Welcome to Evidently—the bi-weekly newsletter where I share my biggest hits (and get honest about my misses) as a first-time VP of Marketing. If this was forwarded to you, join the 4,000+ people who apparently enjoy watching me figure this job out in real time by subscribing here.

The news

This summer, UserEvidence acquired Zealot.

Not the first acquisition I’ve been part of, but definitely the closest. I wasn’t just watching from the sidelines. I was involved in due diligence, cross-functional planning, and even flew out to Seattle with Ray to meet the founders. It was a front-row seat to how these things actually happen.

Why it makes sense

The business case was obvious. We’ve run the risk of being seen as a point solution for a while now. And in 2025, nobody’s getting budget for “just another tool.”

UserEvidence has always been great at collecting proof. But then what? You had advocates raising their hands, but nothing to do with them. You had sales asking for references, and the answer was usually a scramble.

That’s where Zealot comes in. It gave us two things we didn’t have:

• A way to actually activate advocates. Not just identify them, but run programs, reward them, keep them engaged.

• A way to manage references without the fire drills. Sales doesn’t have to beg for a call at the last minute. They can see who’s reference-able, who’s already stretched thin, and who’s the right fit for the deal.

Those two pieces change everything for us.

They take us from being “the survey tool” or “the testimonial tool” into being a platform. One that helps marketing and sales put proof into motion across the entire funnel.

The messy version

That’s the clean version. The real version is messier.

During due diligence, I focused on what I knew best: the story and the pitch. On the technical side, I trusted our engineers, advisors, and the founders to make the call.

The Zealot founders are incredibly early in their careers but already building with a speed most teams only talk about. They’d hear a customer request and have a prototype before the meeting ended. Bringing that pace into our DNA matters as much as the product itself.

Most acquisitions slow companies down. This one should make us faster.

The rollout

Then came the rollout. Our original plan was straight up nuts.

Announce the acquisition and launch the product all at once during the Highline closing keynote. Evan and Alex on stage, me in the back frantically hitting “publish.”

Thankfully, our advisor Jason Oakley said what we needed to hear: don’t do that to yourselves. That’s insane.

The bigger launch is today.

A week after we quietly announced it at Highline. Highline gave us the moment with a curated audience of customers, open deals, and target accounts. Today is the moment we share it with everyone else.

And more content will roll out through September. Not just one loud day and then silence, but waves. It gave us space to do it right.

The grind

Even with that adjustment, the pace has been intense. We’ve been running hot since June. August was a grind.

I’ve told Evan and Ray: we can’t sprint like this forever. Long days, late nights, constant context-switching. But for now, what we’re building outweighs the exhaustion.

The thing keeping us going is the response.

We’ve seen it in our design partner program and in conversations with new prospects. We saw the live reactions at Highline when six inbound demos came through.

That’s when I knew it wasn’t just us who felt the momentum.

People know their customers are the most credible asset they’ve got. They just don’t know how to use them. When we show them how, it clicks fast.

The team

The other side of this story is the team.

Integrations like this put pressure everywhere. Marketing to tell the story, Product to design it, Sales to learn it and sell it effectively, CS to support it, Engineering to build it.

Everyone’s been stretched. But adding the Zealot founders has already raised the bar. They’ve pushed us to build faster, prototype instead of over-discuss, and think bigger.

It’s not often you get both a product and a jolt of new energy with an acquisition, but that’s what this feels like.

Looking back

So yeah, I’ll remember this summer as one of the most exhausting stretches of my career. But also one of the most rewarding.

I got to sit in the middle of an acquisition and see it from all sides: the product rationale, the market fit, the cultural impact, and the grind it takes to pull it off.

This isn’t about us getting bigger. It’s about giving marketing teams what they’ve been asking for: a way to actually use their customers as proof, without the chaos.

That’s the future we’re building toward.

Stuff I’m digging this week

I’ll leave you with this for now. We’re still buzzing from Highline last week. It blew past even my own high expectations—and Evan and Ray’s too.

We owe you a proper recap once we get through the Zealot launch. But this pic will have to tide you over until then.

_{And yes—that’s Brendan Hufford and Devin Reed riding the bull at the front of the raft and getting absolutely dunked. And Jen Allen-Knuth looking like the happiest person on earth watching Devin mess up his hair.}

Opinions are cheap. Proof is gold.

I think we can all agree: chasing big logos and begging for a case study isn’t the most efficient way to get customer stories told. So what actually works?

For this episode of The Proof Point, I passed the mic to our Director of Product Marketing, Alex Eaton. He sat down with Yadin Porter de León, Director of Customer Advocacy and Thought Leadership at Heroku, for a behind-the-scenes look at their alternative approach to customer content, campaigns, and in-person advocacy.

What you’ll get:

• Heroku’s blueprint for a self-service portal that makes customer quotes and stories instantly accessible to GTM teams

• Real-world tips for crafting survey questions that elicit opinion-rich, quotable responses

• The three essential ingredients for impactful customer content

Tune in on Spotify or Apple.

Hold up—what does UserEvidence do again?

Product marketers, marketing leaders, and customer marketers need more than generic testimonials to prove value.

UserEvidence helps create real customer evidence that Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success teams can use to increase buyer confidence.

We make it easy to collect and share case studies, testimonials, competitive intelligence, product stats, and ROI data—proof that helps move deals forward.

Need a stat to prove ROI? A competitive insight to handle objections? A case study that closes the gap between interest and decision?

UserEvidence helps you capture and share the proof buyers need.