Building Nava's Field Channel from Zero to $20.4M in Pipeline
Building Nava's Field Channel from Zero to $20.4M in Pipeline How three and a half years of small, smart tests built Nava's largest inbound channel without playing the standard HR-vendor playbook. I joined Nava in late 2021 to build their field marketing channel from scratch. By the end of 2024, that channel was Nava's highest-performing source of inbound pipeline, contributing $20.4 million. The path there was full of small bets, tight feedback loops, and a refusal to participate in the standard HR-vendor playbook of booths, branded pens, and money thrown at the problem. The quick stats: $20.4 million in field-sourced pipeline in 2024 Largest inbound channel by pipeline amount at Nava that year Built from literal ground zero over 3.5 years Budget grew 6–10x through the program to support scale Long-play community partnerships including PIHRA and NNAHRA Signature activations: Benefits Bestie friendship bracelets, the rage room, cosmic brownies guerrilla at Lattice, sunset horseback rides in Hawaii Premium-brand approach: no chintzy small footprints or swag, no pay-to-speak, no copy-paste scale The messy middle: Testing: Field marketing fails when teams scale before they know what works. So I tested everything at the right spend and the right velocity, then leaned into what hit. Co-sponsored events and community partnerships took off quickly, and we scaled those fast. Longer-play sponsorships needed years to pay off, and I fought to keep the budget for them because trust in the HR community isn't built quickly. By 2024, those longer plays were producing some of the most reliable pipeline in the entire mix. Trust building: HR leaders get marketed to constantly, and almost all of it lands as noise. Booths and crappy swag are just money thrown at the problem. HR is also one of the most isolated communities in any company. Their job is to hold things in confidence, so they can't confide in coworkers the same way other roles in the org can. So our entire field strategy was built around community. Every event, every activation, every partnership had to feel human and add value. And it didn't always need to be huge things, sometimes is was as simple as taking coffee orders ahead of a session so attendees walked in to find their drinks already waiting. Over time that all earns trust–and trust drives revenue. The activations: A few are worth naming because they prove the philosophy. We launched Benefits Bestie friendship bracelets at PIHRA during the Taylor Swift bracelet trend, paired with a 360 photo booth and TSwift playing in the background. Attendees grabbed one at one event and showed up to the next looking for the new bracelet to add to their collection. We weren't a booth they had to escape, but a brand they wanted to engage with. The rage room was the risky one. HR leaders don't get to vent at work because confidentiality is the job, so we gave them a room to break things and a peer community that understood why they needed it. Clients were still quoting it back to me years later. At an event hosted by Lattice, our budget didn't fit a real booth, so we opted out of one entirely. I dressed our team in astronaut gear to match the event's theme and gave each person a branded metallic backpack full of Cosmic Brownies and Benefits Bestie bracelets. We walked the floor, aligned with the host's brand on purpose, and were the hit of the show. The $20.4 million isn't a one-year fluke. It's the compounding result of three and a half years of small calls made in the same direction. Refuse the cheap version. Hold the line on partnerships that need time. Give your audience something they actually want and will remember.
Standardized Client Onboarding Processes and Achieved 100% Retention at Nava Benefits
When I joined Nava Benefits as Client Manager, the company was facing critical growing pains in how we managed client relationships. Client onboarding was almost entirely ad hoc, with no standardized processes in place. Each Client Manager handled onboarding differently, which created inconsistent client experiences and made it nearly impossible to scale efficiently as the company grew. This lack of structure posed a real risk to our ability to deliver quality service and expand our client base. I took ownership of solving this problem by first documenting the current state across all clients, systematically identifying common pain points and extracting best practices from what was working. From there, I led the development of a standardized checklist and comprehensive template library that would create consistency across the entire client onboarding experience. I piloted these new tools with incoming clients to refine the approach, then rolled them out to the full team with structured training sessions to ensure adoption. The impact was substantial and measurable. We reduced average onboarding time from several weeks down to just 3 weeks, dramatically improving the client experience during that critical early phase. The efficiency gains from the templates and standardized processes enabled us to onboard 50% more clients that year without adding any headcount to my team. Throughout this period of growth and operational transformation, I maintained a 100% client retention rate across my book of business, demonstrating that the new processes enhanced rather than compromised the quality of client relationships.
Why I refused to put Nava's logo on our best lead magnets
Building evergreen lead gen by treating templates as tools, not billboards. Nava had a b2b sales motion and we were a lean start-up. We were already seeing lead gen success with both our in person and virtual events, but as anyone who runs those knows, it's laborious to keep things running. You can batch but at certain level you need to recreate the wheel each time. We sold mainly to HR so I set out to create something that 1) gave HR immediate value, and 2) tied back to Nava's offering (benefits). We started with an RFP template. RFPs are routine when a company goes to market for a new benefits broker, but the formatting is wildly inconsistent. If we built a clean, usable template, we'd help HR teams with real work AND quietly shape the RFPs landing in our own inbox. The same project served both sides of the table. My stipulations for this RFP template were as follows: 1. Make it actually useable. Downloading a PDF you cannot edit is a horrible experience. So we made this a google doc that you could copy and make your own in two clicks. 2. Make it unbranded. I HATE downloading something in someone else's branding. We made the template unbranded so the person who downloaded it didn't have to do the extra work of removing our branding. Both rules broke marketing convention, but were also key to the value being provided. After we got initial feedback and metrics that this was working for us we continued to iterate on other useable templates for HR including an employee benefits survey template (which I built alongside the talented Melissa Blackerby!!) and an open enrollment planning guide. All continued to pass the test of being unbranded and editable. I wish i was writing this earlier so I had stats on MQLs > pipeline > closed won, but largely at the time these worked for us from both an evergreen lead gen but also larger trust building with our prospects.
Built $20M Inbound Pipeline from Zero at Nava Benefits
When I joined Nava Benefits as the second marketing hire, the company was disrupting the traditional brokerage model by delivering higher-quality benefits without inflated costs. The challenge was significant: the industry was staunchly sales-led with no established inbound playbook, and we needed to build an entirely new pipeline function from scratch to find prospects open to rethinking their benefits approach through a modern lens. I launched a multi-channel testing strategy, starting with low-cost tactics like webinars, email marketing, and owned content to validate our approach. We sponsored and attended industry events to build trust, then expanded into lead magnets, paid advertising, and a field marketing program. Our strategy centered on adding value and educating prospects rather than hard selling. This helped us target decision-makers actively looking to modernize their benefits strategy. Throughout hundreds of experiments, I tracked cost per lead and lead-to-opportunity conversion rates. In true startup fashion, our tracking was messy but effective, and we constantly reevaluated why customers chose us to refine our messaging and targeting. This ground-up approach ultimately led the pipeline to double year over year. By year 4 we generated $20M in qualified pipeline. Beyond the pipeline number, we established repeatable acquisition channels and a testing framework that positioned Nava's growth team to scale sustainably as the company grew.
Built Paid Media Program from Scratch, Generating $4M Pipeline in 10 Months
When I joined the company, there was no paid media program in place. The organization was heavily dependent on field marketing to generate inbound leads and interest—an approach that wasn't sustainable or scalable for long-term growth. My mandate was clear: establish a paid media function that could consistently drive qualified inbound leads to the sales team. I built the entire paid media program from the ground up, launching campaigns across Google Search, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Meta/Instagram. I started strategically with Google paid search, creating both branded and non-branded campaigns. The branded campaigns captured high-intent users ready to convert on high-value pages like contact us and demo requests. The non-branded search campaigns targeted prospects actively seeking solutions, using high-value gated content to convert them into leads. On LinkedIn, I initiated campaigns featuring high-converting gated content to build our retargeting audience pool and nurture prospects through the funnel. The results were transformative. Within the first 10 months, I generated $4M in pipeline—compared to zero pipeline from paid media previously. We also saw a significant increase in marketing qualified leads (MQLs), establishing paid media as a reliable, scalable channel for demand generation. This program fundamentally shifted how the company acquired customers and laid the foundation for predictable, long-term growth.
Current
Alumni
- AC2021 – 2025
Alex Cozort
Senior Engagement Manager
- EP2021 – 2025
Erin Phinney
Associate Director of Growth
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Erin Phinney
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF GROWTH
- JK2021 – 2024
James Kase
Senior Manager Sales Operations
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Nicholas Severson
Senior Client Manager
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Xanthe Hsu
Founding Digital Demand Marketer