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.