Jonathan Windham

Here's how Allbirds is LOSING ~1.82% revenue... With a simple pricing display error. The Problem: → Value proposition unclear → $98 full price displayed during sale → Customers forced to do mental math → $69 sale price not immediately visible 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁: ❌ ~1.82% revenue loss ❌ Increased cart abandonment 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: ✅ Highlight the discount ✅ Show savings percentage ✅ Display both prices clearly ✅ Make value obvious instantly Want access to our Allbirds A/B test results? 👉 Like this post 👉 Comment “@Allbirds” 👉 Repost this for priority access I’ll DM you exclusive access to the breakdown 📚

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$250M ARR. 180K customers. Which ActiveCampaign GTM strategy worked best? 👉 Conversion optimization As you can see, it was the only one graded A by Kyle Poyar It's because Casey Hill, the Sr. Growth Manager @ ActiveCampaign, found that personalized content blocks worked particularly well for conversion. Personalized content blocks are: - Custom content pieces - Directed for a specific industry - To funnel them to the right path Let's say you're targeting B2B SaaS founders: - Offer lead magnets on scaling SaaS companies - Showcase industry-specific case studies on reducing churn - Funnel them to relevant SaaS webinars, whitepapers, or success stories This is how ActiveCampaign is getting hundreds of folks making it the second step to demo or pricing pages. Full article on Growth Unhinged: https://lnkd.in/g2PjZ-UD #strategy #startups #marketing #sales P.S. Want to build custom content pieces to boost conversions? involve.me ▶ AI-powered interactive form builder used for data collection by 3K+ businesses worldwide

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There's gold in these hills: 👉 Investments in retention can double as acquisition vehicles 👉 Customers do all of the selling to the prospects who join the events 👉 You can do no wrong by doing right by your customers Timeless lessons, Drew Neisser.

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Talked with two CMOs today doing $10m and $100m+ in revenue at their companies. Here's their hot takes: 1) The CMO role is back. Years of a focus of growth marketing has left a lot of companies endlessly hunting the next optimization but not building a sustainable, compounding marketing mix. CMOs who can guide a product and brand from first principles are being added. 2) Data-driven is a false god. Most analytics is tablestakes and the advanced stuff is too messy to rely on. Good strategy and creative is always reliable. 3) Many companies they see struggle with marketing have either far too simple or far too complicated marketing tech stacks for their stage. Underrated area of friction holding them back from speed of iteration and quality execution. Team>Martech fit is a thing. 🤔

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Reducing churn isn't just a nice-to-have for large companies; it's a necessity if you want to survive in the subscription economy. Subscription businesses often focus heavily on acquiring new customers, but when churn rates outpace new sign-ups, it’s a wake-up call. This isn’t just about customer experience—it's a fundamental issue with how your business addresses pricing, service, and product complexity. Here are five powerful steps to tackle churn: 1. Dive deep into your customer buying patterns to tailor offerings that resonate with different segments. 2. Don’t let seasonality automatically lead to churn—consider offering annual subscriptions or creating budget-friendly options. 3. Gather feedback relentlessly to pinpoint product issues—are you falling behind competitors? 4. Personalize interactions and communication instead of relying solely on automation. Consumers crave real connections. 5. Set up a robust revenue recovery process to deal with failed payments efficiently. Embrace these tactics and watch as your churn rates decline. By becoming proactive rather than reactive, you're not just saving customers but building a loyal community. How have you tackled churn in your company? Share your insights. https://lnkd.in/etnqkTVq

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I just got off the phone with Eric Siu (CEO of Single Grain) who has done SEO for Amazon, Uber, and Nordstrom. I asked him what he would do in SEO today if he was a $1m ARR SaaS founder. His response shocked me: - It didn’t involve building a single backlink - It didn’t involve hiring an army of content writers - It wasn’t creating tens of thousands of spamming pages with AI It’s a secret that has been around forever… And that ANY startup founder can start doing now. It’s something that I’ve decided to do with RB2B, and seen major impact. And it’s something we’re doing - albeit in a very differently - at Retention.com. Want to find out how to win in SEO in 2025? Join me and Eric at 3pm (et) tomorrow for a LIVE workshop where Eric will spill all of his secrets, and you’ll walk away with SEO tactics that you can put into practice NOW. Register here: https://events.rb2b.com/

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Yesterday the CEO of GMass said that RB2B was “The WORST SaaS he’s ever used”. Here’s my response to this EPIC shitpost: Backstory: - I have (incorrectly) sold this tool as a source of leads and demos until now - That is not what it is, nor is it a source of emails to blast… It is a signal - That being said, implying accuracy is 0% is factually incorrect - No one who does anything like we do has better accuracy - But shitposting ME gets you visibility Here’s 4 Reasons why this guy doesn’t know how to use RB2B: 1. This isn’t for a site that gets 1000 signups (mostly overseas) in a day The value of resolving a website with a US-based publisher network - as was highlighted by several people in the comments - is low-volume prospecting of US prospects. If 80% of your users are spammers from overseas, we’re not going to match them. 2. Here’s a famous unicorn who has actually tested the data’s results: - 33,000 pilot size - 1,800 ICP visitors - REALLY scrubbed the data hard - Sent to 1,800 ICP visitors (NOT 33,000) - 10x higher response rate than any outbound channel So… They upsized to a 700,000 contact annual deal, closed yesterday. This is how you use RB2B. 3. Retention.com gets value daily (that would be impossible w/ 0% accuracy): In the last 24 hours, we’ve had the CEO, Chief Data Officer, and SVP of Legal of a company that acquired one of our top partners hit our site - because R! would be a great follow-on acquisition. Other sightings from yesterday: - Founder of huge client we lost last month - Senior lifecycle manager at large ecomm agency - Senior global campaign manager of massive consumer app (dream prospect) - VP ops of large publisher (new TAM for us, just closed a huge deal here) - Head of product innovation at a current customer - Large growth equity PE firm - Owner of small Shopify store worth talking to This was out of a total of 53 profiles. If what the GMass CEO said is true, yesterday couldn’t have happened. 4. MadKudu found we matched 65% of their form fills (the person, not email) Check out Sam Levan’s post about us vs. Clearbit: https://lnkd.in/ggkRncgU Our coverage was lower (because we only do US for now). But we got the person correct for 84% of their form fills. TAKEAWAY This is a really annoying post. But here’s the thing. We need to change the narrative around this tech. - It’s not to create a list of leads to spam  - It’s to filter out signal from the needle in the haystack - It’s to nudge people with the right message at the right time I agree if you look at RB2B how he looked at it, it looks bad. But our big customers are filtering down to ICP and engaging appropriately. We have a lot to build, but if we’re able to: - Filter the signal  - Route it appropriately, and   - Tell the rep exactly what to do RB2B has the potential to be a KILLER product. But we’re a long way from that reality. So, in the meantime, Gmass CEO… Keep shitposting. You know I like it.

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Want to see how we found $100M in revenue with an 8.7% increase in funnel conversion? This was a recent client analysis - Socure vs current vendor - for a major Fintech. ◼️ Applications per year: 38 million ◼️ Incremental approved applications by Socure (as %): 9% ◼️ Incremental approved applications by Socure (as #): 3,400,000 ◼️ Fintech's revenue per year per customer: $30 ◼️ Incremental revenue captured per year: $100,000,000 You read that right. Literally, not using Socure was costing them $100M a year. We did this while also capturing 55% of their previously uncaught identity fraud. This is going to change their business.

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I talked with 12+ marketing execs at 9-12-figure retail and QSR companies about their SMS marketing vendor. Here are the 4 features that kept these VPs hooked (and a few that lost customers). //1. User-friendly interface The Director of Marketing at a $500M accessories retailer shared, “I love its simplicity and flexibility; it’s so user-friendly we can build all our campaigns ourselves.” The Marketing Manager at a $10B furniture retailer also loved the platform's UI. She appreciated: - Its straightforward campaign setup - And its streamlined approach to segmenting audiences - Which allowed her to personalize their users’ experiences //2. Exceptional customer support The Director of Marketing for the accessories retailer also said, “The team is exceptional and always available.” He specifically loved: - The weekly progress calls - Their dedicated success manager - Their proactive approach to campaign success //3. Expertise in regulatory compliance A VP at a $10B apparel and accessories retailer shared, “I sleep well at night not having to worry about legal challenges with this vendor in our corner. They are best-in-class at keeping up with changes to telecom laws and making sure we’re compliant.” //4. Personalization features Several vendors loved that the platform made it easy to: - Segment their audience - Test elements for performance - Personalize their messaging campaigns The Director of Marketing at the $500M accessories retailer gave a shout-out to their A/B testing. She loves the platform’s detailed reports that make data interpretation and campaign management headache-free. –– But some buyers were frustrated by this vendor. They didn’t like: - How much it cost - Challenges with testing - Difficulty assessing its ROI - The lack of hands-on team support - Not enough control over personalization features Of course – No vendor will get straight aces across the board. But when you’ve analyzed as many reviews as we have at Alium… … You start to see patterns in what clients appreciate the most. And vendors who: - Provide effective features - Make interfaces intuitively easy to use - Go the extra mile and offer proactive customer support — Are the ones that consistently win these clients’ RFPs (and hearts).

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Is Marketing Attribution really dead? Not if done right. There's been chatter about the decline of traditional attribution methods, but it’s not attribution that’s failing—it's the outdated approaches. Many marketers rely on siloed tools and oversimplified models like last-touch or first-touch, leading to the belief that "attribution is broken."🚩 Marketing attribution thrives when: ✅ You have visibility across channels and touchpoints.  ✅ It’s integrated with your CRM (like Salesforce).  ✅ It’s based on trustworthy data. At Full Circle Insights, we believe attribution should focus on finding the right answers. By connecting sales and marketing data in Salesforce, teams can identify what drives revenue effectively. The real question isn’t whether attribution is dead but whether your strategies are suited for today’s buyer journey. Marketing attribution isn’t fading, it’s evolving—and when done right, it’s powerful. What do you think? Drop your thoughts below.👇

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I sat down with John Roman, CEO of the $30M BattlBox, and asked him to share his complete retention playbook for subscription brands in 2024. Here are 5 game-changing tactics most subscription brands completely miss: 1. You think retention is all about product quality You focus solely on improving your product, believing that's enough to keep customers. Solution: Create a members-only community (e.g., Facebook group) where employees actively engage with customers. Offer exclusive content, giveaways, and live videos to add intangible value beyond the product. This builds a sense of belonging and increases emotional investment in your brand. 2. You're not leveraging data for targeted interventions Solution: Analyze your churn data to identify key drop-off points in the customer lifecycle. Example: BattlBox noticed a significant drop between the 3rd and 4th renewal. Implement surprise and delight tactics at these critical moments: ↳ Send unexpected discount emails ↳ Offer a free gift ↳ Provide early access to new products 3. Your retention efforts lack creativity If your idea of customer appreciation is a generic "thank you" email, you're missing out. Solution: Create unique, high-value experiences that customers can't get elsewhere: ↳ Organize large-scale events (e.g., BattlBox's tank shooting experience) ↳ Offer substantial prizes ($100,000 giveaway including a Jeep and trip to Africa) ↳ Announce these after renewals to show you're genuinely giving back 4. You've given up on churned customers Once a customer cancels, you consider them lost forever. Solution: Develop a win-back call strategy: ↳ Call churned customers 90-120 days after cancellation ↳ Position it as a customer service call, not a sales pitch ↳ Genuinely seek to understand why they left ↳ Present tailored solutions based on their feedback This can become a profitable full-time position with the right approach. 5. You're not maximizing acquisition opportunities You play it safe with campaigns, fearing logistics issues. Solution: When you find a winning campaign, scale aggressively: ↳ Push your limits on ad spend ↳ Be transparent with customers about potential delays ↳ Figure out logistics as you go - don't let them hold you back Remember: It's easier to retain a customer than acquire a new one. TL;DR Retention isn't just about product quality. It's about creating genuine connections, leveraging data for targeted interventions, and continuously experimenting with creative strategies. The best way to start is by building a community around your brand and using data to identify critical moments in the customer lifecycle. (Full episode in the comments)

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Yesterday, I ran a GTMsession for GTMfund portfolio company founders and their executive teams with the brand and content marketing legend, Udi Ledergor 🏳‍🌈. (🤔 GTM what now? GTMfund… GTMnow…) Yes, we have more words attached to the acronym GTM, though not widely talked about since they’re internal. GTMsessions are monthly private digital live sessions on various go-to-market topics, led by an executive operator who is an expert in the field. They’re available to GTMfund portfolio companies and their executive teams. Being closed-door and not open to the public, these sessions allow any and all questions to be comfortably asked, the conversation tailored to be hyper-specific to startups and their current concerns, questions, etc. We didn't even get through half of the moderated points that I had prepared because the questions for Udi just kept rolling in (a good thing, that's the point of these sessions). Udi dropped some 🔥 insights that we’ll share more on later, but for now, Stan Rymkiewicz nailed summarizing key takeaways on how Gong thinks about content creation and distribution that I've dropped in the comments. One key pain point discussed in the session was the challenge of keeping up with the ever-changing landscape of content marketing. It often feels like by the time one strategy is implemented, its effectiveness has already diminished. So, what’s next? How do you stay ahead of the curve? Since GTMsessions are private, their recordings aren’t shared openly. However, the feedback was so phenomenal that we knew other revenue leaders could benefit from the conversation. If you’re a revenue leader looking to understand the future of content marketing and stay ahead of the curve: Join me for a GTMnow digital live event with Udi Ledergor 🏳‍🌈 , Jon Miller, and Pete Lorenco. You'll learn from them how to stay two steps ahead and walk away with content tactics and inspiration. 🗓 June 18th at 10:00 AM PST / 1:00 PM EST 👉 To register: https://lnkd.in/gsdsai23 (pictured here: two passionate hand talkers 👋 )

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𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬 & 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝟑 GTM leaders and practitioners must analyze large amounts of market, product, and customer data for informed decision-making. They also need to communicate these decisions to key stakeholders and inspire action. While AI can help digest and structure this information, a human in the loop is still necessary for decision-making and effective communication with stakeholders. This is where synthesis and the rule of 3 come into play. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐈 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞? 💡 𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬: Set aside a regular time slot at the end of every day to process all the information from meetings, reports, emails, customer discussions, etc. Look for key themes in the data and all the notes. Align them with your and your company's core priorities and decide which ones to filter out. Then, distill it down to the core concepts. (Pro tip: Keep an rolling doc on these themes, and use it as a source for performance reviews or planning later!) 3️⃣ 𝐑𝐮𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝟑: As one of the fundamental rules of great presenters, the rule of three encourages communicators to present their messages and takeaways in groups of three. Why three? This number is large enough to encapsulate multiple concepts, yet small enough for the audience to remember. If you are new to this, practice this rule in everyday communication with your spouse, family, and friends when summarizing a story or describing a vacation. Sometimes my family teases me when I add a filler third point just to reach three 🙂 Don't force it, not everything needs to be in 3's.

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Good read on the current (and near-future) state of GTM tech, if y'all haven't seen it. Worth 15m of your time to digest and consider. Some thoughts from my initial read: -Modern GTM stacks are built around four components: inputs, storage, capabilities, and federation (how data gets moved between the other components -"If you can’t move data because of your vendors or system complexity, you’re screwed." -"Having a highly-flexible stack means you can easily onboard and offboard vendors to create systems that fit your unique needs with the best tools possible without confusing/burdening the team or partners." -"Last year Growth Unhinged featured how seed-funded Thena was replicating 5-10 SDRs by using off-the-shelf tools, like Keyplay, Clay, and Clearbit. Rather than hiring 10 people to solve basic SDR problems, 10 tools did it instead. This resulted in a steady drip of inbound leads from a variety of channels, all turnkey initiated." -"The flipside of this early proliferation of tools was a maintenance cost. Instead of needing 10 SDRs, they needed just as much time to setup, manage and maintain the stack." -"We often went on a Marie Kondo-esque decluttering spree, ruthlessly auditing our tools and asking, "Does this spark joy... I mean, provide value?"

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My first job out of college, I worked at an agency that was implementing a new, innovative technology for B2B marketing - Marketing Automation Platforms. Ah, it was a simpler time: gated ebooks, email nurtures, linear journeys–total control and straight-forward measurability. That was OVER A DECADE  AGO. Think of how much has changed since then… ☎ In 2010, the majority of cell phones were not “Smart” (and we still called them as such). 🌩 “The cloud” wasn’t a thing. Over 90% of data was held in local servers. 📈 LI had less than 100 million users in 2010. Today, more than 1 billion users in 200 countries. It’s mind boggling to be pulling from the same playbook from over a decade ago. Technology has changed, society has changed, buyer behavior and selling has changed. And if you can’t take my word for it, take the word of the Marketo grandfather himself :)

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You're not the only association that gets phone calls from members asking where content lives on your website. Not the best look, that's for sure. Why isn't your best content findable? We’ve spent years helping associations like yours tackle this exact challenge. The simple solution? A combo of sound content strategy and powerful AI Search. Let's break it down: 💡 Content Strategy: It's your blueprint. Ensuring every piece of content is audience-centric, goal-driven, and constantly refined based on real feedback. 💡 AI Search: This is no ordinary website search. AI Search breaks down silos, delivers precise results, and curates all disparate content sources into a single index. Your content is discoverable and useful again. Combine these two, and you've got a website dream team! Check out the 8 ways we've help revolutionize the way content gets found for organizations just like yours. https://lnkd.in/gBhG_PCq #federatedsearch #facetedsearch #fusesearch #aisearch #contentstrategy #assnchat #associations

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I'm bootstrapping a B2B media company called Exit Five (if you haven't heard). Here are some updates from last week as we build: • NEW BRAND: Finalized new designs for the website, rolled out our rebrand inside of the community, and prepared to hit publish on the public rebrand this week - you'll see a new logo, colors, and overall branding from Exit Five. Eli and his team at No Boring Design did an amazing job helping us level up the Exit Five branding; I can't wait to show you later in the week. • EVENT: Closed sponsors for our first event in September - we've had inbound from some of the best B2B SaaS brands and it's been fun to decide who to work with. We're 2 weeks away from launching the event, telling you the name, dates, speakers, and letting you buy tickets if you want to join us in Vermont this fall • TRIALS: Trials are back; after a slow(er) month in April, we had a our best week for trials in months. There's a 7 day free trial to join the Exit Five community; it's a private space for B2B marketers to get feedback, ask questions, and get recommendations from peers. We just crossed 3,500 members. We had 3,500 members a year ago, but had bunch of churn moving off of Facebook. This was a big bet I had; I knew it would be painful and there would be churn and some complaints, but 1 year later we are in a *much* better position. • MAU: We have 38% MAU in our community, which would make us one of the highest engaged communities on Circle based on their benchmark data for communities of our size (3,500 members). The average MAU for communities with 1000 - 5000 members is 28%. • PODCAST: We had a record number of podcast downloads for April too. We'll cross 140 episodes this week. The podcast is hard to control, but there's an incredible long tail once you get going... • JASON LEMKIN: I sat down with Jason Lemkin to record an episode of the Exit Five podcast. I've been a long time SaaStr fan (since it started as a blog and newsletter) but this is the first time we met and Jason over delivered. He recorded an incredible 1 hour interview for the podcast covering what a great VP Marketing in SaaS does, lessons from building SaaStr, and I got him to dive into his personal content creation process. But here's what's even cooler: after the podcast, he stuck around and gave me 30 minutes to just chat through what we're doing with Exit Five off the record and helped me a bunch with the vision, strategy, and validating a lot of our ideas. It was pretty damn cool. Thanks for reading this week's Exit Five update. We're bootstrapping this B2B media business and writing in public about what we're doing helps grow (and it's fun to do). Also we're hiring soon...

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Hey all 👋 I could use some help from GTM leaders/saas folks... Who is the best *marketing leader/head of marketing* you've ever worked with? For context, we're looking to bring in a Head of Marketing here at Circle to join our GTM leadership team. We're currently approaching $25M in ARR and growing fast (~100% y-o-y). This marketing leader will help us continue to scale to $100M+ in ARR. I'm biased, of course — but this can truly be a career-defining opportunity for the right person. —You'll get to shape how we tell the story of *3* brand new products that we're bringing to market this year. —The product is fantastic. Our product/engineering teams are the best I've ever worked with. The customers are the best I've ever worked with. You have all the raw materials necessary to do truly great marketing. We're already growing fast. You'll just help us go faster. —There are lots of new channels and untapped opportunities to go after. So there's plenty of room to come in and make an immediate impact. —This role sits on our leadership team. It's a group of the highest potential GTM leaders I've ever worked with. And we're ready to truly invest in product marketing as a function. — There's LOTS of momentum in the business. Our leading indicators like pipeline, win rates, word-of-mouth, NPS, retention, etc. are all really strong and getting better week-over-week. If you know a truly great marketing leader - I'd love to connect with them. I'd be grateful if you could tag them below or shoot me a DM. And if no one comes to mind, I'd be grateful if you could share this post for a bit of reach. Thanks! 🙏 Here's the JD: https://lnkd.in/e5fzB7T6

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Retention.com ended May up 1.1% at $21.7m ARR, but still below our Dec ‘23 high of $22.1m ARR. RB2B closed the month at $622k ARR (+300% m-o-m). Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of May 2024: If you’ve been following along from home... We had four down months in a row (Jan - Apr). April was the biggest down month: - 2.3%. The hardest LinkedIn post I ever wrote was that April monthly update: - We were down for the 4th month. - We were down more than prior months. - The market dynamics had changed completely. - We had competition coming from everywhere, big pricing pressure. - Our churn problem seemed to be getting worse, no matter what we did. The hardest part of that entire post was admitting that I had no idea when it would end. It was even harder listening to our execs tell me that the post read horribly from our employees perspective. But here’s what I knew when I posted that post... We were (arguably, still are) just stuck again. My entire journey has been getting stuck, then getting un-stuck again. I knew we would figure out how to move forward again. If we just kept going, we would figure out: - Exactly how to navigate the new competitive environment - How and what we could do that others couldn’t do  - How to improve efficiency and get in front of churn I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet, but we are on the right track. Retention(.)com team - I’m proud of you. Keep it up! We’re going to emerge on the other side much stronger. Retention(.)com Highlights: - We continued the roll-out of EOS - We are ahead of our Q2 sales target - We’re seeing an increase in our expansion revenue - Average deal size is up around 7% this Q - Canceled revenue is down 18% this Q - 375 people are signed up for our 2nd Retox event - We launched a new Reclaim flow - “active onsite”  - We made significant progress on our SFMC Reclaim integration We generated around $600k of free cash, which offsets some of the free cash miss last month (which was around $300k). RB2B Highlights: - $622k ARR 12 weeks post launch, team of 5 (welcome Jeff Hall) - Still only have a 1.3% conversion rate - We’re going to push out a credit system (lower prices) next week - We are experimenting with a two-touch sales motion next week - We have our first full-time salesperson starting July 1 - Human support down from 8.4% to 3.2% of total interactions - We’ve started to see an uptick in UGC - 3 last week, 7 this week All things considered, May was a pretty good month. There aren’t too many negative things to dwell on. Pretty soon we’re going to start including RB2B ARR in the top line ARR number. That, to me, is the life we have chosen. Get stuck. Figure something else out. Grow again. Doing what we do is not easy. But when you find a new growth lever, it’s sooooooooo satisfying. The good news is I’ll keep reporting everything so you can be a part of the journey. Keep building.

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