboration proves that true growth isn't just about finding more customers. It's about finding the right customers—the ones who will not only buy your product but will also become long-term, profitable partners. By looking beyond the obvious metrics, Sysdig and Inverta unlocked a deeper understanding of their market, setting the stage for more sustainable and predictable growth.

Check out Inverta’s case study for more details on the situation and how we collaborated to help Sysdig unlock gold from their customer data to drive their 36% increase in average deal size. 

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