Strategic Marketing Operations Leader hiring & growing marketing operations superstars @ Salesforce/Slack!

Sara McNamara

Sara McNamara is a Revenue Operations and Marketing Operations leader helping high-growth B2B teams turn chaotic GTM systems into scalable revenue engines. She’s the creator of The Marketing Operations Strategist, a widely read newsletter for modern marketing ops, RevOps, and GTM leaders who want clarity instead of complexity.

She works across marketing, sales, revenue operations, and customer success to align strategy, tooling, and data so teams can actually execute. Sara partners with founders and GTM leaders to design revenue systems that scale, covering GTM strategy, martech and salestech architecture, data hygiene, attribution, automation, and team enablement.

Known for practical frameworks and hands-on experience, Sara helps teams clean up broken processes, build trust in their data, and navigate growth without breaking their foundation. She’s equally comfortable advising executives, collaborating with marketers and sales leaders, or working directly inside tools like HubSpot and Salesforce.

Through her writing, consulting, and public work, Sara is one of the leading voices in Marketing Operations and Revenue Operations, focused on making complex GTM topics easier to understand and more actionable for operators at every stage.

Outside of ops: reality TV, chick flicks, video games, and pop culture 😎

Executive Member

Run by high-growth leaders, for high-growth leaders.

Pavilion is fueled by an international community of sales, marketing, success, and RevOps leaders from the world’s fastest growing companies. Together, we teach new skills, forge meaningful connections, and help our companies grow.

“Hey, so we don’t have any more headcount for ops, but we’re about to hire 5 new marketers, 5 new salespeople, and 5 new CS reps.

We also need to migrate an acquisition to our platforms and we just purchased 3 new tools. We can onboard these people and tools this month right? Seems like it should be easy enough, the vendors said the tools are so easy to set up!”

Helping B2B teams scale with AI-powered RevOps strategy, tech, and automation // 👻 RevOps & GTM Strategy @ Vector.co // 🏆 Pardot Champion · Marketo Fearless50 · Top Clay GTM Engineer // ex-Cloudera, Slack, Salesforce

World's falling apart but here's your attribution model I guess 🫠 😂

More than ever, the talent of the people running the tool matters more than the caliber of the tool itself. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

🆕 I've finally relaunched my personal website! 🙂‍↔️✨ 

Finally, a singular place where you can:

1️⃣ Read my newsletter (The Marketing Operations Strategist 🐈‍⬛ ☕)

2️⃣ Access all of my RevOps guides and MOPs Salary Survey!!! 📚 

3️⃣ See the latest tools I love and access templates/guides I've created for them, in one place 🤩 

4️⃣ More to come! 👀 

All at saramcnamara (.) com!

“Hey Sara, can we just update all our territories real quick?”

Back in 2009? Sure. A few clicks in Salesforce, done!

In 2026? That request sounds like this Mario level:

🧱 45+ GTM tools

💀 Partial integrations

😶‍🌫️ What do you mean, “documentation?”

🚨 High team turnover

What should be simple now kicks off a multi-day audit. No one remembers how things were set up. Every change introduces risk to the business.

When I joined Vector 👻, our inbound routing was split across 3+ tools. Any update meant opening a ticket, praying the documentation was still accurate, and hoping I didn’t break anything...

So I simplified.

We replaced the sprawl with one tool that just works. Now routing lives in one place…I can run tests, make updates, and move fast without fear of breaking the funnel.

It’s not magic. I just centralized everything in Default. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In fact, I’m centralizing even more soon…looking at moving PLG motion stuff into there.

If your GTM stack feels like this Mario level, the solution probably isn’t more tools.

It’s fewer, better ones. Tools that act like teammates and grow alongside you, not massive tool sprawl.

Are you dealing with tool sprawl? Who's Mario at your org? Any tips? ↓

#DefaultPartner #revenueoperations #sales #sponsored

Brand partnership • Helping B2B teams scale with AI-powered RevOps strategy, tech, and automation // 👻 RevOps & GTM Strategy @ Vector.co // 🏆 Pardot Champion · Marketo Fearless50 · Top Clay GTM Engineer // ex-Cloudera, Slack, Salesforce

"Why our our data a mess? Why can't our marketing operations person just fix it?"

🤦‍♀️

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Hunter Merritt

When a stakeholder buys a new tool without including ops and needs it set up “this week”

(”the sales guy said it would be quick and easy!!!!”) 💀

One of my hardest learned lessons in my career is that doing great work isn’t enough.

We all work with humans, and humans have biases. Humans love compliments and flattery.

What’s more important than doing great work?

1️⃣ Being easy/pleasant to work with. This doesn’t mean being a yes-person, but it does mean being enjoyable to work with and great with managing expectations.

2️⃣ Being great at self-promotion. If your work was great but no one knew about it, it almost doesn’t count in the corporate world. We are especially vulnerable to this in ops, where so much of our work is “in the background” and not as flashy. You have to learn how to document and share your successes loudly, across the organization.

3️⃣ Being a suck-up. This one is probably going to irritate some people, and rightfully so…it was a hard pill for me to swallow, too. But I’ve seen to many peers get away with barely working, while being a bit of a brown-noser to the boss. Maybe you don’t need to completely suck up, but you do have to “manage up” and have them always walking away feeling good about themselves/you/the work you do.

This is hard for us ops folks to accept, because so much of our work really does rely on us being good at what we do, and executing well — but sadly, if we don’t focus on these 3 areas, our work will largely go un-noticed in most orgs.

Build these muscles early and often, if you want to climb the corporate ladder! 🪜

Did I miss anything you've learned? 👀

FWIW I hate that there are so many tools coming out that focus on having AI write LinkedIn posts for you. I don't want more AI slop in here...I want honest, experienced, human-written takes 🤷‍♀️ 

Like c'mon y'all, you can't leave me out here as one of the few nerds actually writing their posts 🫠

🎁 I've thrown just about everything I know about email deliverability into this guide. Years and years of managing email deployments, setup, campaign operations management, from SMB to Enterprise orgs...all braindumped into one doc. 😮‍💨

Why should you care? Because in MOPs, SOPs, RevOps....if we can't get our GTM Teams' emails landing in the direct inboxes of our prospects, we are....in big [REDACTED] trouble. Email is one of the highest ROI channels, we can't afford to screw it up. This guide will help ensure you don't screw it up!

Check it out here and please let me know if you find it helpful or if you have any feedback: https://lnkd.in/gzMppnDB

Call me crazy but I think fake job listings should be illegal....does anyone disagree with me on this?

I have a friend looking for a job and it's a nightmare with all of the fake listing spam out there 🫠

People think about tech first when they think about RevOps or Marketing Ops, but tech is actually the easiest part of the job. And maybe the smallest.

Campaign ops is HUGE. Underrated. If you have a broken campaign ops practice, you'll feel the pain everywhere else.

Marketers will lose trust and try to work around you instead of with you (🙄😒 don't get me started on this one...). Data will become disjointed and a mess to clean up for a simple report. The business won't be able to actually track and optimize the campaigns, where a huge amount of marketing spend is going.

So we have to get campaign ops right. But it is HARD. Not for the faint of heart: there is a lot of pressure from all directions.

I've learned many lessons over the last 10+ years of either directly or co-managing campaign ops...and I can save you some grief. 😅 

The latest edition of The Marketing Operations Strategist just went out this morning, and it includes a guide on how to run campaign ops effectively -- as well as:
→ News of the month (aka hot gossip) 🗞️
→ Dear Sara (where I answer anonymous reader-submitted questions) ✍ 
→ Interesting tech of the month ⚙️
→ Meme of the month 🖼️
→ and other playbooks and resources you can use to up-level your ops 💪

To check out the guide, go to the top link in my bio ↖️ and subscribe to the full newsletter at the bottom of the guide if you want to start receiving all of the rest of the value in the newsletter!

Happy New Year! And happy circling-back week. 😅 

Question, for those feeling generous: who are the best paid media/paid ads professionals you know? Who should I be following to learn the latest and greatest in the B2B ads space? 👀

RevOps work can be a little dry, so a few months ago I decided to really amp up the creative on my weekly slide decks at Vector 👻 -- these are some company favorites 😆

- Lisa Frank-inspired
- Emo
- Grinch
- Neopets
- Elf 

Which one is your fav, and more importantly...what theme should I do next?! 

And what do you do to make RevOps updates a little more exciting?

Every martech and salestech company seems to be selling a "signal" nowadays. 👁️ 👄 👁️ 

I even saw "phone intent" the other day -- the only *intent* I have with my phone is to NOT answer it. 😅 But I guess that's a signal to not call me!

As an ops practitioner, how can you operationalize these signals? Where should you start?

I've put together an ops guide on signals you can use right now -- link in bio because LinkedIn will tank this post's reach if I link it here. 🙂‍↔️ ↖️ 

Btw, if you enjoy it --  The Marketing Operations Strategist newsletter subscribers get these guides the second they're published. 😇 

Would love to hear from you all -- what are your favorite signals to use? Mine are probably product signals and website visitors. 👀

🤑 Every "Closed Won" comes with a hidden fee:

30 minutes of… “so, what did we actually sell them????”

→ “What other tools are they on?”
→ “What did they say their main goal was?”
→ “Who’s actually owning this implementation?”
→ “Wait…did they care about ads or intent or both?”

Whether it's entering in the data manually or fishing for it later, it's a real time-sink for sales, solutions, marketing...anyone who could be interested in that data.

So we built smart automation.

📙 HubSpot Closed Won → Zapier → Fathom.ai Transcript → ChatGPT → CRM update

Now, the second a deal closes, we pull the historical meeting transcripts and plug in need-to-know data:
⇒ Tech stack
⇒ Use cases to kick off first
⇒ Goals / success metrics
⇒ Customer roles (exec sponsor, champion, technical, end users)

The coolest part about this is that my founders, Joshua Perk 👻 and Nick Masters, built v1 of this -- I’ve just tweaked and added more to it. That’s one of the powers of Zapier IMO…just so easy to use. 😍

And now that we have the connections all set up, I can pull data in at any stage, without wasting the GTM team's time — think:

1. Product interest after the initial demo (sharing with marketing the products/features they are interested in, so we can nurture them alongside sales)
2. Deal risks (mentioned on the calls by the prospective customer)
3. Competitors mentioned (to see who is coming up the most, any new competitors making waves)

Those are coming up next. 👩‍🍳

Want to know how I set up this transcript automation? Comment “YES CHEF” and I’ll send you the recipe!

#ZapierPartner #revenueoperations #ai #sponsored

Let’s be honest…most ‘AI for email’ demos don’t survive contact with real-world email teams. 🫠

Here are 6 things I’ve pressure-tested that actually hold up in a real enterprise email setup (and a surprise at the bottom!):

1. Localization at scale (without breaking everything)
Translate a single email into 5 languages in about a minute.
Layouts stay intact. Brand rules survive. No emergency Slack messages. If you’re still nervous, have a human review the translation — but either way, no waiting days on word-by-word manual translation.

2. Accessibility without panicking
Auto-generate alt text across multiple emails so accessibility isn’t a last-minute “oh no” right before launch. AI can help you with this, without compromising your content.

3. On-brand emails from a true blank canvas
Build emails using an existing brand system.
No painstakingly enforcing rules for fonts, colors, logos, or spacing by hand. Guardrails are already enforced by the building platform.

4. Feedback and approval without a million docs
Invite the exact approvers into the process where they’re needed, and let them comment on something as tiny as a pixel on the email — WITHOUT having to manage tons of docs, screenshots, Slack messages, and emails. All in one place, all in a repeatable, defined process.

5. Fewer handoffs, fewer meetings
Marketing teams move faster without dragging design into every iteration.
Pull designs straight from Figma into Knak, with no manual rebuilds.

6. Less design debt over time
Standardized components stay intact even as campaigns scale (which is…not a given otherwise 😅).

I’m not in the camp of “AI replaces marketers,” because bots can’t replace talented marketers. I love creative storytellers and marketers, and I don’t believe they’re going anywhere. If anything, they’ll be in higher demand (y’all see that NYT article about storytellers the other week?).

But better tooling *can* remove the annoying parts of email production that slow good teams down, with no real benefit.

🆕🎁 Now, for the surprise...I've put together a guide to walk you through what's possible with AI, in collaboration with Knak...check it out on my link in bio!

P.S. Would love to hear from others folks in the space — where is AI actually working for you in enterprise email?

#KnakPartner #sponsored #email #ai

Speed doesn’t break at scale because teams get slower.
It breaks because → leadership designs for control instead of results. ← 

Most exec teams say they want velocity, but what they actually build are…approval chains.
Design reviews.
Brand sign-offs.
“Quick checks” that slow down the team so much more than anticipated. 🫠

None of this feels risky in isolation. It feels responsible.
But collectively, it hard-codes lag into your GTM motion.

What started as a 1-day build ends up being 1-3 weeks. As the org grows, it could be over a month.
This is what I find compelling about the Knak platform — it helps humans get out of their own way.

Brand is enforced by the system, not by people.
Speed is allowed by default, not granted by availability.
Execution doesn’t stall when one team gets overloaded.

This will become more and more important with AI, by the way.

AI raises the ceiling on execution speed, but it also raises the floor for competition. 👀

If your GTM motion still routes through manual approval after manual approval while a competitor ships with AI and system-based guardrails, they will out-test, out-launch, and out-learn you — every quarter.

I know it’s frustrating, but don’t shoot the messenger here — it’s just math. 🤷‍♀️ 

So I’m curious: what are you actually doing to scale your teams using AI orchestration? Are you using AI to execute campaigns, or still stuck in “idea” mode? 🤖

#KnakPartner #sponsored #ai #marketing

So, how do we feel about paid ads in free ChatGPT?

I can't help but feel like it was inevitable...the world (and our economy) runs on ads. 😅

Marketing friends: will you be investing in this paid media channel early (to try to get the cheap bids), or wait to see how it performs first? 🤔

Sales and Marketing at CBF Labels

I'm passionate about sharing content & ideas on sales + marketing to help you level up your professional knowledge.

Outside my main role, I've been helping Ecommerce SaaS and AI companies with distribution and promotion.

If you’re looking to advertise to my audience, please send me a message so we can chat further. Thanks!

Jamie Dimond

Here’s something I learned later than I should have:

Being good isn’t always enough.

You can do solid work.
Hit the goals.
Show up prepared.

And still feel overlooked.

For a long time, I thought the answer was:
Work harder
Be more patient
Prove myself longer

But that wasn’t it.

The truth is, skill only compounds in the right environment.

In the wrong place:
Good work gets normalized
Extra effort becomes expected
Your ceiling gets set for you

In the right place:
Your strengths make sense
Your growth gets noticed
Your value actually increases

This isn’t about ego.
It’s about alignment.

Sometimes the problem isn’t your ability.
It’s the room you’re in.

And leaving isn’t quitting.
It’s choosing a place where your work can breathe.

Image credit: Mind_Essentials on Twitter/X

People call it luck.
They don’t see the attempts.

What looks like "overnight success"
is usually years of quiet failure stacked on top of each other.

Missed shots.
Rejected ideas.
Campaigns that didn’t land.
Pitches that went nowhere.
Work that never made it past the draft.

That part rarely gets shared.

But here’s the truth most people skip:

Progress doesn’t come from getting it right early.
It comes from being willing to get it wrong repeatedly.

Every win is just a failure that stayed long enough to learn.
Every breakthrough is built on things that didn’t work first.

So if you’re in the messy middle right now:
trying, 
testing, 
tweaking, 
doubting 

You’re not behind.
You’re doing the work.

And that work compounds.

Don’t call it luck.
Call it reps.

Every logo tells a story.
But not every logo speaks the same language.

Each style carries its own purpose, personality, and visual strategy —
from simple symbols to expressive characters.

Understanding the 7 logo types helps brands choose how they want to be seen and remembered.

🖼 Pictorial
Instant recognition. One symbol becomes the brand.

🔤 Lettermark
Simplicity wins. Ideal when the name is long but memorability matters.

✍️ Wordmark
Clarity first. The name is the brand, powered by typography.

🔗 Combination
Maximum flexibility. Text builds trust, symbols scale everywhere.

🛡 Emblems
Heritage and authority. Feels established and timeless.

🔺 Abstract
Meaning over literal form. Global, adaptable, open to interpretation.

🙂 Mascot
Emotional connection. Brands feel human, friendly, and memorable.

A strong logo isn’t about following trends.
It’s about choosing the visual language that fits your brand’s voice, audience, and ambition.

Credit: Kenny Song

Success isn’t just skill.

It’s discipline.

10 things that require zero talent:

 1. Showing up on time
 
 ↳ Being late is a choice. So is being reliable.
 ↳ Punctuality shows respect for others and yourself.
 
 2. Giving full effort
 
 ↳ No shortcuts. No half-measures.
 ↳ If you’re going to do it, do it right.
 
 3. Having a strong work ethic
 
 ↳ Talent without discipline is wasted potential.
 ↳ The hardest worker wins in the long run.
 
 4. Bringing positive energy
 
 ↳ Be the person others want on their team.
 ↳ Energy is contagious. Choose wisely.
 
 5. Staying prepared
 
 ↳ Stay ready so you don’t have to get ready.
 ↳ You'll raise to your level of preparation.
 
 6. Going beyond expectations
 
 ↳ The bare minimum gets you nowhere.
 ↳ The extra mile has no traffic.
 
 7. Keeping an open mind
 
 ↳ Be coachable. Feedback isn’t criticism, it’s growth.
 ↳ The moment you stop learning, you start declining.
 
 8. Showing professionalism
 
 ↳ Your attitude is your business card.
 ↳ The way you do anything is the way you do everything.
 
 9. Maintaining strong body language
 
 ↳ Confidence is seen before it’s heard.
 ↳ How you carry yourself sets the tone.
 
10. Being kind
 
 ↳ Tough and kind aren’t opposites.
 ↳ Long-term success is built on relationships.
 

You don’t need talent to master these.

Just discipline and a decision.

♻️ Repost if this resonates 

Credit: Noemi Kis✨

Life as a marketer:

Credit: Rana Bassiouni

The #1 thing that separates the best CEOs from the rest:

It's not their vision.
It's not their strategy.
It's not even their intelligence.

It's 6 decisions they make every single day.

Most people think being a CEO is about the big moves.

The acquisitions.
The product launches.
The inspiring speeches.

I used to think that too.

But after years of leading teams, I've learned the truth:

Your company is shaped by the small decisions you make repeatedly.

Not the ones that make headlines.

The ones nobody sees.

Here are the 6 that matter most:

1️⃣ Who you hire

One wrong hire drains everyone around them. One right hire elevates the entire team. No decision compounds faster than this one.

2️⃣ Who you fire

Keeping the wrong person is a decision too. Every day you wait, your best people are watching. And wondering why.

3️⃣ What you tolerate

Low standards spread like wildfire. What you accept today becomes normal tomorrow. Culture isn't built by what you say. It's built by what you allow.

4️⃣ What you say no to

Every yes costs you something. Strategy isn't just what you choose to do. It's what you choose NOT to do. Protect your focus like your future depends on it.

5️⃣ Where you spend your time

Your calendar never lies. It reveals your real priorities. If it doesn't match your goals, nothing else will.

6️⃣ Who you are when things get tough

Pressure doesn't build character. It reveals it. Your team will forget the wins. They'll never forget how you made them feel in the hard times.

You're already making these decisions.

Whether you realize it or not.

Every person you keep is a decision.

Every meeting you attend is a decision.

Every behavior you tolerate is a decision.

The question isn't whether you're making them.

It's whether you're making them on purpose.

The best CEOs don't leave these to chance.

They treat them as sacred.

Because they know the truth:

Your company will never outgrow the standards you set at the top.

Which of these defines a CEO's legacy most?

♻ If this resonates, repost to inspire others.

Credit: Eric Partaker

The best thing you can do in 2026 is to NOT set resolutions.

There’s a reason why our New Year resolutions disappear by February.

Because they’re focused on the outcome; with factors outside of our control.
So we turn the focus inwards.

Want to publish a book?

Don’t set that goal. 
Instead, set a habit of writing everyday.

Want to lose weight?

Don’t set a target weight. 
Instead, set a habit of working out everyday.

Want to get a great job?

Don’t set a job goal. 
Instead, set a habit of connecting with people on LinkedIn and Twitter everyday.

May 2026 be YOUR year.

Where you live it on your terms, at your pace, to your strengths.

May you fall in love with yourself.
And see yourself for what you always were.

YOU.

Not anyone else.
Just authentically you.

Wish you all a very Happy New Year!

Credit: Ankur Warikoo

The new year doesn’t arrive by itself.
It doesn’t change things just because the calendar does.

If nothing shifts beneath the surface -
the way you work, rest, decide, focus -
it’s not a new year.
It’s just a continuation.

Not everything needs to change.
But something small usually does.

A habit.
A boundary.
A choice you repeat when no one is watching.

That’s how years become different.
Quietly.
Deliberately.

taplio

The Battle

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Jamie Dimond

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The Battle

Sara McNamara

Jamie Dimond

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Sara McNamara's LinkedIn Performance

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