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? 🤔

★ Human-Centered Operations Leader, Instructional Design, Instructor, Author, Speaker, Education and Lifelong Learning Advocate. Dedicated to Advancing Women in Leadership ★

Short summary:
My work involves creating and delivering educational experiences to help people grow their careers and businesses using the lessons I learned from building an agency from the ground up as employee #1. I also create plans, processes, and programs such as a knowledge management program, an award-winning comprehensive employee onboarding program, and an award-winning referral partner program that generated 45% of company revenue. I am currently creating courses for Maven, Teachable, and HubSpot Academy. I am also writing a book on RevOps to combine a love of research, writing, and lifelong learning.


More context:
I spent several years learning executive leadership skills in my operations career at Remotish, a RevOps agency serving B2B SaaS companies using HubSpot, which also aligned with my purpose of advancing women in leadership (Remotish is women-owned-and-led).

I have very diverse career experience, which helps me see the big picture, quickly thinking many steps and scenarios ahead, while being detail-oriented. Creative problem-solving and clarity are my superpowers – I can generate surprising ideas with an unconventional perspective, and clearly explain the steps to make those ideas into reality. 

Career Journey: 
1. Graphic designer / art director, mostly magazines, with an art & journalism degree 
2. Photography piqued my interest while directing photoshoots, which led back to school 
3. Career 2 was a photographer and entrepreneur  
4. My favorite part of running the business was marketing, inspiring a career change
5. MBA in digital marketing to help my career move further and faster
6. Starting at Chief Martech Officer (Remotish) in a client-facing role that led to the fast track to management
7. Discovering part of what I was doing my whole career was Operations 
8. Creating educational content to help others learn these operations & career lessons faster than I did (internal training programs, on-demand and live cohort courses, templates, workbooks, and more)


Resources for finding your superpowers and purpose: 
1. howtofascinate.com (My advantages: prestige, innovation, and passion) 
2. 16personalities.com has an eerily accurate personality test (INTJ Architect) 
3. startwithwhy.com first helped me find “what” I enjoy: creating, improving, or discovering/exploring

Jen Bergren, MBA

I began watching #MOpsApalooza recordings, starting with: Taking Mops to the Moon: A C-Suite Perspective, with Terri Avnaim, Carla Fitzgerald, Amy Holtzman, and moderated by Grant Johnson. 

Linkedin limits character count, so I’ll choose just a few questions.

How should CMOs coach marketing ops pros who want to take on more strategic roles?

Terri said to expose yourself as much as possible to the other areas of marketing. And always be asking the why behind the projects you're working on so you get more of the business-centric context.

Carla said to focus on ‘what problem are we trying to solve today?’ so leadership sees you as someone who helps get to the goal. Marketing ops has a tendency to think all problems are solved by technology. But consider a number of different capabilities as solutions, and the way all the components fit together cross functionally.

Amy said to think beyond marketing. Earlier in a career, we think about the impact we have ON marketing. But marketing fits into the much bigger picture of business strategy. Think about who is benefiting from this project? Why is the company doing this and how does my part fit in?


What’s the right balance between speed and structure in operations?

Amy said it depends on what the project and the ask is. Underlying infrastructure that deeply impacts the business has to be incredibly well thought out, and integrated with the bigger picture, and those things take time. Other projects we just need to get out the door, perfect isn’t required, it won’t have a bigger impact, so speed is more important.

Carla said it depends on the maturity and size of the organization, Early stage companies rely on speed because they are trying to establish themselves in the market. The larger and more mature orgs can’t scale, are spinning wheels if they don't focus on structure.

Terri said it depends on if it needs to be repeatable. Marketing ops rarely works on a one-and-done project, almost everything is a repeatable process, where structure needs to come before speed.


What challenges have you faced when trying to align marketing ops across departments?

Carla said what’s harder is getting what they do elevated at a strategic level so people can appreciate and understand how valuable that work is and not take it for granted.

Terri said a common tension point is with finance. Finance thinks if you can make it work in a spreadsheet, why can’t marketing make it work in the real world? She’s spending time educating finance about the length of the sales cycle because they think she’s spending this money in March and getting the opportunities in March.

Amy said it depends where marketing ops sits. Sometimes there is a need to align with marketing. Sometimes there is a greater need to align with other ops teams. Collaboration & sharing DOCUMENTATION 🎉 become really important. Legal can be hard to align with, since our industry and tools move faster than legal may understand.

Thank you all! #MOPZA25

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