James Gilbert 🙏🏻

Bloomerang

Empowering fundraisers and nonprofits to do what they love and build a world inspired by giving

Vice President Demand Generation

noble

Advisor

CloudSpot

Strategic Advisor

Sendoso

CMO Collaborative

SLC CMO Collaborative Chapter Leader

Flip (formerly RedRoute)

Recruited to bring extreme growth. Structured foundational growth engines. Historical pipeline, MRR, ARR, and retention. Built a team from scratch. Structured a rename, rebrand, and new website within 4 months. Built and ran our podcast, outbound engine, and all growth engines. Led Flip to Pavillion’s category king finalist in 2023. Grew MRR and pipe 12% MoM, 92% retention rate.

Chief Marketing Officer

BUSINESSNEXT

•	Grew from Series A to Series C 
•	Built a demand gen engine which led to a 10x growth in ARR
•	Held a steady CAC ratio of 3:1
•	Decreased sales cycles from 12 to 4 months
•	Developed and led culture
•	Developed our US GTM strategy through partnerships and community.

CRMNEXT

GM North America & CMO

California State University, Long Beach

A focus around Big data. I served as a representation of big data and how it can be leveraged across business units.

Big Data Board Of Advisors

Cisco

- Helped develop a global demand gen process and ABM across multiple products
- Discovered $25M in annual savings from overlapping technology and built a consolidation plan for a single tech stack to be used.
- Continued to lead marketing for CloudCherry post-acquisition
- Helped lead strategy and GTM for the collaboration BU with ABM for APAC, EMEA, North America, and South America. This yielded net new market share, cross-selling opportunities into other BUs, and massive pipe and a 1,110% increase in revenue.

Director RevOps and Insights

Passionate about bringing humanity to business. 

High growth leader, Built teams from scratch from 0-120, 3X CMO with a background in RevOps, Demand Gen, and RevOps. 2 Successful exits. I’m a bit of a data freak but I am super creative and have come up with some insanely fun and engaging campaigns. Enterprise leadership roles at Cisco, Verizon, and AGCO, instrumental in driving massive growth. Strengths are driving a growth engine that can scale while building a solid team that can operate and have fun. $0-$150M and Seed - Series D is what I have done several times now.

The personal side of me: I am a father of 4 with an amazing wife, this is what drives me. I am a sports enthusiast & Utah Jazz fan #takenote. 

I believe the biggest gap in today's world is our lack of being human even when there are differences. Be kind in all that you do, it always pays off.

Today our 19yr old son flies to Madagascar for 2 yrs.

He won’t set foot in the US again for 2 yrs.

Sleeping with a mosquito net every night and doing the Lord’s work.

Seeing his growth in 5 weeks it’s crazy. 

He has already turned into such a great man.

Seeing him learn Malagasy at a basic level, and to be able to say full sentences in 5 weeks is even more remarkable.

We are proud of him. But wow is it hard. 

“Mom and dad I know you guys love me, but I got this. I am ready to be on my own serving those around me.” Those are words that hit us hard last night as we spoke to him.

We don’t know the adventures he will have but we know they will be incredible!

3x CMO | Father of 4 | AI-Driven GTM Strategy | Scaling Startups to Market Leaders

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There’s a part of my story I don’t talk about much anymore.

Not because it’s painful.
But because life got busy.
Work got louder.
And somewhere along the way, the thing that shaped me the most got pushed to the background.

Most people today on here know me as a dad of 4, a previous multi CMO, and a GTM leader.

But long before any of that…
I struggled to share the most important aspect of who I am.

For fear of losing a job or not being able to get the next one, For fear of judgment, you name it and I let it get in the way.

You don’t get to choose what happens to you, but you always get to choose who you become because of it.

At a young age I lost my eyesight. Yes you read that right. 

I sat on transplant lists for 4 years (miracles I will later share here)

It happened faster than I would have hoped.
It broke dreams and things I wanted. 
But… bridged new opportunities.
I don’t, and won’t ever give up!

One day I woke up and realized my world was blurring, literally and metaphorically.

I didn’t know what life would look like.
I didn’t know if I’d ever have a career.
I just knew everything was about to change.

And it did.

Losing my eyesight forced me to learn how to see differently.
To work harder than anyone else.
To think differently.
To listen differently.
To create differently.

It’s the reason I taught myself piano by ear.
It’s the reason I think the way I do.
It’s why I am so creative.
It’s why I care so much about the disability community and giving back.
It’s the reason I see patterns in data, stories, and people that most overlook.

I’m going to start sharing more of that journey again, because it’s shaped every part of who I am as a leader, a builder, a father, and a human.

And because if my story helps even one person who’s in a dark place right now…it’s worth telling.

Losing my eyesight didn’t give me a choice.
But choosing how to respond to it did.

And that’s the part I want to share more of because someone out there is facing their own version of “this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

If that’s you, hear me out:

You may not control the setback.
But you absolutely control the story that comes after it.

A dinner this last week turned into a moment I didn’t see coming.

I was catching up with some old friends at Breakthrough. We went to a dinner invite with a BI vendor we’re exploring when I found myself sitting next to Jerry Henry. Who was one of the first people who ever personalized outreach to me. Back in 2013 or 2014, he reached out about the Utah Jazz, and it stood out because it felt… genuinely human.

Still to this day he is one of a handful who did it right in 20 yrs.

We laughed about that, but then the conversation turned deeper.

Jerry brought up the very first video series I ever shared. It was my story about losing my eyesight, learning piano by ear, and discovering creativity and data as two sides of the same coin. I never knew how closely he followed it.

This was way before video became such a big thing (should’ve stuck to that).

Then as others heard about the vague video series people asked to hear it as well.

And it reminded me of something:

Our stories matter. Not because they’re perfect, but because they’re real.

As soon as I finished, someone shared their mom was struggling with her eyesight even had one of the diseases I had. That opened a conversation about accessibility, the disability community, and how often their needs are overlooked in business.

It sparked Justin Cook telling me I should start a nonprofit, not a bad idea actually. 

All from one story.

Sometimes inspiration doesn’t shout.
Sometimes it shows up quietly, in moments you never expected.

My mom inspired me to make that video series back then, but every time I retell the story to others, it inspires me to keep doing it.

The amount of fake AI profiles on this platform is growing at a crazy rate.

In my scroll today I noticed a weird pattern. So, I dug a bit deeper.

This sparked me double-checking all the other posts I found valuable.

I went through a dozen posts from what I thought were people. 

All with a promise, comment x and I’ll send it. Interesting that all the fake ones used this same format.

7 out of 12 were AI and not humans.

I’m curious who else is seeing this stuff. 🤔

Corrina Owens

TripleLift

Fractional ABM

UserGems 💎

GTM Advisor

Navattic

Pavilion

Executive Member

Orum 🥇

TechnoMile

 ABM Consultant

GTM Partners

Postal.io

SMA Technologies

Aptivio

chief evangelist @ purple cork 💜 | 4x B2B SaaS Marketing & ABM Leader | GTM Advisor | Podcast Host

I help B2B SaaS brands build account-based marketing (ABM) programs at scale.

Ready to move upmarket or have a new product launch? ABM could be for you. 

I'll be able to take on new clients in September—let's connect to discuss how I can help you hit your targets.

Forget touching grass, FEED A COO IN SCOTLAND.

That's it, that's the lesson.

I got asked yesterday for the first time in a while why I started my own business.

The way they asked was so sincere, I had to just be real.

Truth is, it wasn’t an active choice; I was forced to choose between my own health and my career.

Burnout doesn’t even begin to describe the state I was in
—I was beyond spent, and it was showing up in my body. I had two seizures in a month, all related to stress.

It’s not realistic to say I had nothing lined up, or no prospects in sight, but I certainly didn’t have a business name, formalized offering, or even a clue about what the difference between an LLC and an S-Corp was. I just knew I couldn’t sustain my life the way it was and that my life was worth more than my career.

And thankfully, as the universe often does, an opportunity fell in my lap. 

Within a couple of days, I had drafted an SOW, secured terms, and had control over my life again.

I love marketing, building systems and programs that scale. 
But I love my life even more. And it took longer than I’d like (almost 2 years), before I really rewarded myself with some time off, but I took it. Months in advance. With contracts in flight, because I know I need it, deserve it, and it won't happen unless I make sure it does.

There’s a lot I’m grateful for, but putting myself first in the way I have the last 2 years is not something I take lightly. And I will share it publicly. Shamelessly. Forever.

Deal with it, LinkedIn. 😉

Why can't I take my own advice? So damn good at giving it. 🤣

There’s a through-line across every ABM motion I’ve built in the last four years and it always came down to this:

> the signals that actually create pipeline are people signals <

When we built the enterprise ABM motion at Gong, we could have tracked hundreds of signals. But the programs that consistently delivered qualified opportunities—and helped us bring deals to market a full quarter faster—came from just a few:

• Former champions from SBM accounts moving to ENT orgs
• Champions at closed-lost opps resurfacing

Those patterns became the #1 driver of qualified opportunities for the Enterprise org.

And here’s the part that most ABM vendors never understood: if your model can’t reflect the humans behind the account, the entire motion breaks down.

Not because the tools are inherently flawed, but because they were built for an era of one-channel activation and vague “intent” that reps stopped believing years ago.

*AND* because the intent models we were paying six figures for were black boxes—literally and figuratively.

Marketers know this so well, we decided to start calling it out, directly, and even built an activation around it at one of the biggest AI events this year: a literal black box.

Because that’s what these big box platforms had become: mysterious, opaque, and deeply frustrating.

Here’s the part I know firsthand—because I’ve watched this product evolve from the inside:

UserGems 💎 didn’t start as “ABM software.” UserGems started where ABM actually works: tracking people and transforming those signals into pipeline.

And that’s why their launch of Gem-E by UserGems 💎 for ABM is so much bigger than a feature. Your team will instantly get:

👉 Names of the people at the accounts that matter.
👉 Context on “the why” to reach out.
👉 And clear recommendation on next actions to take.

This is the version of ABM I always wished existed while trying to maintain overly complicated intent models across multi-product lines and acquisitions.

And now that AI has finally democratized data, we no longer need to wait quarters to retrain a model. We can act—immediately—across the channels that actually create pipeline for B2B SaaS companies today.

If you want to understand what actionable, trustworthy, human-level ABM actually looks like from people who have built it, join them tomorrow (Dec 4) for their latest virtual event: 👉 https://lnkd.in/dG_wD5C5

And yes… they’re giving away 12 bougie gifts if you attend, engage, or post before Dec 4. I don’t make the rules. 🙃


#usergemspartner

Brand partnership • making ABM a reality for B2B

Don't be so hard on yourself, Apple can't even get targeting right.

random morning thoughts:

Can you imagine a world where we praised people’s work as much as we praise/share AI’s? 🤔

Sales is going to be sensitive of their accounts. And they have every right to be.

The best ones handle multi-threading like they’re High Lords of the Night Court [or whatever high stakes political reference, enter that here].

What your sellers often aren’t aware of is that marketers have the ability to give them air coverage that goes beyond their accounts, far beyond entering their contacts into email sequences.

It’s our job to expose them to what’s possible and to show them how we can take their insights and be the secret assassin who delivers the right message to the right person at the right time, all while they can act oblivious to their points of contact that this is even happening.

We can be that shield for them, protecting them from ruffling feathers or going over their point of contact's heads, while extending their message far and wide. Undetected.

This is the light bulb moment for reps every time we talk about account coverage and how that will look across channels, teams, and people. Get that point across, and you’re already ahead of most.

You’ve (finally) finalized your target account list, but realize you’re missing all relevant buying persona contacts and routing logic.

Default let me build a workflow for that. ☝️

 → Enrich with Apollo/ZoomInfo
 → Assign via round-robin (even with complex logic)
 → Notify reps with Slack alert for immediate follow-up

We’ve all been there, it’s ok. No shame! If you want the template, I’ll send it your way. 

#DefaultPartner

STOP SPINNING YOUR WHEELS ON PROMPTING.

AI prompting isn’t this elusive party trick we keep making it out to be.

After analyzing prompts to figure out what made them work and what got me to a usable output in as few iterations as possible, the best prompts reflect judgment, your judgment. They work only because you’ve embedded context, intent, and tone.​

Before I prompt, I ask myself:
→ What type of person am I trying to emulate?
→ What am I trying to accomplish?
→ What is my desired output?
→What model will deliver the most optimal results?

And it's how I’ve been building prompts inside Tofu for repeatable, scalable campaign content:

🪄  Prompt = Signal Context + AI Role + Job + Output Format + Tone

Elaine Zelby & I built a prompt library for marketers who are ready to ship—and are done wasting cycles trying to “get the prompt right.”

And the library of prompts is growing, with a new one from Morgan J Ingram for market research.

Have one we should add? Let us know...no gatekeeping here. 🙅‍♀️ 

https://lnkd.in/etRE5Qqp

What happens when 10 marketers decide to make the group chat public?

We’re making our Navattic advisor meeting public for one hour to talk about:

→What actually worked in 2025
→What flopped (and why)
→Our big bets for 2026

📅 Thurs, Dec 18 | 12pm ET
📍 LIVE on LinkedIn (replay if you’re double-booked)
🔗 save your spot https://lnkd.in/ehqNS8QA

Here’s what each of us will be talking about:
• Blame/praise Brendan Hufford for the idea to take our advisor meeting public. I know he'll be sharing some of the best content tips you can get
• Yi Lin Pei on AI workflows that actually scale (without building agents on day 1)
• Anna Furmanov on turning raw customer feedback into GTM gold
• Jason Oakleyon building high-converting newsletter + CI systems
• Mark Kilens on product launches, PLG, and paid programs that print pipeline
• Andrew Capland on CRO systems and PLG playbooks
• Erin Balsa on marketing research that earns trust and closes deals
• Peyton Walbeck on shifting from review sites to paid search + video case studies
• Camille Trent on building video strategy with brand-led narrative
• Corrina Owens (👋) on how I’m using signal-based ABM + AI Slack agents to warm up entire buying committees

I mean, really, COULD YOU ASK FOR MORE!?

If you really could, tell us what you want to hear, let us know & we'll cover it.😉

Marketers are planning 2026 without enough real data.

So we’re opening up a live, roundtable with our advisors where they'll share:

• What actually worked in 2025
• What didn’t, and why
• The bets they’re making for 2026

Fast, candid, no slides. Just perspectives you can use for annual planning.

Thursday, Dec. 18th, 12 - 1 pm EST

Register on LinkedIn:

Marketing Big Bets: What Worked in 2025 + Bets for 2026

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The Battle

James Gilbert 🙏🏻

Corrina Owens

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The Battle

James Gilbert 🙏🏻

Corrina Owens

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Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}James Gilbert 🙏🏻's LinkedIn Performance

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