Active Campaign

Active Campaign, which broke $165 million in ARR in 2021, operates in a highly competitive marketing automation space facing pressure from newer AI-powered tools and established competitors like HubSpot and MailChimp. Under the leadership of Senior Growth Marketing Manager Casey Hill, who joined in July 2023, the company has built a sophisticated growth machine focused on three core channels: LinkedIn, earned media, and influencer partnerships.

The LinkedIn strategy operates on three interconnected layers. First, "Operation LinkedIn" gamifies internal participation, challenging employees to create topical content around marketing automation, owned assets, and AI. The team set progressive goals starting at 150,000 weekly impressions, and now consistently achieves north of 300,000 weekly impressions. The key insight is avoiding product-centric pitches—instead focusing on category-level education about email best practices and tactical marketing guidance.

The second layer is voice of customer activation. Rather than offering monetary incentives, Hill discovered that specificity and reciprocity drive participation. By asking customers for exact posting dates, specific scopes ("Why did you switch from MailChimp to Active Campaign?"), and offering team engagement (50 employees would comment, share, and engage with customer content), the company mobilized 60 customers in their most recent campaign. Hill notes: "All of this is about reciprocity and us using our team to essentially engage. A lot of people are on LinkedIn. They obviously want exposure."

The third layer is paid amplification. Rather than creating new ads, Active Campaign promotes the best-performing organic content from both employees and customers, achieving efficient CPMs around $50. The strategy generated measurable results—one month showed $27,000 in direct revenue impact from Casey's LinkedIn efforts alone, tracked through HockeyStack's multi-touch attribution modeling.

Hill developed a systematic approach to podcast guesting that differs sharply from ad-hoc appearances. Rather than starting a company podcast (which he notes is "slow and takes a long time to get to meaningful results"), the strategy focuses on being a guest on 20-30 high-quality podcasts monthly within a focused vertical.

The process begins on ListenNotes, where Hill filters podcasts by topic, ranking, and competitive intelligence (checking what podcasts HubSpot or MailChimp founders have appeared on). His outreach follows a three-part formula:

**The Hook:** Watch at least one episode and reference specific content or use a personal connection to the host. "If you don't have that breadth of knowledge, just watch an episode and pull out something topically interesting."

**The Authority Middle:** Explain why you're relevant to *their audience*, not just listing credentials.

**The Specific Topics:** Never pitch generic angles like "email marketing." Instead: "Newsletters are broken. 99% of newsletters drive almost no ROI and here's what the 1% are doing."

Hill emphasizes: "If you plan on only doing two or three podcasts, just don't even do it...You want to do at least 20 to 30 podcasts in one month in a focused niche. It's very much a 'I heard about them here and here and here' all on a close period of time that drives the actual intent signal."

Beyond podcasting, Active Campaign built owned email channels including SaaS Steps (profiling growth journeys of founders at companies like Zapier and Typeform, breaking down each growth stage from zero to one, one to ten, through to billion-dollar exits). They also launched Angles & Insights, a top-three podcast debating AI, remote work, and marketing channels between prominent founders—their debut episode featuring Wade Foster (Zapier) and Jason Lampkin generated 4,000+ downloads and hundreds of thousands of LinkedIn impressions.

Active Campaign structures influencer deals around performance, eliminating the "did this actually drive business" question that plagues influencer marketing. The model: identify a target account goal (e.g., 10 paid accounts), calculate the annual customer value ($2,000 per customer = $20,000 total), and split 50/50 with the influencer ($10,000 upfront, $10,000 on hitting targets). This aligns incentives—influencers want renewals and higher payouts, and both parties benefit from customer retention.

Key influencers include Raj (Startup Hypeman), Ashley Stahl (creator economy focused), and Belaji (B2B SaaS marketer with over a decade of experience). The program currently engages 30-50 influencers (a blend of micro and mid-tier, with minimal macro influencers), with expanding focus on video content (short-form at $30-60 CPM, long-form at $100-200 CPM).

Hill is measured on revenue impact tracked via HockeyStack's marketing mix modeling, direct attribution (e.g., "9 people signed up and listed podcasts as their source"), and brand awareness metrics. Over the past year, Active Campaign generated 10 million impressions across channels (6 million on LinkedIn, 3 million on Reddit, remainder on Quora), driving north of 50,000 trials per month company-wide. The focus isn't on MQLs or raw lead volume—it's revenue impact and brand presence across owned, earned, and paid channels.