// Case study

LIFECYCLE + CONTENT

CyberSaint Security

A category nobody reads for fun, and a bet that tone was the distribution strategy.

6x
email's share of pipeline revenue
from 2% to 12% in one year
Role
Content Marketing Specialist
Dates
2020 to 2022, remote
Industry
Cybersecurity risk and compliance automation
What I owned
All copy across email, blog and paid. Sole email campaign manager.

// Context

Everyone in the category was writing the same whitepaper.

Risk and compliance automation is complex, dry and repetitive, and most of what gets published about it reads like a document nobody asked for. CISOs have seen all of it. They had stopped reading, and the content was still being measured as though they had not.

There was no nurture program and no drip campaign when I arrived. Open rates sat at 3 to 4%. Click-through was 1.5%. Email contributed 2% of pipeline revenue, which is another way of saying the channel was not working at all.

My read was that this was a writing problem before it was a targeting problem. In a category where every vendor sounds identical, tone is not decoration. It is the distribution strategy.

// The work

What I did

  • Demand generation

    Paid on LinkedIn and Facebook, SEO cleanup in SEMrush, and Databox brought in so performance was legible. Paid social traffic grew over 1,400% from 2020 to 2021 and cost per lead fell 32%.

  • Email marketing

    Sole email campaign manager. Nurture and drip built from nothing in HubSpot, segmented properly, and run end to end. Over 500 new MQLs from a program that had not existed, and email's share of pipeline revenue from 2% to 12%.

  • Content creation

    Every word across email, blog and paid, in a category that reads like a terms of service. Open rates went from 3 to 4% up to 30 to 50% on tone alone.

  • Social media

    Brought in GaggleAMP, restructured the content approach, and wrote for a cybersecurity audience that had stopped reading. Engagement rose 698% and audience across platforms grew 33%.

// Process

How I did it

  1. 01

    Write like a person, without dumbing it down

    I took the tone somewhere smart, clear and occasionally playful, on purpose. The emails stopped sounding like legal memos and started sounding like something you might actually open. That is the whole move, and it is harder than it sounds, because the failure mode on either side is a whitepaper or a LinkedIn post with no substance. Open rates went from 3 to 4% up to 30 to 50%. Click-through went from 1.5% to 11%.

  2. 02

    Build the email program that was not there

    I was the sole email campaign manager. I built nurture and drip from nothing in HubSpot, segmented properly, and ran the whole lifecycle. That program alone brought over 500 new MQLs into the pipeline, and email went from 2% of revenue in 2020 to 12% in 2021.

  3. 03

    Close the loop with Sales

    Startups do not come with clear lines and this one was no exception. I built systems to route cold leads back to marketing instead of letting them die in a list, and set the touchpoints that moved MQLs forward. Campaigns stopped just going out and started going somewhere. Not glamorous. It is the difference between a campaign and a pipeline.

  4. 04

    Make the rest of the stack earn its place

    I managed paid on LinkedIn and Facebook and grew paid social traffic over 1400% from 2020 to 2021. I cleaned up SEO in SEMrush, brought in Databox so performance was legible, and cut cost per lead 32% through better targeting and better creative. Audience across all platforms grew 33.2% and social engagement rose 698%.

I took a category people dreaded reading about and made it approachable, without dumbing it down.

// What I would do differently

The honest part

Most of these multiples are measured from a floor. A 3% open rate to 40% is a 10x, and it is also what happens when you replace emails nobody wanted with emails somebody did. The absolute numbers were small for a company that size, and I would publish them next to the percentages if I were writing this up today.

I also owned every word on every channel, which was the fastest way to get the tone consistent and the slowest way to scale it. I did not document the voice until late, so when I left it left with me. I write voice guides first now.

// Outcomes

The results

2% to 12%
email share of pipeline revenue
1.5% to 11%
click-through rate
500+
new MQLs from a program that did not exist
32%
lower cost per lead

The full results

Email share of pipeline revenue
2% in 2020 12% in 20216x
Click-through rate
1.5% 11%7x
Email open rate
3 to 4% 30 to 50%10x
New MQLs from email
No program existed 500+New
Cost per lead
Baseline Better targeting and creativeDown 32%
Paid social traffic
2020 2021+1400%
Audience across platforms
Baseline 2021+33.2%
Social engagement
Baseline 2021+698%

// Writing

Published work from this role

// The stack

The tools

  • HubSpot
  • GaggleAMP
  • GA4
  • Semrush
  • Databox
  • BrightTALK
  • WordPress
  • Canva
  • Photoshop
  • Trello
  • Notion

// Proof

Proof

  • Social interactions, 2020 to 2021. Up 698%.
  • Audience across platforms over the same window. Up 33.2%.
  • 7 Best Practices for CISOs, written and designed in house.

// Keep going

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