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.

One week out from Highline–our 2.5-day event in Jackson Hole, WY for 100 of the best B2B marketers. And… I’m calmer than you’d expect. Still stressed—just not panicked.

We’ve been at this for six months, to the day. The big rocks are set: venue, agenda, guest list, travel. Every detail has been reviewed, re-reviewed, and reviewed again.

The smaller things are already in motion—the kind you only learn to think about after you’ve done an event before and learned the hard lessons of what happens when you skip them.

Here’s what we locked down early.

Before we dive in: UserEvidence is making a huge announcement on August 27th––one that I’ll dive into in my next Evidently send. But if you care at all about the customer marketing space (or are just nosy as to what we’re cooking up), you’ll want to saddle up and join us. Now onto the good stuff.

1. Getting the right partners early

I’ve never pulled off an in-person event like this before. 

I almost did at my last company—an August 2021 event we started planning that spring, right as vaccines were rolling out. 

We put money down, felt like we were in the clear… and then the Delta variant hit. Within weeks, we were canceling months in advance and ate lots of monies.

So for Highline, I knew enough to know that I didn’t know enough. Especially with senior B2B marketing leaders, the stakes are higher. 

Could we have done it ourselves? Probably. Would it be this good or would I be this calm right now if we had? Not a chance.

The list of little things you don’t think about with B2B events is endless: contracting, negotiating, knowing what you actually need (and what you don’t). I needed experts.

That’s where Planwell came in. Thank you Kyle Lacy and Alex Eaton for the intro. 

Madeline Searight—our main coordinator—has been unbelievable. If you work with Planwell, tell them I sent you and request Madeline. You’ll thank me later.

But Planwell didn’t know Jackson. And Jackson is… its own thing. 

So we brought in Katie Payton, our CEO Evan Huck’s neighbor, who knows every venue, vendor, and back road. She’s been our walking, talking Jackson tour guide.

For months, we met every other week, then weekly as the date got closer. 

Internally, I’ve had Jayana Patel (one of our CSM’s at UserEvidence with serious event chops) helping me keep our internal team on the same page, confident, and ready to play their part. 

It takes a village to put on an event like this. Without this support system, Highline wouldn’t be anywhere near what it’s going to be.

2. Sweating the details your audience will notice

It’s not just the venue. It’s the activities, branding, signage, merch, entertainment, furniture, itinerary, aesthetics.

All of these things create an experience.

Every moment, from attendee gifts to activations to the “you had to be there” touches, is designed to make this event last.

Highline’s a big swing for us. We’re creating something unique and memorable for our customers and target accounts.

Attendees are paying their own way to get to Jackson, but once they’re here, we’re covering everything (and it ain’t cheap). It’s the single biggest line item in my budget this year, so it has to turn into more than just a nice couple of days.

It needs to create word-of-mouth, LinkedIn posts, and plenty of FOMO. That’s why we’ve made it stupid-easy for people to share it: social cards, launch guides, a proper “Know Before You Go” page. 

We were about to send that KBYG as a bare Google Doc. As I threw the Google Doc together, I remember thinking to myself, “I really don’t want to send this as is. But we’re getting late in the game. We’ll get this right next year when we have more time.”

Except Jillian (our content marketer) felt the same when she saw it. She flagged this to me and shared how she felt about it. It validated exactly how I felt. So we didn’t send a Google Doc.

Within 12 hours, Algert (our design and branding agency) took Jillian’s vibe coded prototype and turned it into something that actually felt like Highline.

When you go to a wedding, a concert, or a great activation, you notice details you weren’t supposed to notice. And once you’ve seen them done well, they set the bar for what “good” looks like.

We’re marketing to B2B marketers. They notice those details. That’s why we’re sweating every single one of them.

3. Planning your content capture like a product launch

Most companies record event sessions, make a recap video, and move on.

Highline is the Super Bowl of our entire year. We’ll have founders, customers, employees, target accounts, and some of the biggest names in B2B SaaS all in one place.

How often does that happen? It doesn’t, so we knew we had to take advantage of it.

Jillian built a plan to create serious content, not just “record” content. She’s mapped out plenty of shots on both days for their own specific reasons. She’s planned exactly what to capture during our special announcement during the closing keynote on content day for a big launch we have on August 27th.

Our three main content pillars for Highline:

• Behind-the-scenes docu-series – The good, the bad, the messy, the ugly. Six months of event planning realness you rarely see.

• Practical thought leadership – Ideas from Jen Allen-Knuth, Devin Reed, Meagen Eisenberg, Kyle Lacy, and more. Plus, in-person interviews you can only get here.

• Social content for momentum – Reactions from attendees as they leave the closing keynote, ready to repurpose for our big launch.

This isn’t dumping random GB’s of footage into a bunch of Dropbox folders. It’s intentional, differentiated content that will help us stand out in the channels we’re marketing in.

When you see the Tetons in the background and stop scrolling because you have to know what’s going on.

That’s our plan working. Jillian’s walking away with a year’s worth of content from two and a half days.

4. Pre-event communications that feel different

Most pre-event emails feel like a formality with “See you soon” and a hotel address.

Highline isn’t that kind of event. 

People are making the trip to meet new people, reconnect with old ones, and spend time in a place they’ve never been. Many of them are spending their own money to get to Jackson too.

That’s a big responsibility when you’re the one putting the event on and we feel it. So we’ve treated pre-event communications like part of the experience itself. 

We pulled local recs from our Jackson teammates: coffee shops, breakfast spots, the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. We built a packing guide so nobody has to guess what to wear for summer in Wyoming. We made a Spotify playlist to set the tone. We created that “Know Before You Go” guide with the kind of practical tips that make traveling to a new place much less stressful.

It’s not just about getting people to the event. It’s about making them feel like they’re part of something special before they even board the plane.

This is the first time I’ve gone this deep on the story behind an event before it even happens. It feels different (and right) because the focus is entirely on the attendee.

Out of two-and-a-half days at Highline, UserEvidence will be on stage for just 30 minutes. The rest of the time belongs to the attendees.

5. Follow-ups that don’t bomb

You can run the best event in the world and still lose if your follow-up is lazy.

I’ve been on the receiving end: great conversations, big ideas, new connections… and then you get dumped into a generic nurture sequence that ignores everything you talked about.

It’s the fastest way to erase all the goodwill you just built. We’re not doing that.

Before the event, our team will have a Who’s Who book: customers attending, target accounts in the room, open deals, LinkedIn profiles, and key contacts.

That way, when we meet someone onsite, we already have context. We can skip small talk and go straight to the conversations that matter.

After the event, there’s one hard rule: no sales follow-up until marketing and sales meet, compare notes, and agree on the next step for every single person. That outreach will be personal, relevant, and rooted in the relationship we started in Jackson.

A sloppy follow-up would undo months of work, the investment, and the trust we’ve earned.

Done right, it extends the life of the event for months, opens doors that wouldn’t have opened otherwise, and makes us the first call when someone’s in market.

Bottom line: Highline is the biggest bet of my career so far. 

If it works, it’ll be because of what no one saw: the obsessive attention to detail, the middle-of-the-night “what if we…” ideas, the notes scribbled after evening walks in Chicago, the nonstop LinkedIn DMs and emails we sent (then sent again and again and again) to make sure the right people were in the “room”.

The unglamorous grind. The calls that stretched for hours. The small moves that stacked up for six months.

That’s what got us here. You don’t luck into moments like this. You earn them.

One small win at a time. That’s how we’re running Highline.

Stuff I’m digging this week

• We analyzed 100+ Customer Marketing & Advocacy job postings—These roles are leveling up fast. We pulled job posting data to see what the “new era” of these positions really looks like. What’s expected now that they’re no longer just case study machines or reference wranglers?

• The return of Reed Between the Lines—aside from being a very good friend of mine, Devin is one of the few people in B2B marketing I’ll drop what I’m doing to watch. He has a way of getting people to open up and share stories you wouldn’t hear anywhere else—and then bringing those stories to life so you feel like you’re in the room. Season 3 drops next Wednesday.

• This Travis Kelce GQ profile —Been a huge Kelce fan for a long time. New Heights has been a huge creative inspiration for me, and this piece nails why—he hasn’t forgotten where he came from, even with all the lights, attention, and yes, the girlfriend. And at 6 pm CT tonight, I know exactly what I’ll be watching on YouTube (IYKYK).

Evidently, now streaming

Tara Panu (Director of GTM & Enterprise Marketing at RapidSOS) joined me to talk teamwork, proof points, and how marketing can literally help save lives.

From competing in sports to convincing skeptical B2B buyers in critical safety tech, Tara’s seen it all. She breaks down why collaboration, agility, and tangible proof—like real-world “save stories”—are the difference between driving adoption and getting ignored.

Catch the full 15-minute convo on YouTube.

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.