{ "clusters": [ { "id": "data", "name": "Data & attribution", "short": "Data", "blurb": "Tracking, dashboards, MER versus ROAS, margins, and why attribution is always a little broken." }, { "id": "paid", "name": "Paid performance", "short": "Paid", "blurb": "Meta, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok: which channel to start with, when to scale, and what to measure." }, { "id": "organic", "name": "SEO, content & community", "short": "Organic", "blurb": "SEO that is not dying, communities that build the product, content that earns trust." }, { "id": "ai", "name": "AI & automation", "short": "AI", "blurb": "Claude, n8n, vibe coding, agents: what AI multiplies, and what it quietly erodes." }, { "id": "brand", "name": "Brand & positioning", "short": "Brand", "blurb": "Branding as a performance lever, micro-niches, founder brands, and consistency that moves ROAS." }, { "id": "sales", "name": "Sales alignment & CRM", "short": "Sales", "blurb": "HubSpot as nervous system, measuring from the sale backwards, and the marketing-sales loop in SMEs." }, { "id": "gtm", "name": "GTM & experimentation", "short": "GTM", "blurb": "Test first, channels second. One metric, not a dashboard. Who to exclude before who to target." }, { "id": "craft", "name": "Craft & human skills", "short": "Craft", "blurb": "Curiosity, fundamentals, copywriting, talking to humans, loving the struggle." } ], "interviews": [ { "id": "desimone", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-27", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/come-efficasa-vende-impianti-fotovoltaici", "name": "Salvatore De Simone", "role": "Co-founder & Marketing Manager", "company": "Efficasa", "sector": "Energy / E-commerce", "place": "Lecce", "linkedin": null, "clusters": [ "organic", "paid", "brand", "craft" ], "channels": [ "SEO", "Google Ads", "Social", "Trade shows" ], "tools": [], "metrics": [ "Qualitative trends" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Come Efficasa vende impianti fotovoltaici da migliaia di euro interamente online", "number": { "v": "€10,000+", "l": "complete solar systems bought online, no site survey, because prices were public when nobody else showed them" }, "insights": [ "In 2015 solar e-commerce was all brochure sites with prices on request. Efficasa showed prices in the open, and people bought €2,000 inverters and €10,000 kits directly.", "Fights are won with fundamentals, a clean jab, not fancy kicks: SEO plus Google Ads, and a qualitative read of trends instead of over-quantified metrics.", "Smell the market: the skill no tool gives you is reading the person in front of you." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 3 }, { "id": "destefano", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-03-26", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/transparency-and-authenticity-are", "name": "Lorenzo De Stefano", "role": "CMO", "company": "Zumba Hub", "sector": "Startup studio", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenzo-destefano/", "clusters": [ "organic", "data", "paid" ], "channels": [ "Email", "Meta Ads", "Community" ], "tools": [ "Lovable" ], "metrics": [ "Conversion rate", "AOV" ], "ai": "builder", "title": "Transparency and authenticity are non-negotiable when you are building a community around a new product", "number": { "v": "8,000", "l": "emails collected before launch, zero ad spend" }, "insights": [ "Stopuzzle let the community vote on the product name; to vote you had to leave an email. Lead generation and market research in one mechanic, 8,000 addresses before launch.", "Personas were built only from the people who actually bought, not from the whole list.", "He pulls raw e-commerce data into Lovable and builds his own dashboards in an hour, no analytics team.", "Spends three times more in summer on purpose, and treats conversion rate, not CPC or CTR, as the metric that decides what to scale." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "cossalter", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-26", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/marketing-b2b-in-un-settore-a-bassa", "name": "Valeria Cossalter", "role": "CMO", "company": "Radical HR", "sector": "HR consulting B2B", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/valeria-cossalter/", "clusters": [ "sales", "brand", "data", "craft" ], "channels": [ "CEO personal brand", "Physical events", "Content" ], "tools": [ "HubSpot", "AI agents on HubSpot" ], "metrics": [ "Sales cycle length", "Decision-maker share" ], "ai": "builder", "title": "Marketing B2B in un settore a bassa digitalizzazione: il caso Radical HR", "number": { "v": "−25%", "l": "sales cycle between 2024 and 2025, because prospects already knew them when they arrived" }, "insights": [ "A B2B sector run with B2C logic: the CEO's personal brand is the acquisition lever.", "Italy has about 20,000 HR decision makers: a bottleneck, not an ocean. So optimise from the end of the funnel, not the start. CAC stopped being central.", "An event with 100 attendees and under 40% decision makers has failed; 40 attendees, all decision makers, is a win.", "HubSpot as the nervous system: 28 tools that do not talk are 28 silos. The strategic skill is unlearning; to juniors: do, do, do." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 3 }, { "id": "valvetri", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-03-25", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/how-a-google-specialist-thinks-about", "name": "Federica Valvetri", "role": "Google Specialist", "company": "Push Studio", "sector": "Agency", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/federicavalvetri/", "clusters": [ "data", "organic", "paid", "craft" ], "channels": [ "SEO", "Google Ads" ], "tools": [ "GA4", "Tag Manager" ], "metrics": [], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "How a Google specialist thinks about integrated data, Tag Manager, and what AI won't replace", "number": null, "insights": [ "Silos between SEO, paid and analytics are the most common and most expensive mistake she sees across clients.", "Tag Manager is the foundation everything else stands on: no clean tagging, no trustworthy decisions.", "As AI takes over execution, what separates marketers is asking the right questions and understanding people. She recommends grounding in psychology and sociology." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 3 }, { "id": "antichi", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-25", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/branding-micro-nicchie-e-ai-come", "name": "Fabio Antichi", "role": "Founder", "company": "Advertaria", "sector": "Agency (SEO & ads)", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": null, "clusters": [ "brand", "organic", "ai", "data" ], "channels": [ "TikTok", "Instagram", "SEO", "Google Ads" ], "tools": [], "metrics": [ "Search terms as signal" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Branding, micro-nicchie e AI: come un'agenzia da 15 persone si orienta nel marketing che cambia", "number": { "v": "15", "l": "people in a distributed agency whose founder is searched by name, not company" }, "insights": [ "For service businesses, branding beats Google Ads: become the brand that owns a micro-niche. One theme, and on that nobody like you.", "Use AI without delegating decisions to it; search terms are an indirect signal worth more than attribution models.", "The Aranzulla model of endless text that ranks and converts is over. Be wherever your niche is, fast and direct.", "Put your face, style and vocabulary on it: the only advantage AI cannot copy." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 3 }, { "id": "cuadros", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-03-24", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/from-b2b-outreach-to-b2c-organic", "name": "Andres Cuadros", "role": "Fractional Growth Lead", "company": "Qura (ex Coverflex)", "sector": "Healthtech / Fintech", "place": "Lisbon", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/janio-andres-cuadros-garcia/", "clusters": [ "gtm", "ai", "data", "craft" ], "channels": [ "Outbound email", "Community", "Video ads" ], "tools": [ "Claude", "MCP" ], "metrics": [ "One north-star metric" ], "ai": "builder", "title": "From B2B outreach to B2C organic: what changes and what doesn't when you switch lanes", "number": { "v": "10×", "l": "what Claude with MCP feels like as a multiplier" }, "insights": [ "You can track a thousand metrics, but if the fundamental one is not moving, working on the others is pointless.", "In outbound, stop optimising email volume and start reading the replies, including the negative ones: they calibrate the message.", "The analytics stack should change with the stage of the company, not the other way round.", "Curiosity is the only sustainable edge, and it is a habit, not a trait." ], "geo": "eu", "scale": 1 }, { "id": "poiega", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-24", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/marketing-automotive-tra-canali-analogici", "name": "Michele Poiega", "role": "Marketing Manager", "company": "F.lli Lovato (Hyundai, Suzuki, MG)", "sector": "Automotive retail", "place": "Italy, 4 dealerships", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelepoiega", "clusters": [ "paid", "sales", "ai", "data" ], "channels": [ "Google", "Meta", "Spotify", "Geo-targeted TV", "Print", "WhatsApp" ], "tools": [ "CRM", "Claude", "Gemini", "Excel" ], "metrics": [ "Lead-to-showroom", "Cost per test drive" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Marketing automotive tra canali analogici, CRM e AI: la strategia di una concessionaria a quattro sedi", "number": { "v": "30 s", "l": "the practical limit of a car video ad before attention collapses; static images often beat video" }, "insights": [ "In automotive you cannot forget analogue: large slices of the market are not digital. Segment the audience by channel.", "Meta works for awareness, not leads, after testing every month. WhatsApp with a human beat the AI chatbot: empathy is not automated yet.", "The CRM connects marketing, the BDC and sales; the metrics that matter are lead-to-showroom and cost per test drive.", "For BI analysis Claude proved the most reliable of GPT, Gemini and Claude; AI still struggles with sector-specific detail." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 3 }, { "id": "vrincenau", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-23", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/quando-cambiare-modello-di-business", "name": "Vlad Vrincenau", "role": "Marketing consultant & serial founder", "company": "Impresa24, TileandStyle", "sector": "SMEs / E-commerce", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": null, "clusters": [ "gtm", "ai", "sales" ], "channels": [ "Facebook Ads", "Cold calling", "Organic" ], "tools": [], "metrics": [], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Quando cambiare modello di business invece di ottimizzare campagne dead-end", "number": { "v": "€90,000", "l": "burned by a performance agency with zero conversions, before the GTM was rebuilt on one channel" }, "insights": [ "Nobody buys €10,000 of tiles online. When the business model is wrong, no campaign optimisation saves it: change the model, then market it.", "Rebuilt TileandStyle's GTM on a single channel, Facebook at €50 a day, weekly sprints, ten weeks to find the angle. The winning angle came from customer calls: one supplier from bathroom furniture to rendering.", "Tool scarcity: fewer tools, more clarity.", "Vibe coding multiplies only those who can already judge the output." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 1 }, { "id": "gradenigo", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-03-23", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/product-marketing-in-b2b-telecommunications", "name": "Tommaso Gradenigo", "role": "Product Marketer", "company": "Retelit (ex Vodafone, IBM, Accenture)", "sector": "Telco B2B", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": null, "clusters": [ "gtm", "data", "craft" ], "channels": [], "tools": [], "metrics": [ "Retention campaign lift" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Product marketing in B2B telecommunications: what actually moves the numbers", "number": null, "insights": [ "If you cannot see on paper how much a retention campaign moved the needle, you are flying blind.", "In B2B infrastructure, saying something wrong to a customer who knows better is a credibility problem you do not recover from. Study the product, talk to engineers.", "Three metrics watched obsessively; everything else is noise." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 5 }, { "id": "rinaldis", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-20", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/e-commerce-e-gdo-come-todis-usa-dati", "name": "Stefano Rinaldis", "role": "E-commerce & Digital Marketing Specialist", "company": "Todis (IGES, PAC2000A Conad)", "sector": "Grocery retail / E-commerce", "place": "Central-South Italy, 320 stores", "linkedin": null, "clusters": [ "data", "paid", "gtm" ], "channels": [ "Glovo in-app ads", "Own e-commerce", "Loyalty" ], "tools": [ "GA4", "Tableau", "ChatGPT" ], "metrics": [ "ROAS", "CPA", "Long-wave retention" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "E-commerce e GDO: come Todis usa dati di prima parte, Glovo e BI per crescere nel digitale", "number": { "v": "6.5", "l": "ROAS on Glovo thanks to in-app ads, across 63 of 320 stores" }, "insights": [ "Two e-commerce channels with opposite logics: Todis a Casa, owned, and Glovo, a partnership growing by the day.", "The metric he cares about is the long wave: customers from a campaign who keep buying for twelve months lower the real acquisition cost.", "The right software house is worth more than any tool.", "First-party data, through a loyalty programme, is the competitive edge in grocery: stop treating every customer the same." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 5 }, { "id": "quinzii", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-20", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/con-poco-budget-ogni-canale-sbagliato", "name": "Stefano Quinzii", "role": "CMO & co-founder", "company": "HEU", "sector": "Legaltech SaaS for SMEs", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanoquinzii001/", "clusters": [ "paid", "gtm", "sales", "data" ], "channels": [ "Meta Ads", "Google Search", "LinkedIn (dropped)" ], "tools": [ "HubSpot", "Notion", "MeetAlfred", "Google Sheets" ], "metrics": [ "Cost per lead vs ticket" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Con poco budget, ogni canale sbagliato è un lusso che non puoi permetterti", "number": { "v": "€10 vs €500", "l": "cost per lead on Meta against a €500 yearly ticket; LinkedIn could not match it" }, "insights": [ "Meta as the main channel because everyone, from CEO to intern, is on Facebook or Instagram. Ads run at the weekend, leads are called on Monday.", "LinkedIn abandoned: with a €500 average ticket its cost per lead does not hold. It would return with a narrower, richer target.", "A Google Sheet filled by hand every two weeks tells him what is really happening.", "No magic formula: your acquisition channel may be one you do not expect. Build it one test at a time." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "lombardi", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-03-19", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/from-growth-marketer-to-builder-how", "name": "Matteo Lombardi", "role": "Co-founder & advisor", "company": "Pickeat (ex Accenture for Meta)", "sector": "Consumer marketplace", "place": "Dublin / Italy", "linkedin": null, "clusters": [ "ai", "gtm", "craft" ], "channels": [ "LinkedIn", "Outbound" ], "tools": [ "AI agents" ], "metrics": [ "One metric" ], "ai": "builder", "title": "From growth marketer to builder: how Matteo Lombardi uses AI to run multiple projects at once", "number": { "v": "20", "l": "AI agents running in parallel, built over one Christmas" }, "insights": [ "Start with who you are selling to, not which channel to use. Pickeat found its first clients by reading sports arenas' staff pages.", "Startups need one metric, not a dashboard.", "Spends one or two hours a day on Reddit, YouTube and GitHub finding repos that change how he works; reviews 50 to 60 B2B tools every Friday on LinkedIn." ], "geo": "eu", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "barboni", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-19", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/canali-dati-e-ai-come-ragionare-sulla", "name": "Luca Barboni", "role": "Serial entrepreneur, growth", "company": "4 companies, 1 exit", "sector": "Growth agency / Startups", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": null, "clusters": [ "gtm", "data", "ai", "craft" ], "channels": [ "19 Traction channels", "SEO", "Ads", "Partnerships" ], "tools": [ "Excel", "Zapier", "Make" ], "metrics": [ "AAARRR funnel" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Canali, Dati e AI: come ragionare sulla Crescita senza farsi fregare dai trend", "number": { "v": "45 min", "l": "a week: a spreadsheet of predictions, actuals and gaps, instead of a €5–15K dashboard that tells half the truth" }, "insights": [ "Start from anti-personas, who would never buy from you. Not everyone is supposed to get the joke.", "The pirate funnel still works in 2026 if you can read the metrics.", "Unpopular opinion: the perfect dashboard is often not sustainable. Thirty minutes on a call with an Excel sheet beats it. There are 15,000 martech tools and no all-in-one.", "Vibe coding changed pretotyping, a landing page with cart and emails in 40 minutes, not expert execution. When content is a commodity, the relationship is the asset." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "finanz", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-18", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/crescita-di-finanz-meta-ads-ugc-ambassador", "name": "Marco", "role": "Head of Growth", "company": "Finanz", "sector": "Fintech / EdTech app", "place": "Italy & international", "linkedin": null, "clusters": [ "paid", "organic", "ai", "data" ], "channels": [ "Meta Ads", "UGC ambassadors" ], "tools": [ "n8n", "Notion" ], "metrics": [ "ROAS > 4", "CTR", "CPM", "CPC" ], "ai": "builder", "title": "Crescita di Finanz: meta ads, UGC ambassador e automazione del reporting con N8N", "number": { "v": "ROAS 4×", "l": "the single target: a user must earn four times what it cost to acquire" }, "insights": [ "Duolingo for personal finance, twelve people in three groups, one target: ROAS above four.", "A content farm of fifty UGC ambassadors balances paid and organic; their conversion rate is attributed without native attribution.", "Weekly reporting automated with n8n and Notion; CTR, CPM and CPC watched on every campaign.", "Speaking the language of data will be the new English." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "mosca", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-18", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/colmare-il-gap-tra-marketing-e-sales", "name": "Matteo Mosca", "role": "Freelance advertiser & sales bridge", "company": "Independent", "sector": "Italian SMEs", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": null, "clusters": [ "sales", "paid", "data" ], "channels": [ "Meta Ads", "LinkedIn", "Google Search" ], "tools": [ "CRM" ], "metrics": [ "Measured from the sale" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Colmare il gap tra marketing e sales nelle PMI italiane", "number": { "v": "€1–2M", "l": "revenue: the SME sweet spot, structured enough for a CRM, agile enough to adopt processes" }, "insights": [ "The real problem is not the channel, it is marketing and sales not talking: leads declared dirty by sales without any analysis.", "The CRM is the connection point between campaigns and the sales process; measure from the sale backwards, not from the click.", "You cannot force change an owner does not want, but ask: can this hold for another ten years?" ], "geo": "it", "scale": 1 }, { "id": "salvaggio", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-17", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/performance-marketing-automazione", "name": "Marco Salvaggio", "role": "Freelance Performance Marketing Specialist", "company": "Independent", "sector": "E-commerce / Startups", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": null, "clusters": [ "paid", "data", "ai", "craft" ], "channels": [ "Meta (discovery)", "Google (shopping)", "TikTok (tested)" ], "tools": [ "Looker Studio", "Klaviyo", "n8n" ], "metrics": [ "Business data first" ], "ai": "skeptic", "title": "Performance marketing, automazione e trasparenza: la prospettiva di un freelance che lavora su più fronti", "number": { "v": "9 / 10", "l": "clients who never look at the dynamic dashboard and prefer a call" }, "insights": [ "Meta for discovery, Google for shopping; TikTok paid is still behind in Italy, and for €300–400 orders users want information first.", "Start from business data, not from the platforms.", "Forced transparency: he updates clients more often when things go badly.", "Use AI, do not get used by it. Better one hour done well than one minute done badly: losing control of the output means losing the usefulness of the work." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 1 }, { "id": "papo", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-17", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/growth-marketing-con-le-mani-in-pasta", "name": "Igor Papo", "role": "Growth marketer & fractional CMO", "company": "Independent, YouTube 22K", "sector": "E-commerce / B2B SMEs", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": null, "clusters": [ "data", "paid", "brand", "ai" ], "channels": [ "Paid ads", "YouTube" ], "tools": [ "Tableau", "Looker Studio", "Metabase" ], "metrics": [ "CPL", "CPA", "ROAS", "MER" ], "ai": "skeptic", "title": "Growth marketing con le mani in pasta: positioning, KPI e AI secondo Igor Papo", "number": { "v": "1 in 20", "l": "of his Italian clients has a BI tool. One." }, "insights": [ "Italy is in a bubble: we read about Tableau and Looker, but one client in twenty has a BI. €500–1,000 a month for HubSpot is out of market for an SME.", "Build the ad budget from the economics: start with ads, read CPL, CPA, ROAS and MER after one or two months, find the minimum ROAS, then ask if it holds when the budget grows.", "Positioning first, communication angle after.", "AI was making him mentally lazy on structure; go back to Business Model Canvas, value proposition, archetype. If you ask the right questions, AI is powerful; otherwise it takes you where it wants." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 1 }, { "id": "torelli", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-16", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/ventanni-di-marketing-tra-fashion", "name": "Giuliano Torelli", "role": "Marketing Director", "company": "Redify (ex Baldinini)", "sector": "Fashion / Retail / E-commerce", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/giulianotorelli/", "clusters": [ "paid", "data", "ai", "gtm" ], "channels": [ "Marketplaces", "Own e-commerce", "Performance ads" ], "tools": [ "PIM", "BI" ], "metrics": [ "Ad spend vs marketplace reach" ], "ai": "builder", "title": "Vent'anni di marketing tra fashion, retail, e-commerce, dati ed AI", "number": { "v": "−50%", "l": "performance ad spend after entering six German marketplaces at once" }, "insights": [ "The war in Ukraine forced Baldinini to rethink its channel strategy overnight.", "Six marketplaces at once in Germany cut performance ad spend by half: the marketplace brings awareness, the site converts, and they feed each other.", "Every structured e-commerce should have a PIM. Three types of users need three approaches to data and BI.", "Ad systems do not know the user's context, on a plane or after a run; contextual creative is the next frontier." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 4 }, { "id": "tresca", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-16", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/centralizzare-il-dato-prima-di-scalare", "name": "Giovanni Tresca", "role": "Co-founder", "company": "Webgas.net", "sector": "Growth agency", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": null, "clusters": [ "data", "paid", "ai", "craft" ], "channels": [ "Meta", "Google" ], "tools": [ "Proprietary data stack", "Claude" ], "metrics": [ "Margin by category", "CAC" ], "ai": "builder", "title": "Centralizzare il dato prima di scalare il marketing", "number": { "v": "45% → 28%", "l": "the real margin of a €3M e-commerce once logistics, returns, packaging and fees were counted" }, "insights": [ "A €3M e-commerce had a healthy-looking ROAS, 5× on Meta and 8× on Google. Nobody had crossed it with margins per category: 40% of Meta budget was going to a low-margin line.", "Many clients discover their real margin with him: 45% on paper, 28% in reality. Everything about allocation changes from there.", "Once sources are centralised, Claude answers in natural language: highest-margin, lowest-CAC category in the last 90 days, in seconds instead of hours of Excel.", "To a junior: do not learn the platform, learn what is underneath. Button-pressers are replaceable by people or algorithms." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "urso", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-03-13", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/growing-a-dental-health-startup-with", "name": "Francesco Urso", "role": "Growth Marketing Specialist", "company": "CleanOS (Smartbrush)", "sector": "Healthtech / D2C", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/ursofrancesco11/", "clusters": [ "organic", "paid", "ai", "craft" ], "channels": [ "SEO", "Email", "Meta Ads" ], "tools": [ "Shopify" ], "metrics": [], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Growing a dental health startup with SEO, email, and a lot of patience", "number": { "v": "2 / week", "l": "high-quality articles that positioned a toothbrush startup in its niche" }, "insights": [ "Everyone says SEO is dying. They publish two high-quality articles a week, and over time that is what positioned them.", "A failed Meta campaign taught more than the ones that worked: a €200 average ticket with no competitors means every channel choice matters.", "Uses AI to analyse data, but only after screenshotting the dashboards so the model cannot hallucinate numbers.", "Startup life compresses years of learning, but go in with eyes open about the cost." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "pietrobon", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-03-13", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/google-ads-still-works-whatsapp-converts", "name": "Francesca Pietrobon", "role": "Digital Marketing Manager", "company": "Arkomedia", "sector": "Agency / E-commerce", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/francescapietrobon/", "clusters": [ "paid", "data", "craft", "ai" ], "channels": [ "Google Ads", "WhatsApp", "TikTok Shop", "SEO" ], "tools": [ "Smartypilot" ], "metrics": [ "MER" ], "ai": "skeptic", "title": "Google Ads still works, WhatsApp converts better than email, and the real data you should be watching", "number": { "v": "85%", "l": "open rate on WhatsApp Business, with double the conversion of newsletters" }, "insights": [ "Google Ads is the one channel she would not cut. WhatsApp and TikTok Shop are the two most e-commerce brands are sleeping on.", "She looks at MER, marketing efficiency ratio, instead of ROAS, because platforms over-attribute to themselves.", "Customer interviews are a data source most e-commerce brands ignore; internal search queries are another.", "Do not study AI, study the fundamentals behind it. AI becomes invisible like HTML; taste and copywriting compound." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 3 }, { "id": "pedroni", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-03-12", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/how-need-games-raised-14m-on-kickstarter", "name": "Matteo Pedroni", "role": "Head of Marketing & Producer", "company": "Need Games", "sector": "Gaming / Publishing", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": null, "clusters": [ "organic", "paid", "gtm", "data" ], "channels": [ "Kickstarter", "Meta", "Trade shows", "DriveThruRPG ads" ], "tools": [ "Spreadsheets" ], "metrics": [ "Pre-orders vs spend" ], "ai": "skeptic", "title": "How Need Games raised €1.4M on Kickstarter and won the gold Ennie Award", "number": { "v": "€800K", "l": "raised in under 48 hours, €1.4M in total, from a community built before the launch" }, "insights": [ "Organic community on Meta first, paid only to boost what already works.", "Kickstarter used as a launch platform, not a funding source; 300 backers were mobilised in the first 48 hours. That does not happen by accident.", "Distillery strategy: localisations are gin, made fast and funding the whiskey, original games that take years.", "The RPG community rejects generative AI, so production choices follow the community. Attribution is spreadsheets and manual pre-order tracking, and at their scale it is enough." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "pizzi", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-12", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/seo-ai-e-dati-il-metodo-di-chi-lavora", "name": "Alessia Pizzi", "role": "SEO Lead", "company": "Consulting firm; poetessedonne.it", "sector": "Consulting / Culture", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": null, "clusters": [ "organic", "ai", "data", "craft" ], "channels": [ "SEO", "AI search", "LinkedIn newsletter" ], "tools": [ "ChatGPT", "SEMrush", "NotebookLM", "Screaming Frog" ], "metrics": [ "AI citations" ], "ai": "builder", "title": "SEO, AI e dati: il metodo di chi lavora tra performance e cultura", "number": { "v": "2 sites", "l": "small, technically clean, cited by ChatGPT: strangers now email her because the model told them to" }, "insights": [ "SEO and ads are not two departments. Without tracking you have no idea what is happening.", "Screaming Frog is the most underrated tool in marketing.", "AI does not replace you unless you behave like a machine.", "A small site with good technical hygiene and information architecture gets cited by AI engines. You do not need huge traffic, you need to be relevant, precise and structured." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 3 }, { "id": "guastella", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-11", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/content-e-b2g-costruire-una-macchina", "name": "Gaetano Guastella", "role": "Head of Marketing", "company": "SIKUEL (Maggioli group)", "sector": "B2G / GovTech", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": null, "clusters": [ "organic", "gtm", "craft" ], "channels": [ "SEO content", "Newsletter", "Case studies", "Social" ], "tools": [], "metrics": [ "Quote requests" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Content e B2G: costruire una macchina inbound per la pubblica amministrazione", "number": { "v": "8", "l": "years of explaining regulations to public administrations before competitors knew the problem existed" }, "insights": [ "Blue ocean in B2G content: arrive before the regulation itself. Pages ranked, people subscribed, and every new decree brought quote requests.", "Push needs power, pull needs knowledge. Inbound is still the method, but the form changed: not explaining the norm, but telling how the solution fixed a real client's problem.", "More than funnels, learn storytelling. Learn to simplify." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 4 }, { "id": "celotto", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-11", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/allineare-marketing-e-vendite-con", "name": "Enrico Celotto", "role": "CMO", "company": "EasyVista", "sector": "Enterprise IT (PE-backed)", "place": "Italy / France", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/enricocelotto/", "clusters": [ "sales", "data", "craft" ], "channels": [ "Inbound" ], "tools": [ "End-to-end dashboards" ], "metrics": [ "Anonymous traffic → closed opportunity" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Allineare marketing e vendite con un sistema di metriche end-to-end", "number": { "v": "5% vs 20%", "l": "if 100 opportunities convert at 5% instead of 20%, the problem is sales performance, not the leads" }, "insights": [ "Measuring the whole lead-generation stream in real time, from anonymous traffic to closed opportunity, aligns marketing and sales and makes revenue predictable.", "Dashboards are not dead: decisions remain human. Data quality comes before any architecture.", "When you stop learning or having fun, change company. And in a world of hype, fundamentals about the value of data let you use any tool in the stack." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 5 }, { "id": "lazizzera", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-03-10", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/how-a-lean-startup-does-gtm-in-a", "name": "Alberto Lazizzera", "role": "Marketing Leader", "company": "Be-Boost", "sector": "ESG SaaS / Consulting", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/alberto-lazizzera/", "clusters": [ "gtm", "ai", "sales" ], "channels": [ "LinkedIn", "Outbound email" ], "tools": [ "Lemlist", "Vibe coding" ], "metrics": [], "ai": "builder", "title": "How a lean startup does GTM in a volatile regulatory market with constant experimentation", "number": { "v": "2 weeks", "l": "per experiment; budget is allocated only after consistent signals" }, "insights": [ "No fixed channels. Two-week tests, keep what improves, adapt to each channel.", "Automate the middle of the funnel, never the first hello: open rates go up when a human gives the message a second look.", "Build your own playbook; the differentiator now is creativity in lead gen, not having all the data." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "martino", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-03-10", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/how-branding-and-performance-work", "name": "Antonio Martino", "role": "Founder", "company": "Fluido Factory", "sector": "Agency / E-commerce", "place": "Valencia", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonio-martino-fluido-factory-marketing-consultant/", "clusters": [ "brand", "paid", "data", "ai" ], "channels": [ "Meta Ads", "Google Ads" ], "tools": [ "Lovable", "Shopify", "WooCommerce" ], "metrics": [ "LTV", "ROAS by audience" ], "ai": "skeptic", "title": "How branding and performance work together in e-commerce marketing", "number": { "v": "2.6 → 4.52", "l": "cold-prospect ROAS after creatives introduced the brand before the conversion push" }, "insights": [ "Three ROAS tiers for one client: 2.6 on cold prospects, 6.9 on engaged audiences, about 13 on existing customers. The gap was brand warm-up, not bidding.", "Meta usually wins as the channel to start with for e-commerce; LTV is the metric that actually matters.", "Attribution is always broken; cross-check manually. He built an AI reporting tool in Lovable and it gave him dangerous advice, like pausing a campaign on naive ROAS. No tool replaces thinking." ], "geo": "eu", "scale": 3 }, { "id": "franzese", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-03-09", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/marketing-without-tech-is-marketing", "name": "Paolo Franzese", "role": "Performance & growth leader", "company": "Norma's Teaching, Kiver Digital, Register", "sector": "Creator economy / EdTech", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/paolofranzese/", "clusters": [ "paid", "data", "ai", "gtm" ], "channels": [ "Meta Ads", "Email" ], "tools": [ "n8n", "AI agents" ], "metrics": [ "CPA", "LTV", "Retention rate" ], "ai": "builder", "title": "Marketing without tech is marketing without legs", "number": { "v": "90%", "l": "of revenue from paid ads, despite 900K organic followers" }, "insights": [ "900K followers, yet 90% of revenue came from paid performance: €2.5 million. Organic does not scale businesses, paid does.", "80% of lead loss is tech, not marketing: page speed, broken pixels, tracking errors. He hires on that understanding.", "60% of the work is nurturing, not top of funnel. On a 5-million-address base, 0.1% of open rate changes everything.", "An AI customer-care agent cut support load by 30%. AI increases the need to understand tech, it does not diminish it." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 3 }, { "id": "carnevali", "lang": "it", "date": "2026-03-09", "url": "https://marketerstoriesitalia.substack.com/p/trackting-da-una-moto-rubata-a-un", "name": "Claudio Carnevali", "role": "CEO & founder", "company": "Trackting", "sector": "Hardware / IoT D2C", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudiocarnevali/", "clusters": [ "gtm", "brand", "craft", "paid" ], "channels": [ "Trade shows", "Word of mouth", "Customer care", "Influencers", "Performance ads" ], "tools": [], "metrics": [ "Retention before scaling" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Trackting: da una moto rubata a un love brand", "number": { "v": "100+", "l": "Grimaldi ships connected to the cloud in a previous life; a stolen motorbike started this one" }, "insights": [ "The product was born from a real, urgent problem: his motorbike stolen the day of a small accident, and no tracker on the market he wanted.", "Trade shows as the first marketing tool and an ethnographic lab on the customer. Customer care turned into the growth and word-of-mouth lever.", "Digital is expensive. Do it to grow only when you are sure customers stay, love you and bring friends.", "If you are not ashamed, you launched late. Do not make a pitch deck before you have revenue." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "conforti", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-03-05", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/growth-at-scalapay-business-function", "name": "Stefano Conforti", "role": "Growth Manager", "company": "Scalapay", "sector": "Fintech (BNPL)", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/confortistefano/", "clusters": [ "gtm", "sales", "data" ], "channels": [ "Inbound", "Outbound", "CRM" ], "tools": [ "Score cards" ], "metrics": [ "Merchant activation" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Growth at Scalapay: business function or company DNA?", "number": null, "insights": [ "B2B growth at Scalapay means merchants activating and transacting; it splits into inbound and outbound and the merchant's size decides the motion.", "Self-serve onboarding needs category-based communication, not one generic flow.", "Score cards must inform decisions, not look good in meetings.", "Growth as a team or as culture? If everyone owns growth, does anyone? How you answer shapes org, hiring and metrics." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 4 }, { "id": "labianca", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-03-04", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/managing-supply-and-demand-in-real", "name": "Alessandro Labianca", "role": "Marketing Manager", "company": "DayBreakHotels (ex Too Good To Go)", "sector": "Marketplace / Hospitality", "place": "Italy, 17 markets", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/alessandro-labianca-86949684/", "clusters": [ "data", "organic", "ai", "brand" ], "channels": [ "SEO", "Paid" ], "tools": [ "Metabase", "SEMrush", "Vibe coding" ], "metrics": [ "Traffic × availability" ], "ai": "builder", "title": "Managing supply and demand in real-time across 17 markets: how to make KPIs talk to each other with an AI-first approach", "number": { "v": "6,000+", "l": "hotel partners whose real-time availability is overlaid on traffic and conversion data" }, "insights": [ "Never read marketing data in a vacuum: overlay traffic and conversions with partner availability, down to the city or package.", "The biggest win of 2025 came from good old SEO, while colleagues feared AI search.", "Brand is the only defence against an oligopoly of AI agents choosing for users.", "The marketer of the future is full-stack, between data and creativity, and fails fast. Theory is free, application is rare." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 3 }, { "id": "nicotra", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-03-03", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/marketing-ai-products-before-anyone", "name": "Mario Nicotra", "role": "Head of Marketing", "company": "Elai (ex BigProfiles.ai)", "sector": "AI B2B SaaS", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/marionicotram/", "clusters": [ "gtm", "sales", "brand" ], "channels": [ "Cold outreach", "Trade shows", "LinkedIn" ], "tools": [], "metrics": [ "Leads" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Marketing AI products before anyone knew what AI was", "number": { "v": "8", "l": "people in the company when he had to explain predictive AI to a market that thought it was a chatbot" }, "insights": [ "Selling AI before ChatGPT: the hardest part was proving they were not just a bot.", "Extremely targeted cold outreach beats blanket coverage; leads are the queen metric, not impressions.", "Marketing and sales are one continuous process. Trade shows become essential at the right stage.", "Treat your LinkedIn like your product, and be the first on new tech." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "bader", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-02-26", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/marketing-for-artists-and-entrepreneurs", "name": "Yassin Bader", "role": "Marketer for artists & entrepreneurs", "company": "Independent", "sector": "Creative / SMEs", "place": "Switzerland", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/ybader/", "clusters": [ "gtm", "ai", "craft", "paid" ], "channels": [ "Organic content", "Paid boost" ], "tools": [ "Own dashboards", "Automation" ], "metrics": [], "ai": "builder", "title": "Marketing for artists and entrepreneurs who need to get out of their bubble", "number": { "v": "$200/mo", "l": "the tool subscription his clients do not need when a bit of automation does the job" }, "insights": [ "Trying to be everywhere at once is the problem; test channels, then master the one that works.", "Use paid ads to scale organic content that already performs.", "His bio is built to spot AI-automated outreach: anyone referencing something no human would mention is a bot.", "Listen before you sell. The best relationships came from real conversations, not pitches." ], "geo": "eu", "scale": 1 }, { "id": "castelletta", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-02-25", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/building-bridges-what-marketing-looks", "name": "Noemi Castelletta", "role": "Digital Marketing Manager", "company": "G-Nous (ex Forest Valley Institute)", "sector": "Deeptech / Innovation", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/noemi-castelletta-digital-maketing-specialist/", "clusters": [ "gtm", "sales", "craft", "data" ], "channels": [ "Events", "Content", "CRM" ], "tools": [ "Looker Studio", "GA4", "Adveronix", "HubSpot" ], "metrics": [ "Lead maturity" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Building bridges: what marketing looks like when your product is an ecosystem", "number": null, "insights": [ "There is no winning channel when your targets, founders and corporations, are fundamentally different. Marketing works as a system: education, relationship, then projects.", "Lead maturity beats lead volume every time.", "The CRM is undervalued for organising an ecosystem, whatever the tool.", "Get out of quantitative analysis. Talk to stakeholders. That is where the insight lives." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 3 }, { "id": "roli", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-02-24", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/b2b-digital-marketing-to-schools", "name": "Nicola Roli", "role": "Marketing Manager", "company": "C2 Group", "sector": "EdTech / Public sector", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicola-roli/", "clusters": [ "gtm", "data", "ai", "organic" ], "channels": [ "E-commerce", "Webinars", "Partners" ], "tools": [ "GPT API", "Gemini", "Claude", "BI" ], "metrics": [], "ai": "builder", "title": "B2B digital marketing to schools and public administration", "number": { "v": "30", "l": "years serving Italian schools, from photocopiers to classroom ecosystems" }, "insights": [ "Teachers and school administrators are surprisingly digital; digital marketing does intervene in public-sector decisions.", "An e-commerce built to generate leads alongside instant purchases.", "In an agency you are a slave to projects, in big companies to processes; a mid-sized company can innovate faster, and run AI experiments without bureaucracy." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 3 }, { "id": "capovilla", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-02-19", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/how-learning-to-love-struggle-shapes", "name": "Claudia Capovilla", "role": "Performance Marketer & founder", "company": "Supplements brand (Berlin) & Outdoor People", "sector": "D2C / Fitness", "place": "Berlin", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudia-capovilla/", "clusters": [ "paid", "data", "craft", "gtm" ], "channels": [ "Paid acquisition", "Organic content" ], "tools": [ "In-platform dashboards" ], "metrics": [ "LTV" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "How learning to love struggle shapes better marketing", "number": { "v": "80 / 20", "l": "proven channels versus the budget where you are allowed to fail" }, "insights": [ "Understand the product and master channels before you scale; a real test is not the same as scalability.", "Most marketers do not look at lifetime value enough, especially in early acquisition.", "Early in a career or a new job, getting your hands dirty in the platform beats BI tools.", "Fare fatica, tattooed on her knees: the campaigns that win come from the 20% where you push into the unknown." ], "geo": "eu", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "picozzi", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-02-18", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/building-marketing-engines-inside", "name": "Pietro Picozzi", "role": "Marketing lead", "company": "JetHR, Y42, PayFit", "sector": "B2B SaaS scale-ups", "place": "Berlin / Milan", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/pietro-picozzi/", "clusters": [ "brand", "gtm", "paid" ], "channels": [ "LinkedIn", "PR", "Outbound", "Paid boost" ], "tools": [], "metrics": [], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Building marketing engines inside scale-ups: lessons from JetHR, Y42, and Payfit", "number": { "v": "$31M", "l": "raised by Y42, which still had to pivot several times" }, "insights": [ "Controversial: branding drove the first growth push at JetHR, even though it was not measurable.", "Paid ads to warm up organic content, not only for direct conversions.", "Outbound to 200 people is the fastest market test: if nobody cares, change the message or the product.", "In early stage, horizontal beats specialised. Nothing is fixed yet." ], "geo": "eu", "scale": 4 }, { "id": "gotti", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-02-17", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/building-performance-marketing-0", "name": "Jessica Gotti", "role": "Performance marketing lead", "company": "Paired, Bending Spoons, ONCE", "sector": "Consumer apps", "place": "Milan", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicagotti/", "clusters": [ "paid", "data", "ai" ], "channels": [ "Paid social", "Search", "Multi-country" ], "tools": [ "MMP", "Spreadsheets", "Data viz" ], "metrics": [ "ROAS target", "Payback period", "Marginal ROAS" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Building performance marketing 0 to 1 at ONCE, Bending Spoons, Paired", "number": { "v": "3×", "l": "built performance marketing from zero, at companies that became category leaders" }, "insights": [ "Spreadsheets with good pivot tables are enough at the start; upgrade to an MMP when spend grows and channels diversify, or when scale introduces measurement gaps.", "Master one paid channel before expanding to others.", "Set a payback period the company can afford, and derive the ROAS target from it.", "Average ROAS hides problems. Marginal ROAS asks whether the next dollar is efficient; use it as a mindset when scaling." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 4 }, { "id": "giovannini", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-02-13", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/why-roi-matters-more-than-channels", "name": "Ilenia Giovannini", "role": "Performance Marketer", "company": "Inarea", "sector": "Brand identity / E-commerce tech", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/ileniagiovannini/", "clusters": [ "paid", "brand", "data", "ai" ], "channels": [ "Google Shopping", "Meta", "Organic social" ], "tools": [], "metrics": [ "ROI" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Why ROI matters more than channels in digital marketing", "number": { "v": "€20 CPC, 12× ROI", "l": "a phone retailer on Google Shopping: expensive clicks, excellent economics" }, "insights": [ "Start with strategy and the customer journey, not platform preferences. Without ROI you do not move forward.", "A €25 click is cheap if it sells an iPhone; cost is proportional to the action you need.", "Brand identity must stay consistent between digital and offline; Meta and Google should feed each other bidirectionally.", "The biggest mistake of new businesses: organic social that is incoherent with what they offer." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 3 }, { "id": "maglio", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-02-10", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/how-banking-marketing-became-a-multi", "name": "Marco Maglio", "role": "Digital channels", "company": "Sella Personal Credit", "sector": "Banking / Fintech", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcomaglio88/", "clusters": [ "paid", "data", "organic", "craft" ], "channels": [ "Google Ads", "Meta display", "Radio", "SEO" ], "tools": [ "Looker Studio", "Search Console" ], "metrics": [ "Search lift" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "How banking marketing became a multi-channel testing ground", "number": { "v": "+12%", "l": "branded searches after Meta display ads were targeted on the same area and audience" }, "insights": [ "Avoid Performance Max without proper tracking infrastructure.", "Radio schedules used to adjust Google Ads bids by the hour; the 8–10 AM slot does not work for shift workers.", "Meta display can influence what people search on Google: 12% more searches for the targeted amount.", "AI is the calculator argument: it does not exempt you from knowing addition." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 5 }, { "id": "diangelo", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-02-09", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/lead-magnets-as-a-beachhead-strategy", "name": "Mattia Di Angelo", "role": "Growth Marketer", "company": "B2B SaaS, procurement & IT (ex e-commerce)", "sector": "B2B SaaS / E-commerce", "place": "Piedmont → London", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattia-di-angelo-625928235/", "clusters": [ "gtm", "paid", "data", "craft" ], "channels": [ "Lead magnets", "LinkedIn Ads (retargeting)", "Video content", "Influencer marketing" ], "tools": [ "Mixpanel", "GA4", "Tag Manager", "HubSpot", "SEMrush", "Leonardo AI", "Runway" ], "metrics": [ "CTR", "Leads in target", "CAC vs retention" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Lead magnets as a beachhead strategy", "number": { "v": "400", "l": "leads in six months from educational lead magnets, about 200 in target, before a single euro of retargeting" }, "insights": [ "With no Meta, TikTok or Google available for enterprise procurement, educational lead magnets built the audience first; only then did LinkedIn retargeting on specific ICPs make sense. You cannot retarget people who never heard of you.", "Static creatives had a high CTR and no calls; lead magnets lowered CTR and raised quality. CTR is still the earliest signal of message-market fit.", "Mixpanel and GA4 in parallel via Tag Manager, anonymous before signup and user-level after, to tie CAC to retention and not just to leads.", "In SMB environments think horizontally: growth cannot ignore sales or product." ], "geo": "eu", "scale": 3 }, { "id": "mastrantonio", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-02-06", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/building-marketing-that-connects", "name": "Giulia Mastrantonio", "role": "Marketing, product line owner", "company": "Starting Finance", "sector": "Financial education", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/giulia-mastrantonio/", "clusters": [ "data", "paid", "organic", "craft" ], "channels": [ "Organic content (Instagram, Facebook)", "Meta Ads", "Google Ads", "Criteo & Outbrain (abandoned)" ], "tools": [ "GA4 server-side", "Clarity", "Looker", "Notion", "Google Sheets" ], "metrics": [ "No-show rate on booked calls", "Conversion rate per channel" ], "ai": "skeptic", "title": "Building marketing that connects creativity to tracking", "number": { "v": "20 pages", "l": "the automatic report built in-house that puts organic, SEO and ads under the same eyes, to compare attribution systems" }, "insights": [ "Growth runs on organic content and Meta ads because that is where the target spends its time; Google Ads still has the best targeting, but its automation makes you spend the day excluding things.", "Criteo and Outbrain abandoned: a €5K product with the platform claiming the sale, and fewer, less precise conversions than Meta and Google.", "Strong brand content turns outbound warm: people answer because they already know you.", "The undervalued metric is the no-show rate on booked sales calls, actionable almost in real time. A marketer who does not handle tracking is absurd; AI is a tool, precision is the skill she would hire for." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 3 }, { "id": "clarke", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-02-05", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/how-rb2b-automated-993-of-support", "name": "Robb Clarke", "role": "Head of AI", "company": "RB2B", "sector": "B2B SaaS / Visitor identification", "place": "USA", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbclarke/", "clusters": [ "ai", "data", "gtm", "sales" ], "channels": [ "Website visitor ID", "Intent-based outbound", "Self-serve support" ], "tools": [ "Intercom Fin", "Custom analysis scripts", "Slack alerts" ], "metrics": [ "Self-serve support rate", "ICP share of traffic" ], "ai": "builder", "title": "How RB2B automated 99.3% of support tickets with AI and turned them into product insights", "number": { "v": "99.3%", "l": "of support handled self-serve by AI and docs over twelve weeks, at a company with $7M ARR and three full-time employees" }, "insights": [ "AI took over support not to deflect tickets but to make patterns visible: when the same question clusters after a release, it is a product problem, not a docs problem.", "A flood of tickets after a launch stopped when one word in the dashboard was changed, a word that read differently outside North America. The AI surfaced the spike; a human made the fix.", "Only about 10% of a website's visitors are ICP. The best customers never send a cold email: they read who visits which page and rewrite copy for the real audience, product pages for juniors, pricing pages for managers.", "Spray and pray versus signals: several people from one company on high-intent pages, a return visit, a Slack alert, then one good conversation. A hammer is great, but you must know how to build a house." ], "geo": "us", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "barbaro", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-02-04", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/testing-channels-before-scaling-how", "name": "Maria Chiara Barbaro", "role": "Head of Growth & founder", "company": "Nova Studio, Primo Round (ex ParkingMyCar)", "sector": "Startups / Validation studio", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariachiara-barbaro/", "clusters": [ "gtm", "data", "ai", "craft" ], "channels": [ "Meta Ads", "Traction channel tests" ], "tools": [ "Excel", "Looker Studio", "Clarity", "Tally", "ChatGPT" ], "metrics": [ "Overall marketing ROI", "Cost per lead as leading indicator" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Testing channels before scaling: how to validate what actually works", "number": { "v": "€2M", "l": "recurring revenue reached by ParkingMyCar in two years, learning growth by needing cash before running out of it" }, "insights": [ "The Traction method: brainstorm every channel, test the three most promising with small budgets, then focus. Psicologoinchat went from zero to €10K MRR in six months on Meta alone.", "Attribution is a problem everyone wants to solve and nobody does; measure total ROI and find where you are weakest instead.", "Metrics must be actionable now, not lagging: cost per lead moves before CAC does. Start in Excel, move to Looker Studio when ad spend makes manual updates too slow.", "The best AI use case is reading unstructured data you would never have time for: reviews, customer-care exports. And read How to Win Friends and Influence People instead of a marketing course." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "abate", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-02-03", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/why-positioning-unlocks-outbound", "name": "Carmelo Abate", "role": "Fractional GTM operator", "company": "Independent; teaches GTM at Learnn", "sector": "B2B tech startups", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmeloabate/", "clusters": [ "brand", "sales", "gtm", "craft" ], "channels": [ "LinkedIn outbound", "Email outreach", "Organic content", "LinkedIn Ads (amplification)" ], "tools": [ "Freckle", "Instantly", "HeyReach", "Databox", "Gamma", "Fathom", "Tally" ], "metrics": [ "Campaign attribution over time", "Qualitative positioning surveys" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Why positioning unlocks outbound and content", "number": { "v": "€199/mo", "l": "Databox, chosen over Looker at TAG, because dashboards people want to look at are the ones that get used" }, "insights": [ "Outbound on LinkedIn and email still works when the core message, the pain and the positioning are right; without them you throw balls, not products.", "Ads are no longer a primary channel: saturation and costs are too high. LinkedIn ads only to amplify organic content that already works, with account-based targeting.", "Fewer tools, less engineering: Freckle for enrichment in natural language instead of Clay and n8n; Instantly and HeyReach for outreach.", "In B2B, qualitative surveys on positioning beat CRO. Tools are almost irrelevant now; method and the blank page make the difference." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 1 }, { "id": "miletta", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-02-02", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/from-testing-channels-to-data-driven", "name": "Mario Miletta", "role": "Head of Product Marketing & Growth", "company": "DeepAgent (ex iSendU, Coverzen)", "sector": "AI voice agents / SaaS", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariomiletta/", "clusters": [ "gtm", "data", "ai", "organic" ], "channels": [ "Founder-led content", "LinkedIn", "X", "Inbound", "WhatsApp", "Meta (abandoned)", "YouTube (abandoned)" ], "tools": [ "Claude Code", "Mixpanel", "Attio", "Metabase", "jam.dev" ], "metrics": [ "Activation: agent created, number connected, 3 calls" ], "ai": "builder", "title": "From testing channels to data-driven pivots: a product marketer's journey to acquisition", "number": { "v": "1,500", "l": "calls in two weeks by the first product-led customer, who arrived from ChatGPT on a €799 plan" }, "insights": [ "Channels depend on responsiveness: for insurers email had zero impact, phone and LinkedIn worked; at iSendU social and YouTube performed worst, and even gadget packages converted poorly.", "Content and brand authority before cold outreach; cold without content means high cost and low return.", "One activation metric only: created an agent, connected a number, made three calls. Everything else is noise.", "The WhatsApp pivot came from data: undelivered packages across Shopify and WooCommerce stores, because merchants could only email. The feature became the acquisition story and SendCloud bought the company. Critical thinking first, then AI and automation." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "delvecchio", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-01-30", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/product-marketing-sits-at-the-intersection", "name": "Valeria Delvecchio", "role": "Product Marketer", "company": "Epassi Italia (Epassi Group)", "sector": "Welfare / HR tech", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/valeriadelvecchio/", "clusters": [ "gtm", "craft", "data", "ai" ], "channels": [ "Communities", "Building in public", "Webinars", "Review platforms", "Reddit" ], "tools": [ "Pendo", "HubSpot", "Salesforce", "Lovable", "Claude", "Notion" ], "metrics": [ "One metric per launch tier", "Win/loss" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "Product marketing sits at the intersection, and sometimes builds closer to it", "number": { "v": "2 voices", "l": "product marketing carries the market to the product and the product to the market, continuously" }, "insights": [ "Product marketing is not launch emails: it is the voice of the market to product and of product to market, and it belongs at the product table early.", "Go-to-market is not one playbook: launches are tiered by scope and revenue impact, and the most valuable customers co-design releases before anything goes broad.", "Lead generation changed: long-tail SEO and live Q&A brought few but very qualified leads; now visibility comes from communities, niche spaces and building in public.", "Scale-ups gain more from focused tools, product analytics plus CRM plus interviews, than from a BI layer on top of everything. Attribution is breaking; pick the metric for the problem in front of you." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 4 }, { "id": "matarrese", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-01-28", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/ai-agents-that-qualify-leads-from", "name": "Adriano Matarrese", "role": "Marketing & CRM strategist", "company": "DeepAgent (ex Result Consulting)", "sector": "AI voice agents / B2B", "place": "Italy", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriano-donato-matarrese/", "clusters": [ "ai", "sales", "gtm", "data" ], "channels": [ "Meta Ads", "LinkedIn Ads", "LinkedIn outbound", "Cold email", "Voice agents" ], "tools": [ "Clay", "Apify", "n8n", "Supabase", "Lovable", "Airtable" ], "metrics": [ "SQL by BANT", "SQL recovery rate at 12 months" ], "ai": "builder", "title": "AI agents that qualify leads from social engagement", "number": { "v": "66", "l": "appointments in three days by contacting only companies with five or more active lead-gen ads in Meta's ad library" }, "insights": [ "Ads are not for form fills: they surface people who engage, then eight or nine agents read every comment and decide who deserves outreach. Social advertising as a qualification mechanism.", "Meta's ad library as a public intent signal: companies with five or more active lead-gen ads go straight into Clay. 66 appointments in three days.", "n8n into Supabase, then Lovable on top: dashboards on hidden subdomains for stakeholders, no engineers.", "The north star is sales-qualified leads by BANT, not MQLs, plus the share of wrong-timing leads recovered within twelve months. Marketing ops and sales ops are one unit. If one channel only: email." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "giaquinto", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-01-26", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/how-a-racing-tire-simulation-company", "name": "Edoardo Giaquinto", "role": "Marketing", "company": "MegaRide (University of Naples spin-off)", "sector": "Deeptech B2B / Motorsport", "place": "Naples", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/edoardogiaquinto/", "clusters": [ "organic", "brand", "craft", "gtm" ], "channels": [ "LinkedIn (organic)", "Scientific papers", "Newsletter", "Instagram", "SEO" ], "tools": [ "Clarity" ], "metrics": [ "Organic impressions", "Inbound requests" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "How a racing tire simulation company does B2B marketing without paid ads", "number": { "v": "300,000", "l": "organic LinkedIn impressions in 2025, zero sponsored posts, in a niche of Formula 1 and MotoGP engineers" }, "insights": [ "If the whole budget had to go to one channel: LinkedIn, even above SEO. Technical stories about the real problems of racing teams, all organic.", "Paper marketing: dozens of scientific papers with university partners put thermoRIDE and weaRIDE inside the literature their PhD audience already reads. Nobody reads advertising; people read what interests them.", "Clarity on every inbound email: the entry point, the keywords, the dozens of minutes spent on case studies. Newsletter titles never name the software, they name the problem.", "Marketing works in osmosis with the engineers. In deeply technical B2B, mastery of your own product is the skill that cuts through." ], "geo": "it", "scale": 2 }, { "id": "bessi", "lang": "en", "date": "2026-01-26", "url": "https://marketerstories.substack.com/p/what-product-marketing-actually-looks", "name": "Davide Bessi", "role": "Product Marketing Manager", "company": "Qonto (ex Sendcloud, Treatwell)", "sector": "Fintech B2B SaaS", "place": "Italy / Netherlands", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/davide-bessi/", "clusters": [ "sales", "data", "gtm", "ai" ], "channels": [ "Outbound sales", "In-app notifications" ], "tools": [ "Looker", "HubSpot", "Intercom", "Heap", "Segment", "Gemini" ], "metrics": [ "Onboarded users", "Feature activation", "Expansion", "MRR" ], "ai": "pragmatic", "title": "What product marketing actually looks like at a B2B scale-up", "number": { "v": "daily", "l": "the dashboard cadence product marketing can live with; performance marketing needs it by the hour" }, "insights": [ "In B2B the most important investment is internal training: every new feature is explained to sales first, because deals are won in conversations. Sales enablement is marketing.", "Metrics cascade: closed contracts, then onboarding conversion, feature activation, customer-base expansion, MRR. Expansion is product-market fit in action.", "A small data-engineering team is a bottleneck only if you need real time; a daily cadence is enough for product marketing.", "AI coding shrinks time to MVP and leaves tons of MVPs on links nobody visits: distribution becomes everyone's job. Gemini chosen for its Drive integration, not for capability." ], "geo": "eu", "scale": 4 } ] }