This is the living strategy document for the team to reach our wildly important company goals, the immediate next steps, and what we are actively working on — six projects multiplied by four impact metrics and nine big ideas, each one fueling the engine that connects every motion our team runs. It covers the AI capabilities redefining our competitive advantage, the team and weekly rhythm behind the execution, and the operating model that makes it all stick. One north star: growing high-quality leads that convert to trials, predictably, and at scale.
TL;DR
This is more than a project plan — it's the blueprint for how we bring everything we started in Chicago to life.
We're building these next two years in waves: four of them, each with its own micro-launches between. Each release makes the next one more powerful. It's the same philosophy behind every product rollout that actually sticks — you don't drop everything at once. You build conviction, earn trust, and let the work compound.
What you'll walk away with is a clear picture of where we are right now, real confidence in where we're heading, and — if I did this right — some of the same excitement I feel every time I sit down with this data. The opportunity is real. The momentum is real. And the most exciting ideas in here are the ones we haven't fully built yet.
We're onto something real. I'm ready to build it. — Alicia
As a takeaway from our on-site last week, I built this framework. The biggest takeaway is that I genuinely feel we are building something extraordinary over the next couple of years. In addition to a path towards hitting our trial numbers, we have the opportunity to build a sustainable system that helps us tie every number we report sync with the many motions we have in place — allowing us to connect every initiative to real outcomes while we launch Water and the soon-to-come Sun. What follows is my best thinking on how we get there together.
Every ambitious business wants to grow without drowning in complexity. They want a system that thinks ahead, moves with them, and makes their team extraordinary. That's what we are building.
ActiveCampaign is the leader in marketing AI automation — and the businesses that choose us don't just get software. They get a strategic advantage that makes their people more powerful, their campaigns smarter, and their growth more predictable.
We don't replace the talent businesses have built. We amplify it. Every marketer, analyst, and operator using AC becomes exponentially more effective — because the system does the heavy lifting on data, sequencing, and intelligence, leaving them free to do what humans do best: think strategically, build relationships, and make great decisions.
This year, we are launching many platform capabilities that change what's possible — and the six projects in this document are designed to have the data, campaigns, and infrastructure ready when they do.
⚡ No documented competitor is building this combination at scale — AI that learns from your specific dataset to generate custom templates, paired with a cross-platform intelligence layer that turns your own data into next-step decisions. This is worth teasing everywhere.
🌊 Now — Water
Generate beautiful emails from your own data
Upload previous campaigns, content, and project documentation. Water learns your voice, your patterns, your brand — and generates ready-to-send emails you can approve in a moment. The data infrastructure we're building now feeds directly into this.
AI email generation · live this year
🌅 Coming — Sun
Your data already knows what to do next
Most tools show you a dashboard and leave the thinking to you. Sun synthesizes everything your customers have already told us — every contact, every send, every pipeline signal — and surfaces what to do next, specific to them. Not generic insights. Your intelligence, made actionable.
Revenue intelligence · coming soon
Why this matters — estimated impact
The work that's been done has already generated real data to learn from — and the Airtable integration will give us even more precision. What follows is grounded in both AC's own performance numbers and published SaaS benchmarks. These are directional targets worth building toward.
3.1×
The activation multiplier
Behavior-triggered onboarding sequences activate 3.1× more trial users to key milestones vs. static drip. This is not an incremental improvement — it's a structural change in how we move people from trial to customer. The MQL scoring work is building directly toward this. Vertical-specific messaging amplifies it further: the right story, to the right buyer, at the right moment.
Source: ProductLed / SaaS activation research · behavioral vs. static onboarding · published industry benchmark
39%
Cold trial open rates — the previously interested audience is just waiting
Nearly 2 out of every 5 people who walked away from a trial are still opening our emails. That means the conversation was never really over — we just haven't sent the right message yet. If we reactivated even a fraction of that engaged audience, we'd be generating new customers without spending a dollar on new acquisition. An audit of the current welcome, nurture, and win-back sequences — reviewed with Shauna and the lifecycle team — is one of the most meaningful opportunities in front of us right now.
Our trial-to-paid conversion rate has been improving and is stabilizing around 19% — at or above SaaS industry norms. That means roughly 81% of trials don't convert yet. Not a failure stat — an opportunity stat. This funnel already exists inside our data. It is not a new audience. It is an under-served one. Targeting it doesn't require new acquisition. It requires using what we already have.
Source: AC internal conversion data (Apr 2026) · SaaS benchmark range: 14–25% (Totango / Paddle ProfitWell 2025 SaaS Benchmarks Report)
~40 hrs
Weekly hours reclaimed through reporting automation
The ELT process previously required 60 hours/week across two contractors. With Looker → Airtable automation and structured templates, the same output takes an estimated 15–20 hours — freeing 40+ hours per week for campaign work, scoring, and growth initiatives that move the actual number.
Based on documented contractor hours (60/wk) + industry automation efficiency benchmarks for structured reporting workflows
✦ Where it gets tactical
Six projects, one system — click to explore
Priority 1
ELT weekly reporting
Active
Priority 2
Mailchimp Switcher
In flight
Priority 3
Airtable integration
In build
Priority 4
Scoring framework
In design
Priority 5
Monks SFTP
This week
Priority 6
Big Ideas
Forward
Project deep dives
Notes auto-save in this browser
Priority 1 · every Monday
ELT weekly reporting
The backbone of everything. A Monday-to-Thursday workflow that turns raw data into a strategy-ready story for ELT — covering the full funnel from traffic to trials to ARR, by source, region, and onboarding signal.
Data pulled Monday
Traffic by source — paid, organic, direct
Top 12 priority countries + other bucket
MQL volume, demos, pricing requests
Trial count by region and source
Switcher data: who they left, conversion rate
Onboarding answers: size, contacts, experience
The funnel we measure
Traffic → MQL (scored behavioral signals)
MQL → trial (primary company KPI)
Trial → demo or pricing request
Trial → conversion (ARR — north star)
Who is buying big and why
Weekly rhythm
Monday: pull + validate (Alicia + Nick)
Tuesday: deep dive on movements, Airtable context
Wednesday: build the story + office hours review
Thursday: Rachel presents to ELT
Why it matters
Aligned RevOps reporting drives 36% more revenue growth. Clean Monday data is the foundation — scoring, Airtable context, and campaign attribution all depend on it. When a country moves, we need the story, not just the number.
The primary focus of the weekly rhythm is preparing ELT numbers that tell a complete story — which requires Airtable data alignment to connect every number to an initiative. Equally important is initiative-level reporting: the Mailchimp takeover is already in flight and additional platform takeovers are on deck, each needing its own reporting cadence. Ad hoc data requests will become more streamlined as Airtable matures. On the vendor side, active work with Monks on spend data and with Gina on budget planning. Bigger open question: what's happening with demos that didn't convert, and are there opportunities in the onboarding email and SMS flows we haven't fully addressed yet?
Next steps
Open questions
Timeline
Priority 2 · in flight
Mailchimp Switcher
A multi-motion conquest system — currently focused on Mailchimp, designed to become the template for every competitor takeout. The goal is to build a repeatable process that is measurable, optimizable, and connected to ELT-level reporting.
The market signal — why now
Mailchimp
−17.8%
Active domains dropped 283K → 233K in 4 months (Mar–Jul 2025). 3:1 ratio of former-to-current users. Post-Intuit pricing driving accelerated churn.
HubSpot
$$
"Safe but expensive." Highest price point in category. Price-sensitive customers actively looking for automation depth at a lower cost.
Brevo
↑
€500M raised, unicorn (Dec 2025). Aggressive on volume pricing. Rising challenger but weaker on automation depth and CRM integration.
RD Station
LATAM
Dominant in Brazil. Primarily a LATAM story. AC differentiates on global reach, AI roadmap, and automation depth.
Motions we are running
Churned + expired customer outreach
Lookalike lists from converters → ads + winback
Cold list outreach via Unify
Prospect list campaigns
Webinars: AC vs. Mailchimp differences
"Easy button" — migrate from competitor to AC
What we report — due Monday
Total switchers — weekly count
Switchers by competitor source
Newsletter campaign performance
Ad performance by placement + creative
Benyamin's review pack — same cadence as ELT
Both reports tracking to Monday as of today ✦
Building the machine, not just the campaign
Analyze what is working and what is not. Provide objective recommendations on where to invest more and where to pull back. Use Airtable to unify everything down to task level — with metrics tied to each task — rolling up to initiatives and QBRs. All teams get near real-time access. The Mailchimp process becomes the standard template for every competitor takeout.
Long-term: automated stakeholder intelligence
Build an Airtable notification system that sends relevant reporting, metrics, and pending tasks to each stakeholder automatically — customized per user. Benyamin gets switcher metrics. Nick gets analytical depth. Rachel gets the overview. Marissa gets project progress. The dashboard is always on, always current, always relevant.
Next steps
Open questions
Timeline
Priority 3 · in build
Airtable integration
The connective tissue. Airtable unifies OKRs, projects, campaigns, and deliverables under one naming and process convention — enabling cross-team roll-ups, AI wave tracking, and the context layer that explains why numbers move.
Architecture (top down)
OKRs → Initiatives & Programs → Projects
Projects → Channels · Tactics · Teams · Tasks
Each team member gets their own Airtable interface view
Deliverables surface through personalized interfaces — not shared dashboards everyone has to navigate
AI wave launches to track
Water — AI email generation from your own data
Sun — visibility and actionable intelligence
Wave 3 — TBD, leadership input needed
Wave 4 — TBD, leadership input needed
Naming & process unification
Consistent naming conventions across all teams and tools
Standardized intake processes for new projects and campaigns
Order of operations defined so data tells the right story
One language — from OKR to task — everyone speaks it
Automations built in
Weekly digest — automatically delivered to each stakeholder
Alerts on project status changes and milestone hits
Intelligent fields that flag anomalies, surface context, and reduce manual updates
Looker → Sheets → Airtable: one pipeline, always current
Nick's report tells leadership what happened. Airtable tells them why. Claude helps find the story between them.
Next steps
Open questions
Timeline
Priority 4 · in design
Scoring framework
Four scores, in sequence. Each one builds on the last. The goal is intelligent lead routing — so the right action happens automatically, at the right moment — 3×ing our productivity and proactivity as a team.
01
Onboarding score
Alicia owns
Needs adjustment
02
MQL score
Nick McClanahan
In progress
03
SQL score
After MQL is complete
Capacity block
04
Fourth score
TBD with team
TBD
Onboarding signals (score 01)
How many employees? (deal size signal)
How many contacts? (pricing model — critical)
Switching from another provider? (highest intent)
Experience with email analytics? (sophistication)
Primary use case? (vertical segmentation input)
Constraint + long-term strategy
Sales capacity is the current blocker for MQL outreach. We need routing thresholds: which leads go to sales, lifecycle automation, or self-serve nurture. We also build campaigns to support sales long-term — so when capacity opens back up, the infrastructure is already there and ready. Predictive scoring improves lead gen ROI by +77%.
Next steps
Open questions
Timeline
Priority 5 · this week
Monks SFTP integration
Resolving the date format issue this week to unlock clean ad spend data — so we can see what we're spending, where it's going, and whether it's driving the trials we need.
What we're solving for
SFTP connection — date format fix in progress
Spend by channel: search, social, display
Spend by placement and ad type
Attribution: which ads generate which trials
Budget planning coordination with Gina
Questions we'll finally answer
What's the cost per trial by source?
Which placements drive highest-value leads?
Are we over-indexed on any single channel?
What's the Q3 spend game plan?
Current status
Date field formatting is the blocker — being resolved this week. Once clean, connects to Looker → Google Sheets → Airtable, putting ad spend in context alongside every other channel metric. Gina partnership on budget planning begins once data is flowing.
These aren't hypotheticals waiting for a budget. They're the natural extensions of the infrastructure we're already building — ideas with signal, with data, and with a clear first step. Some are ready to prototype now. All of them are on the map.
🎯Turn intent into a trialThe moment someone raises their hand, we should be ready to catch them.
The "Cut 13 Hours" Welcome
A smart website prompt — what's the hardest part of your process? How many campaigns, how many contacts? Drop your email and see your personalized recommendation — and then, naturally, start a trial. By the time sales talks to them, they already know the product solves their problem. That's not a cold lead. That's a conversation that's already started.
→ Data needed: pre-trial drop-off, pain point categories, sales handoff conversion rate
Webinars That Become Trials
The AI Lab webinar drove the most trials, the only conversions, and the highest-quality demos of anything we've run. The formula: participants need a live trial to follow along. We solve real business problems on screen. The webinar is the trial. The trial is the sale. Industry-specific editions. Competitor migration sessions. Feature deep dives with live automation builds.
→ Signal: AI Lab data confirms the model · next step: quarterly webinar calendar
Activation Nudges — the Right Push at the Right Moment
Trial users who invite a teammate or hit a key milestone convert at dramatically higher rates. Three activation milestones. Automated nudges timed to behavior. Connects directly to the MQL scoring work Nick is building — and creates a conversion engine that compounds every week it runs.
→ Source: 3.1× activation lift (ProductLed) · MQL scoring foundation already in build
🌍Meet them in their momentThe right message finds people. A great message finds them at exactly the right time.
The Cultural Calendar Play
Fashion Week in Milan. Carnival in Brazil. Golden Week in Japan. Diwali business season in India. These are the moments when mid-market businesses are actively investing in growth tools — and we should be there with a message that says we see them. Localized campaigns tied to real cultural moments outperform generic sends significantly.
→ Data needed: top-12 country performance by month · cultural calendar · vertical by country
Same Tool, Different Story
A healthcare practice and a fashion retailer use AC completely differently. Vertical-specific messaging — lifecycle emails, ad copy, landing pages — is the highest-leverage, lowest-cost multiplier available right now. We don't build new product. We tell the right story to the right buyer at the right moment. And it feeds directly into the 3.1× behavioral activation number.
→ Data needed: trial data by industry · conversion rate by vertical · messaging baseline
A Social Presence Worth Having
YouTube for the power user who wants to see AC in action before they buy. Instagram for the mid-market owner who decides with their eyes. TikTok for the SMB decision-maker under 40 who learns in 60 seconds. AC is a product people love once they understand it — social closes the discovery gap. We need a plan, not just a presence.
→ Data needed: current social traffic contribution · competitor social audit · platform benchmarks
🚪The great migrationThey've already decided to leave. We're just making sure they land here.
The Easy Button — Frictionless Migration at Scale
People leaving Mailchimp have already made the hard decision. They just haven't chosen where yet. A dedicated switcher track — landing page, guided migration, onboarding sequence built around the pain points they're leaving behind — captures the highest-intent prospects in the funnel. Built once for Mailchimp. Replicated for HubSpot, Brevo, RD Station. The process is the product.
→ Signal: 3:1 Mailchimp former-to-current ratio · −17.8% active domain decline confirmed
We Remember You — The Win-Back Story
People who trialed and went cold are not gone. They're the most qualified audience we have that we're not talking to. A win-back sequence that starts with our story: how AC was founded, what problem it was built to solve. Personalized by what we already know about them. Then: what didn't we give you? Water and Sun are the news worth coming back for.
→ Source: 39% open rate on cold trial nurture (AC internal) · lifecycle audit with Shauna recommended
📡The intelligence layerWhen the right information reaches the right person automatically, everything moves faster.
Everyone Gets Their Own Digest
Rachel's digest: full org overview and key signals, weekly. Nick + Alicia: analytical reporting depth. Benyamin: all initiative updates with bite-size summaries. Marissa: project progress at a high level. Each one automated from Airtable — not a new meeting, a customized output from infrastructure we're already building. The right information to the right person, automatically. No more ad-hoc requests that pull people out of deep work.
→ Foundation: Airtable integration (P3) · timeline: ready to prototype in Q3
Why this bucket matters most
The intelligence layer isn't the flashiest idea in this section — but it's the one that makes every other idea sustainable. When each person automatically receives exactly what they need to make their next decision, we stop spending time on information management and start spending it on outcomes. This is what Sun is built for. And this is the infrastructure we're laying the foundation for right now.
What to prototype first
Open questions
Q3 / Q4 roadmap
The team behind this
RG
Rachel Garcia
VP, Revenue & Performance Marketing
Steering the revenue vision and OKR alignment. Holds the WIG and the room.
NM
Nick McClanahan
Dir., Marketing Analytics & Operations
Data integrity, Looker, and MQL scoring. Makes every number trustworthy and decision-ready.
MP
Marissa Price
Dir., Marketing Strategy & Planning
Organizes initiatives through motion project management. Owns process architecture and execution cadence.
BE
Benyamin Elias
Senior Dir., Growth Marketing
Project oversight across growth and demand generation. Connects every motion to the revenue story.
The weekly operating rhythm — Monday through Friday
Monday
Pull, validate, and review
ELT data pull w/ Nick's Claude project
Validate all sources, flag anomalies
Week-over-week movement scan
Top 12 countries quick review
Dual reporting due
Tuesday
What moved and why
Deep dive into ups and downs
Pull Airtable campaign context
Cross-reference with initiative activity
Draft preliminary narrative
Analysis day
Wednesday
Build the story + team review
Organize and deepen the narrative
Tie data to business context + OKRs
Office hours: all projects + standardization
Build presentation structure
Office hours
Thursday
Polish and present
Early: final presentation tweaks
Rachel to present to the ELT team
Afternoon: all projects + side tickets
Campaign builds, scoring, requests
ELT day
Friday
Look ahead
Review what the week surfaced
Plan next week's focus areas
Update Airtable initiative progress
Prep Monday pull infrastructure
Forward planning
→ Bring it home
Strategic recommendation — how we execute all of it
Slow down to speed up — the operating model that makes it stick
Last week we put a name to something we'd all been feeling: the cost of running fast without a shared system. 4DX isn't a new methodology we're adopting — it's the structure that turns what we already agreed on into something we can actually measure and hold together. We've seen six projects and nine ideas on the horizon. The question isn't whether we can do it. It's how we make sure we actually do it together, consistently, over one quarter. That's all it takes to build this rhythm. Teams using 4DX achieve their goals 2–3× more often than those without a shared operating model.
Wildly Important Goal
Grow high-MQL leads that convert into trials — one north star, owned collectively.
Lead Measures
2–3 predictive, controllable actions per team. Built into Airtable. Tracked weekly.
Scoreboard
This document + Airtable + ELT brief. Everyone sees the same data, always.
Cadence
Wednesday office hours — 15 minutes. Not a meeting. A rhythm. A commitment.
How we make this real — one quarter, six steps
01
Team process audit
Each team maps their current workflow — inputs, outputs, tools, handoffs. Alicia coordinates. 2 weeks.
02
WIG working session
All stakeholders align on the Wildly Important Goal together. We set the number, we own it collectively.
03
Define lead measures
2–3 predictive, influenceable actions per team that move the WIG. Built into Airtable as trackable tasks.
04
Build the scoreboard
Airtable + Looker become the single shared scoreboard. Everyone sees the same data in near real time.
05
Launch the cadence
Wednesday office hours begins. 15-minute pulse check per project. Not a meeting. A rhythm.
06
First retrospective
At 30 days: what's working, what isn't, what changes. Iterate every 30 days and keep going.
Rachel holds the WIG · Alicia + Nick build and maintain the scoreboard · Marissa organizes initiatives through motion project management · Benyamin Elias leads project oversight · every Wednesday we give a quick update on the status of moving us forward together.
AM
Alicia Martin
Revenue Marketing Analyst · ActiveCampaign
I've spent my career learning how to make complicated things make sense — and honestly, I just really love doing it.
At Twilio I sat with clients inside their systems — not to audit them, but to actually understand how everything fit together. Where the naming conventions had gotten tangled. What each team was asking for versus what they were actually getting. I'd help untangle it, build the reporting that made sense for the people reading it, map out where to test and where to invest, and hand over something that felt like a plan, not just a presentation.
Before that, at Targetbase, I was deep inside the data itself — learning how information flows from a CRM through intake and formatting all the way to the moment it becomes a story someone can act on. Data dictionaries, campaign displays, project management, order of operations. I learned that how data is organized at the beginning shapes every decision that comes after.
I bring both of those things here. My goal isn't to make things feel complicated — it's to do the complicated work so that when we're in the room together, everything feels simple and obvious and possible. That's the job. That's what I'm here for.