Happy Sunday from NYC!
I hope you had an incredible week. I’m Julia, and every week in this newsletter, I break down marketing insights I’ve learned building software and consumer products (bootstrapped + VC-backed) and lean into the organic, creator, and paid strategies that fuel viral growth.
As a marketing exec at a high-growth startup, one of the most important jobs I have is stacking my team correctly. Today, I prefer to structure my team leanly with full-time headcount, and mix in fractional team members, agencies (that are usually small and I have a close, professional relationship with the founder), and contractors. This gives me incredible flexibility to ensure my team and function are able to adapt and hit any changing business priorities, whether that’s increasing revenue, MAU, launching products, increasing brand perception, etc.
I always make sure our workflow is connected to the core of the business = revenue. Our partners must fit in perfectly to this equation.
When I started working with Jordan, who runs the marketing agency, icepop, I quickly learned we would be an incredible team (which is still true almost 3 years later!). As a previous product lead at Tinder during its prime, Jordan was able to speak and understand my language: fast-paced, lots of questions, startup slang like “LFG”, and a relentless emphasis on what winning looks like and how we can get there.
Together, we combined strategic thinking with bold ideas and an iterative approach to execution. So when he told me that one of his clients, a high-growth consumer app backed by Founders Fund called Open, decreased their customer acquisition cost by 76% and increased trials by 661% through a super cool marketing shift, I had to get alllll the tea (those are wild metrics). Plus, the campaign that drove this went on to win multiple awards, including a Gold Stevie and a Platinum AVA Digital Award… and for good reason.
Today, I’m going to share everything he spilled with you, so you can copy this absolutely killer strategy. Fun surprise: it’s not that difficult, but it does require a sharp eye and serious attention to detail.
Part 1: Be Honest About What’s Broken
I emphasize this point to college students when I lecture and to audiences of industry peers when I speak on panels – you will KNOW when something is working. The metrics will prove it. Something that is half working NEEDS iteration. Something that is working perfectly will run like a beautiful engine (and truthfully, it will still need tweaking and iterations, and eventually an overhaul if you don’t do proper updates and grow with your customer).
Open is a meditation app that was pouring money into content that racked up millions of views, but those views weren’t turning into trial sign-ups. The strategy looked good in a report, but it wasn’t actually moving the business forward. This is one of my biggest icks, when people try to bluff or B.S. the perception of their business because it literally just hurts them. This can be totally unintentional, too, if you’re just focusing on the wrong metrics.
When this type of problem exists, there are a few ways you can approach the solution. You can chip away at little things, run small tests, launch a few new features….or you can simply overhaul your entire strategy.
In this case, with Open, a complete overhaul is what the team decided to do. If views aren’t converting, you have to ask: what’s their actual value? It’s not that views are useless, but for Open, they weren’t translating into meaningful business outcomes.
There are a lot of reasons this happens: the wrong optimization event, campaign structure misaligned with goals, creative that grabs attention but doesn’t drive action, or landing pages that simply don’t convert. In Open’s case, it was a combination of all of the above. That’s why a full strategic reset wasn’t just helpful….it was necessary for the business to survive.
How can you copy this? Your business has broken sh*t, so start by asking yourself the not-so-fun questions. That’s just the reality of any company, and if you think that you don’t fit into this, then you’re too far removed from operations. I’ve always found that when I look closely enough at whatever business I’m operating, there’s always something to improve on and test out. I usually start with looking at the businesses revenue engine and working back from there to identify what exactly needs to be fixed.
If your business isn’t growing fast enough, ask yourself: Is this a marketing or product problem?
If your business is growing fast enough, ask yourself:
Are you too comfortable? No, but seriously, because I don’t know many people who feel this way.
Are your customers retentive?
Have you discovered the price insensitivity point of your customers (i.e. the most they are willing to pay for your current product)?
Do you have customers on a subscription (or recurring contracts that auto-renew if you’re B2B)
What is your referral / PLG flywheel like to generate more customers for you?
If your online views aren’t converting, ask yourself:
Does your marketing drive attention but not action? How can you change this?
Are your paid events optimized to the correct end goal (e.g., download vs. purchase campaign)
Is your landing page or app store page compelling?
Do you have good reviews? Do you downvote bad ones?
If you’re B2B, are you offering a self-service checkout model now? How does that perform compared to a sales rep? Your customers might prefer this and can use their corp card to sign up. Definitely something I’m seeing become wayyyy more popular now and will be a must-have in some form in the future.
There’s always room to dig in more. Broken doesn’t always mean the thing you’re looking at is falling apart; it usually means you have something up and running, but it’s not meeting company goals or growth expectations.
Part 2: Fix Your Acquisition System
Open’s growth challenges weren’t isolated; they were structural and embedded in the deepest roots of its marketing. The right approach isn't just fixing surface-level problems like low engagement or poor conversion rates. It's digging deeper to address the root causes, including broken onboarding, unclear positioning, weak product-market fit, or misaligned team processes.
Here were the top three critical areas that needed to be rebuilt:
Campaign Structure: Their paid media was optimized for the wrong outcomes, driving views instead of actions.
Ad Content: Assets were polished but not built for performance — they didn’t connect or convert.
Landing Page Experience: Traffic wasn’t landing in an environment designed to drive sign-ups.
They cut out the B.S. and focused on CAC and conversions.
So what was the real unlock that actually drove meaningful views and conversions? The Nervous System Reset: a campaign timed around New Year’s, when users are focused on habit change and self-care. This wasn’t just a seasonal push (like most brands do when they engage in holiday, summer products, etc.). It was a full-funnel system built around emotional relevance and strategic execution.
The campaign was carried across 5 main channels:
Paid Ads: A mix of founder-led content, UGC, influencer videos, and high-production assets focused on driving trial sign-ups.
Landing Page: A dedicated conversion-optimized experience that aligned tightly with campaign messaging.
SEO + Blog Strategy: Content built around high-intent keywords like “breathwork,” “meditation,” and “nervous system reset,” bringing in organic traffic and reinforcing authority.
Email & Organic Social: Campaign-aligned content that supported engagement and nurtured users toward action. Boost organic posts that perform well with paid $$.
Offer: The product needed a clearer, more compelling reason to try, so they introduced a 30-day free trial to reduce friction and let people form habits.
Not pictured but also very cool parts of this campaign: static ads, studio video ads, organic social, billboard.
By aligning storytelling with strategy, brand engagement began to propel business growth.
How can you copy this?
Instead of just increasing ad spend to boost signups → rethink your value prop or landing page funnel.
Instead of blaming poor retention on content → examine whether the product actually delivers on its promise.
Instead of constantly reacting to data dips → set up systems that ensure consistent performance and feedback loops.
Create off-platform engagement that feels like a subscription; recurring, expected, and eagerly anticipated. When your audience knows it's coming, it becomes a celebrated dopamine hit (see, we’re staying on theme here since Open is a mindfulness product).
Part 3: Get it Working. Then, Scale It.
Top brand builders know and can quickly feel out what a win looks like. Once the Nervous System Reset campaign launched, the results were immediate. Because the campaign was time-bound and clearly resonating, budgets were increased, top-performing creatives were iterated, and audiences were expanded just enough to keep performance strong without diluting results. Every decision was grounded in data and conversion efficiency.
Metrics that they focused in on that showed early, positive signals:
High thumb stop ratios (aka, Does someone stop scrolling to watch your video? This indicates content is good.)
CTRs were higher
CACs were coming in significantly lower than evergreen campaigns
CAC dropped by 76%, and free trial sign-ups skyrocketed by 661%. The funnel was finally working, and it was working fast.
With proof that the full-funnel strategy worked, Open leaned into the model and began running more emotionally timed, limited-window campaigns. Each one was crafted around a moment that aligned with how their audience was feeling, supported by targeted content, media, and offers:
February: Heart & Heartbreak – A campaign centered around emotional recovery and self-care during Valentine’s season.
March: Strava + Oura Partnership – A performance-focused theme tapping into physical and emotional resilience, supported by strategic brand collaborations.
Each rollout used the same integrated structure: ads, SEO, landing pages, email, and organic content, ensuring the message was consistent and the user journey stayed optimized for conversion.
By combining real-time emotional insight with disciplined execution, Open turned a single campaign into a repeatable growth system and playbook; one that could scale, adapt, and keep CAC low even as sign-ups surged.
How can you copy this? Building a repeatable content system is key. Here's how to do it:
Start with emotional timing: Pick a moment your audience is already thinking about (e.g., breakups in February, burnout in September, etc.). Build your campaign around that emotion or need. Bake in organic content on your owned channels, too.
Test a narrow funnel first: Use paid ads + a focused landing page + strong organic content pieces. Watch for early signals — CTR, CVR, CAC.
Iterate fast: Take the top-performing creative and tweak angles, copy, and visuals. Launch variants quickly while performance is still hot. P.S. At Citizen, we rotate creative every 7-10 days and this has worked so well for us.
Expand smartly: Once it works, scale budget + very carefully test widened targeting just enough to scale without losing efficiency. Consider adding things like email flows and more content to deepen the funnel and reiterate the messaging.
Systematize the structure: I love repeatable things, so you should consider building your workflow into a system. It can look like….emotional hook → content theme → paid + organic rollout → conversion path. Reuse the same system with different themes, just like how Open did this with The Nervous System Reset campaign.
That’s how Open scaled over the past few months, and it’s interesting because it’s a similar but also different playbook than built at Citizen to reach 1B+ views.
Well, How’d I Do?
The right way to problem solve is often with your own outlook on the situation. Approaching things with fresh eyes and a unique POV, thinking like no one else, is a superpower. I’ve seen this superpower propel people to company-defining breakthroughs – whether they’re an engineer, marketer, or CFO.
The only way you can get there is if you are radically honest with yourself about your business. Case studies like this show what happens when you strip back a business function to the studs – it’s a risky move, but can completely change the trajectory of revenue, so don’t be scared to approach this.
I’m actually a huge fan of this strategy, and continuously push for the best product market fit possible, which is redefined over time as your offering (and even the world around you) evolves. Of course, you’ll need to be able to sell/market your product to get there in the first place.
I’m so glad to be able to pull the curtain back on what has worked for me and industry peers that have crushed it, so you can apply it directly to what you’re building. If you liked this newsletter or have any questions, reply and let me know!
Julia
