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The TL;DR:

• Let’s Chat D2C: Klaviyo’s Future of Consumer Marketing Report!

• Building in Public with SCALIS: Tackling the problem of creating a sales pipeline strategy that sets us up for long-term success but also produces short-term wins.

• What I’m Thinking about this Week: Building a robust website early on in your company’s journey as a source of trust and authority.

• The D2Z Podcast: In this episode of The D2Z Podcast, I sat down with Daniel Borba, CEO of Spark Portal, about the evolution of video marketing, the challenges of transitioning from a service-based model to a core offering, and the importance of authenticity in branding.

• Upcoming Events: I’m in Miami until Wednesday - let me know if you’re in the area and want to connect!

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Let’s Chat D2C: Klaviyo’s Future of Consumer Marketing Report

Consumers today expect more from brands than ever before. And yet, most brands are falling behind.

Klaviyo just released a report on the Future of Consumer Marketing, surveying over 8,000 consumers worldwide—and the insights are a wake-up call for every B2C brand.

Here’s the reality:
📌 Personalization is no longer a “nice-to-have”—it’s the expectation.
📌 Brand loyalty is built on quality, value, and service.
📌 Mobile-first and omnichannel experiences are now the default.

So, what does this mean for you? If you’re not prioritizing personalization, if your customer journey is fragmented, or if your brand feels replaceable—you’re losing customers.

Let’s break it down.

1️⃣ Personalization is the Bare Minimum

74% of consumers expect brands to deliver personalized experiences in 2025—but most brands aren’t delivering.
✅ The #1 way to make a customer feel valued? Exclusive, tailored discounts.
✅ 77% of consumers say they feel most understood when the customer journey is tailored to them.
✅ Yet, only 34% of consumers can recall a brand personalizing an experience for them in the past six months.

This is a massive missed opportunity.

Brands that don’t step up their personalization game won’t just see lower engagement—they’ll lose customers to the brands that do it right.

2️⃣ Brand Loyalty is More Fragile Than Ever

Most brands assume that once they acquire a customer, they’ll stick around. That’s a dangerous assumption.
🚨 1 in 5 consumers will stop buying from a brand after just ONE negative experience.
🚨 50% of consumers would give a brand a second chance—IF they receive compensation like a refund, discount, or replacement.
🚨 The #1 reason consumers stay loyal? Consistent product/service quality, followed by affordability and customer service.

This means you can’t afford to mess up. Every customer interaction matters. And when things go wrong, how you handle it determines whether you win them back or lose them forever.

3️⃣ Mobile-First and Omnichannel Are Non-Negotiable

The way consumers shop has completely changed.
📱 Mobile is now the primary purchasing channel across industries. It has officially surpassed desktop and in-store shopping.
📢 Organic social media is the #1 way consumers discover new brands. If you’re not building an audience there, you’re invisible.
❌ The biggest frustration when shopping across channels? Inconsistent pricing and promotions.

If your pricing and promotions aren’t seamless across all channels, you’re frustrating customers and losing revenue.

What’s the Takeaway?

Consumers expect seamless, personalized, omnichannel experiences—and they have no patience for brands that can’t deliver.

The good news? Brands that get this right will dominate in 2025.

🔹 Leverage AI and automation to scale personalization
🔹 Ensure marketing, service, and analytics work together—because customers see one brand, not separate departments
🔹 Invest in retention as much as acquisition—because keeping customers is cheaper and more profitable than constantly chasing new ones

This isn’t just a trend—it’s the new standard.

The brands that adapt will win. The ones that don’t? They’ll be replaced.

If you want to dive deeper, I highly recommend checking out Klaviyo’s full report.

Building in Public with SCALIS: Creating a Sales Pipeline Strategy for Short and Long-Term Wins

We’ve officially hit the phase at SCALIS where building a product is only half the battle—now it’s about building a sales engine that can scale alongside it. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been refining a dual-track pipeline strategy that allows us to secure short-term wins while laying the groundwork for big-ticket, enterprise-level opportunities that will take months (if not years) to close.

Here’s how we’re thinking about it…

1. The “Pie-in-the-Sky” Enterprise Plays

We’re investing early in building relationships with major enterprise organizations currently under contract with Tier 1 ATS providers—think the big-name legacy systems that dominate the Fortune 1000.

These accounts often have:

• 1–3 year contracts in place, with early termination fees or legal red tape

• Long RFP cycles that involve multiple stakeholders, procurement departments, and security reviews

• Complex integration requirements across multiple departments and systems

Why go after them now? Because when that contract term ends or that RFP opens up, we want to be the first call they make. That means building trust and delivering consistent value today, even if the deal doesn’t close until 2026.

We’ve already started:

• Mapping out key decision-makers and building out our ABM (account-based marketing) strategy

• Identifying contract end dates where possible and setting “reverse timelines” for nurture campaigns

• Exploring co-marketing or soft integration opportunities to stay top-of-mind without requiring a full rip-and-replace

This is a long game, but it's the exact kind of groundwork that leads to $250K+ ACV deals down the line.

2. The Tier 2 ATS Targets (Mid-Market)

In contrast, Tier 2 ATS companies (think smaller or mid-market solutions) offer much faster sales cycles. These companies are:

• Often evaluating alternatives because their current provider is clunky, overpriced, or lacks innovation

• Not as contract-heavy, meaning fewer hurdles and a faster path to close

• Usually dealing with internal resource constraints—so a plug-and-play solution like SCALIS is incredibly appealing

Our approach here:

• Outbound outreach focused on pain-point messaging: cost, clunky UI, slow support, etc.

• Highlighting speed-to-value in our sales materials (i.e., how fast we can onboard and deliver results)

• Positioning ourselves as a flexible, modern alternative that won’t require six months of onboarding

This segment feeds our 30–60 day pipeline and gives us traction while the Enterprise conversations develop in the background.

3. The Greenfield Opportunity: No ATS

This is where we see the fastest closes and the most excitement. These are companies that haven’t yet adopted any ATS at all—usually because:

• They’ve had bad experiences with legacy solutions and are still manually managing hiring via spreadsheets or Notion

• They’ve just raised a Series A and are standing up their first formal talent acquisition team

• They're wary of being locked into an outdated solution and want to "get it right" the first time

The value prop here is clear:

• No migration headaches

• No existing contract baggage

• No legacy process debt

These are also the companies most open to adopting a system that bakes in modern workflows, AI-powered matching, and collaborative hiring from Day 1.

We’re tailoring our marketing and outreach to speak directly to this audience with messaging like:

• “Still hiring through email threads and spreadsheets?”

• “Just raised a round? Here's how to build your talent stack from the ground up—without the baggage.”

• “Why adopt a system from 2008 when your company was built in 2024?”

Why This Dual Strategy Works

We're not just trying to fill the top of the funnel—we’re trying to build a predictable revenue engine that sets us up to win:

• Now: With mid-market deals and greenfield startups that move quickly

• Next: With early conversations, intent signals, and nurture tracks for enterprise accounts

It’s not either/or—it’s both. And we’re building internal systems to track progress across all stages so we can allocate resources where the ROI will hit hardest.

As we continue building in public, I’ll share more about how we’re segmenting these audiences in our CRM, optimizing outreach cadences, and aligning marketing content to each stage of the funnel.

We’re just getting started—but the strategy is sound, the signals are positive, and momentum is building.

What I’m Thinking About This Week: Your Website is a Source of Trust and Authority

If you're building a startup and think you can push your website to the back burner… think again.

Early-stage founders often overlook how much your site matters in the early days—not from an SEO perspective (that comes later), but as a credibility checkpoint during cold outreach and competitive sales cycles.

When you're cold emailing a potential customer, partner, or investor, the first thing they’ll do after reading your message? Google you.
And what they find—your website—is either going to give them confidence to keep the conversation going… or end it before it even starts.

That’s why we’ve been investing heavily in the SCALIS website from day one. We’re not just throwing up a homepage and calling it a day—we’re building out a scalable CMS with modular, templatized content structures that make it incredibly easy to expand.

Here's what that looks like:

• ⚙️ Templates for every major content type: product features, customer case studies, blog posts, integrations, FAQs, etc.

• 🧱 Built in a CMS that enables us to spin up an unlimited number of landing pages—all consistent, clean, and conversion-optimized

• 🖥️ A front-end experience that looks enterprise, even if we’re still in early innings

The goal? When someone visits our site—whether they’re a potential buyer, partner, or even a future hire—they immediately get it. It looks and feels like we’re the real deal, because we are. I’ll share our new website when it goes live in the next 4-6 weeks, but expect there to be A TON of content.

So no, your website isn’t just a marketing asset. It’s a sales tool. A hiring tool. A trust-building machine.

Invest in it early. You’ll thank yourself later.

This Week’s The D2Z Podcast

#146 – B2B Video Marketing

🎧 Listen Now 🎧

In this episode of The D2Z Podcast, I sat down with Daniel Borba, CEO of Spark Portal, about the evolution of video marketing, the challenges of transitioning from a service-based model to a core offering, and the importance of authenticity in branding. We discussed the nuances of delegation, hiring the right talent, and how AI is reshaping the video marketing landscape. Daniel shares insights from his entrepreneurial journey and the strategies that have led to success in the B2B marketing space.

Upcoming Events

I’m in Miami until Wednesday - let me know if you’re in the area and want to connect!