Felipe Santos

Marketing leader, Greater Toronto Area

I lead marketing teams and build the systems that turn leads into revenue.

14 years across a global wellness brand, a B2B consultancy, an agency and a startup I co-founded. I design the funnel, the CRM and the automation, then I lead the people who run it.

Email me Download resume (PDF)
Open to Head of Marketing, Marketing Director, Growth and Social leadership rolesVaughan, ON (Greater Toronto Area), hybrid or remote
How I think about marketinglive
How a lead becomes a customer. People find you, leave their details, get sorted by how ready they are to buy, then go to Sales or get follow-up. The grey dot is a lead nobody followed up with. I build the system that catches it.
1M+followers built at a startup I co-founded
6-figureannual paid budget, 3 regions
~25%lower CPA from a creator program I rebuilt
8person marketing team I built at a startup

The questions hiring managers ask

Straight answers, with the proof next to each one.

Have you built a team?

Yes. Three times.

  • 8-person marketing team at HighlightHub (staff and interns), inside a 15-person company
  • 7 people at OTBX Air across 15+ client accounts
  • 3 direct reports at Merrithew across social and community; one was promoted to project manager
See HighlightHub →

Have you owned a budget?

Yes. Every dollar tied to a target.

  • Six-figure annual paid social budget at Merrithew, across 3 regions: forecast, paced and reported against CPA
  • Moved spend to the best-returning channels and markets, and reported results to senior leadership in business terms · Merrithew
  • Paid budgets across every client account at OTBX Air
See Merrithew →

What commercial impact have you had?

Lower acquisition cost, more qualified pipeline.

  • CPA down ~25%, conversion up ~18%, engagement rate up ~40% · Merrithew, over 3 years
  • Qualified leads up ~50%, CPA down ~30% · Dicentra, over the webinar program
  • Qualified leads up ~32%, client ROI up ~40% · OTBX Air, as the roster grew from 5 to 15+ accounts
  • Startup built to a private sale · HighlightHub

These are acquisition-cost and pipeline numbers. I haven't carried a personal sales quota.

Have you developed a strategy?

Yes, and then built the system to run it.

  • Multi-brand positioning and a measurement framework · Merrithew
  • Trade-show to webinar demand gen pivot in 2020 · Dicentra
  • Social and brand strategy presented to senior leadership · RATESDOTCA
  • Full funnel, CRM and lifecycle architecture · Pillar

Have you delivered measurable growth?

Yes.

  • $250K seed round raised · HighlightHub
  • 1M+ followers across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, ~10M weekly impressions · HighlightHub
  • 1M page views on highlighthub.com in 2016 with no marketing spend · HighlightHub
  • 500K+ UGC audience, and an athlete series with videos at around 1M views · Merrithew
  • 5 to 15+ client accounts handled by a team of 7 · OTBX Air

What have you actually delivered?

Programs, systems and launches I owned end to end.

  • A live revenue system: 18 workflows, 2 pipelines, 51 fields · Pillar
  • A live lead calculator wired to the CRM · try it ↗
  • A creator program with briefs, rights, tracking and paid amplification · Merrithew
  • A webinar engine with Salesforce lead scoring, built with Sales · Dicentra
  • The social side of every major launch, from a new education platform to Black Friday · Merrithew
  • A pro-athlete content series, from idea and budget to the deals with Sales · Merrithew
  • An iOS and Android app launch · HighlightHub

Have you stayed anywhere long enough to see the results of your decisions?

Yes. Seven years from founding to sale, and three years at Merrithew.

HighlightHub, 7 years, founding to sale · Merrithew, 3 years · Pillar, ongoing contract.

OTBX Air ended when the agency's funding ended. RATESDOTCA was a short-term role I took on for one large project. Merrithew ended when the company moved to an agency model. I am looking for the next long one.

Selected work

Five cases. What I owned, what I decided, what happened, what I learned.

Each one reads in under a minute. Open “See the build” for the constraints, the tradeoffs and where every number comes from.

  1. People come in four ways

    A 14-page funnel: the Revenue Leak Estimator, a free guide that leads to the $97 Playbook, the toolkit on its own, or booking an audit.

  2. Every contact gets a full record

    51 custom fields and 21 lifecycle tags track where each lead came from, what they did and what they agreed to hear about.

  3. Each lead lands in the right pipeline

    Owners ready to talk and cold traffic move differently, so each gets its own path.

    Sales path, 7 stagesNew › Audit booked › Audit done › Install call › Proposal › Won or lost

    Cold path, 5 stagesNew › Estimator done › Toolkit buyer › Hot lead, or lost

  4. 18 workflows keep it moving

    Capture, nurture, checkout and sales handoff, plus checks that flag any lead gone quiet. A $97 purchase marks a hot lead and gets a person on the call.

Pillar Studio Systems · Fractional Marketing Lead, Growth Systems (contract), Dec 2025 to now

Built a complete lead-to-revenue system in GoHighLevel: 18 workflows, 2 pipelines, a live lead calculator and one data model.

A company that sells revenue systems to boutique fitness studios retained me on contract to design its own. I built it for one Pilates studio first, then scaled it, over about 8 months including testing. I scoped the funnel, the CRM data model and the automation, and hired and directed 3 freelancers, including a CRM developer and a designer, against one quarterly plan, run in two-week sprints.

18workflows live
51custom fields
14funnel pages
Marketing OpsCRM architectureLifecycle automationCross-functional delivery
See the build

The problem

Pillar sells revenue infrastructure to studio owners. To sell it, the business needed its own: capture interest, separate buyers from browsers, follow up automatically and route hot leads to a call. None of it existed.

Constraints

  • A lean team: me and 3 freelancers, including a CRM developer and a designer.
  • GoHighLevel has no page or workflow API. Everything is built by hand, so specs had to be exact enough to build without coming back to me.
  • Canadian and US contact law (CASL, TCPA, A2P 10DLC) designed in from day one.

Decisions and tradeoffs

  1. Two pipelines. Ready-to-talk owners and cold traffic behave differently, so each got its own stages. More to maintain, but reporting shows exactly where each kind of lead stalls.
  2. A $97 product as a filter. A buyer is far more likely to take a call, so two hot-lead workflows fire on that signal.
  3. No lead goes quiet unnoticed. A weekly stale-lead alert flags anyone 21+ days in without booking or buying. It notifies a person and never contacts the lead.
  4. A human answers replies. Reply handlers alert a person instead of letting a bot respond in phase 1.
  5. A reactivation module for dead leads. Dead-lead import, 3-touch SMS, 5-branch intent classification on replies, gated by consent rules.

Inside it: the Revenue Leak Estimator

A 5-question calculator that shows a studio owner what slow follow-up costs them, before asking for an email. The email unlocks the full breakdown and creates a scored contact in the CRM in real time.

  • Number before the gate. Some people leave with the number and no email. The ones who stay have already seen the value.
  • The webhook cannot lose a lead silently. A retry after 2 seconds, then a backup send; the result still shows if both fail.
  • Consent built in. Separate, unchecked email and SMS boxes, stored on the contact.

Try it live ↗ Live since Aug 19 2026. Too early for conversion data.

What QA caught before launch

Tagging, routing and access-timing defects, and a missing workflow that would have broken the lifecycle on day one. During the estimator install: a stale webhook field picker, an unreadable CTA button, an auto-padded logo and three wrong links.

Outcome

The system is live, documented and QA'd, and built to handle 20 studio clients in its first year. This case shows the build and the decisions.

What I learned

Build for one real customer first. Designing around one Pilates studio made every stage concrete before the system had to scale.

How these numbers were measured

ResultHow it was measured
18 workflows, 2 pipelines (7 and 5 stages)Live GoHighLevel read, Oct 27 2026
51 custom fields, 21 tagsGoHighLevel API, Oct 27 2026 (test items excluded)
14-page funnelThe live funnel, page by page
Built to handle 20 studio clients in year oneSystem design capacity, not a result

Proves: owns the martech stack, builds lifecycle automation and routing and writes requirements developers can build from

Three Merrithew Instagram reels with 4.6M, 1.7M and 2M views
Creator and partnership reels from the program I ran, on @merrithew: 4.6M, 1.7M and 2M views.

Merrithew (STOTT PILATES), 2022 to 2025

Cut CPA about 25% by tying a global creator program to acquisition cost.

Creator work across North America, Europe and Asia was informal: no briefs, no rights, no tracking. I turned it into one program with paid amplification and measured it against cost per acquisition, with three direct reports and a six-figure paid social budget. Results are across my three years, November 2022 to October 2025.

~25%lower CPA
~18%higher conversion
~40%higher engagement rate
GrowthTeam leadershipPaid mediaMeasurementBrand architectureBrand & social
See the build

The problem

Brands and regions ran in silos. Creator relationships were informal: no brief structure, no rights management, no tracking and no link to acquisition.

Constraints

  • No direct authority over regional teams in Europe and Asia.
  • A multi-brand portfolio: one framework could not flatten what made each brand distinct.
  • A six-figure annual paid social budget across Facebook, Pinterest and Reddit in North America, Europe and Asia, so every test had to earn its spend.

Decisions and tradeoffs

  1. Interview the regions first, then co-design. Slower start, but adoption held.
  2. Pilot in two markets before scaling. Teams saw live results before being asked to change.
  3. Measure on two levels. Leading signals (engagement, creator performance by market) and lagging ones (CPA, conversion from creator traffic) in Looker Studio.
  4. Paid amplification on creator content, run alongside organic in every market.

The loop

BRIEF + RIGHTS CREATE AMPLIFY (PAID) MEASURE CPA, not likes leading + lagging

One brand split into two

I helped split STOTT PILATES into two brands under Merrithew: STOTT PILATES Academy for instructor education and STOTT PILATES Studio for classes. I helped set how each brand's content would differ, and worked on the brand guidelines for all three through launch, over a 12+ month project.

@stottpilatesacademy Instagram: STOTT PILATES Academy, education brand, 17.5K followers @stottpilatesstudiotoronto Instagram: STOTT PILATES Studio Toronto, 7,234 followers

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Education brand and studio brand, today. Current posts are brand context, not my work.

A series I created: Athletes in the Off-Season

Pilates was going mainstream. I wanted to reach people who train for any sport, at any level, so I went after athletes and the trainers and studios that serve them.

  • I pitched the series inside the company and secured the budget.
  • I built the relationships with the trainers and the athletes, and worked with Sales to close each deal.
  • We made about nine videos with NFL and NBA athletes. Several reached around a million views, and it became one of Merrithew's most popular series.
Three Athletes in the Off-Season reels on Merrithew's Instagram with 1M, 1.3M and 1.1M views
Athletes in the Off-Season, October 2024: 1M, 1.3M and 1.1M views as shown on Instagram. Athlete names hidden.

Launches: Black Friday and the education platform

  • Black Friday: early access through social was my idea. People signed up before the sale for first access and a chance to win a $500 shopping spree, so demand was building before the doors opened.
  • Education platform: we launched Merrithew Connect on social. One reel reached 2.4M views and made the platform's top five of 2024.
Merrithew Black Friday creative: register for early access and you could win $500 Merrithew Connect reel, Conditioning for Resilience on the Reformer, 2.4M views

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One of the Black Friday 2024 creatives, and a Merrithew Connect reel at 2.4M views.

Outcome

  • CPA down about 25%, conversion up about 18% and engagement rate up about 40%, across my three years (Nov 2022 to Oct 2025), as the creator program and testing framework rolled out. Paid spend and launches ran over the same period, so these are team results I led, not mine alone.
  • UGC program scaled to a 500K+ audience. Creator and partnership reels reached 4.6M, 2M and 1.7M views.
  • Created Athletes in the Off-Season with NFL and NBA athletes; several videos reached around 1M views. Also ran partnerships with Virgin Group's UK studios, MYO and other brands and creators.
  • STOTT PILATES Academy and STOTT PILATES Studio launched as separate brands with their own guidelines.
  • Built the social side of every major launch: a new education platform, education programs, equipment launches and sales events such as Black Friday.
  • Managed three direct reports across social and community; one was promoted to project manager.

How these numbers were measured

ResultHow it was measured
~25% CPA, ~18% conversion, ~40% engagement rate, 500K+ audienceTracked in Looker Studio, Nov 2022 to Oct 2025. Engagement rate is the standard measure: interactions divided by reach, from platform analytics.
Launches, March Matness 2024My campaigns. March Matness 2024 (a month of instructor-led creator posts) is recapped on the Merrithew blog
Six-figure paid social budget, 3 regions, 3 direct reportsThe scope of the role at Merrithew, Nov 2022 to Oct 2025
Brand split and guidelines for all threeA 12+ month project. Both brands run their own live Instagram accounts today.
4.6M, 2M, 1.7M reel viewsPublic view counts on @merrithew, Oct 2026
Athlete series 1M, 1.1M, 1.3M; Connect reel 2.4MPublic view counts on @merrithew as Instagram displays them (rounded), Oct 2026

What I learned

Teams adopt what they help design. The two-market pilot persuaded the other regions faster than any deck could, because they saw live results before anyone asked them to change.

Proves: owns paid budget against CPA, builds measurement tied to acquisition and leads across regions without authority

  1. Trade shows stopped

    In 2020, COVID closed the events where Dicentra met its buyers.

  2. Teach instead of pitch

    Webinars for the same buyers, building to 1 to 2 a month, with promotion and nurture around each one.

  3. Score with Sales

    Lead scoring in Salesforce, set up with the Sales team so they trusted what reached them.

  4. Only qualified leads to Sales

    Sales spent its time on buyers who were ready to talk.

Dicentra · Digital Marketing Manager, 2020 to 2021

When trade shows stopped in 2020, I moved demand gen to webinars and lifted qualified leads about 50%.

Dicentra, a B2B consultancy, found its buyers at trade shows. When COVID closed events, I moved demand generation to webinars, built the cadence to 1 to 2 a month, and set up lead scoring in Salesforce with the Sales team so only qualified leads went to sales.

~50%more qualified leads
~30%lower CPA
1 to 2webinars a month
Demand genB2BSales alignmentSalesforce
See the build

The problem

The pipeline depended on meeting buyers in person. In 2020 that channel disappeared, and Sales needed a way to tell ready buyers from early ones.

Decisions and tradeoffs

  1. Teach first. Webinars gave buyers the answers they used to get at a booth. Leads arrived better informed, which is what lifted quality.
  2. Build the cadence up. 1 to 2 webinars a month, increasing as the funnel matured.
  3. Score with Sales, not for Sales. The scoring rules were agreed with the Sales team, so a qualified lead meant the same thing on both sides.

Outcome

  • Qualified leads up about 50% and CPA down about 30%, over about a year and a half of the webinar program.
  • Lead quality kept rising as the webinar funnel matured.

What I learned

Lead quality follows education. The more the funnel taught, the better the leads that reached Sales.

How these numbers were measured

ResultHow it was measured
~50% qualified leads, ~30% CPATracked across the webinar program, 2020 to 2021
1 to 2 webinars a month, Salesforce lead scoring with SalesThe program calendar, and the scoring model set up with the Sales team in Salesforce

Proves: runs B2B demand generation, aligns marketing and sales on lead quality, adapts when a channel disappears

  1. Audit the work

    Mapped every manual step and timed it. Anything that needs judgment stays with a person.

  2. Build AI in

    Content production, lead-magnet creation, onboarding and email follow-up, each with a QA check.

  3. A person approves

    Nothing reaches a customer until someone says yes.

  4. Ship

    Pages, emails, social posts, PDFs and reports.

AI workflow build, Pillar contract

Audited every manual step, then built AI in where it removed work, cutting onboarding and email time about 40%.

Content production, lead-magnet creation, onboarding and email follow-up now run through AI-assisted workflows, with a QA check and a person's approval before anything reaches a customer. A lean team gets the output of a much bigger one.

~40%less time on onboarding and email
4workflows rebuilt with AI
AI-native opsProcess designPythonGovernance
See the build

The problem

A small operation needed the output of a content team, a CRM team and a lead-qualification team without the headcount.

Decisions and tradeoffs

  1. Small, single-purpose automations over one big agent. Easier to fix and extend; less autonomous.
  2. A human gate on anything outward-facing. Counts shown first, then a yes.
  3. One source of truth per topic so the agents cannot drift.
  4. QA built in. Content is checked against the brand rules before anyone sees it.
  5. A written taste file first. The AI reads one file of who the customer is, how they talk and what makes them stop, so the output sounds like the brand.
  6. Fix the layer underneath first. Process written down, then clean data, then automation, then AI.
  7. Two-week sprints. The audit, customer mapping, pipeline, strategy and brand each ran as sprints: one bet, a test, a written lesson for the next one.

What I learned

Automate the steps, keep the judgment. The time came back from the repeatable steps; every customer-facing call still has a person on it.

Much of the method comes from reading The Loop by the HubSpot team and from talks on AI operations. I took the ideas and put them to work here.

Proves: AI fluency in marketing workflows, builds scalable processes and knows when not to automate

highlighthub.com in October 2018: trending fan-uploaded highlights, an Upload Video button and a banner for the app on the App Store and Google Play
highlighthub.com, October 2018: fan uploads on the web, and the app we launched on iOS and Android in April 2017. Wayback Machine ↗

HighlightHub, co-founder and Head of Marketing, 2012 to 2020

Co-founded a sports media app, built an 8-person marketing team and grew the brand past 1M followers across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter before a private sale.

I raised $250K, launched the iOS and Android apps, signed partnerships with MLSE, the NFL, NBA and NHL, and built the team and processes that scaled the brand. Sports Illustrated and Complex used our fans' clips, and two major sports media companies made offers before a private sale.

1M+followers across IG, FB, Twitter
$250Kraised
8person marketing team
Head of MarketingTeam buildingGo-to-marketPartnerships
See the build

The problem

A new sports media app in a crowded market, with little budget and no brand.

Decisions and tradeoffs

  1. Borrow distribution we could not buy. Athlete previews first, then league and entertainment partners: MLSE, NFL, NBA, NHL, Roc Nation, Complex Media.
  2. Reward fan content. Gamification rewarded fans for uploading clips, which brought in more clips.
  3. Build process before headcount outgrew it. Clear owners for content, social, community and influencer relations.

Outcome

  • $250K raised, with pitches in rooms including Gary Vaynerchuk and Roc Nation.
  • Company grown to 15 people, with an 8-person marketing team.
  • Audience grown from about 178K Instagram followers in the early days to 1M+ across several Instagram pages, Facebook and Twitter, with about 10M weekly impressions.
  • 1,000,000 page views on highlighthub.com in 2016 with no marketing spend.
  • Sports Illustrated and Complex used our fans' clips in their own coverage.
  • Two major sports media companies made offers. We sold the company in a private sale.

The pitch and the app

HighlightHub pitch deck cover: Sports start-up poised to flip industry on its head HighlightHub on the App Store with Upload and Upvote screens, and the in-app feed, April 2017

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The investor deck I built with my co-founders and a designer, and the app at launch, April 2017: upload, upvote, and a score on every profile.

The 1M+ was spread across several Instagram pages, Facebook and Twitter. Some accounts went with the company sale and some were sold on their own. We kept @highlighthubtv ↗ (205K followers), which is still up but hasn't been active for a few years.

Drake tagged us, unpaid

Drake followed HighlightHub on his own, and it grew into a working relationship with Drake/OVO. He tagged us in three of his own Instagram posts:

  • September 1, 2015: "Crazy Lamp Trick Shot." 271K likes. Wayback Machine ↗
  • August 24, 2016: a half-court shot from his back. 2.27M views. Wayback Machine ↗
  • "Summer camp in the winter time. All net." 1,698,071 views.
Frame from Drake's August 2016 Instagram video: a half-court shot taken lying down at the Atlanta Hawks practice court
Drake's Instagram, August 24, 2016: "FOR THE KIA!!!!! @highlighthub @bleacherreport". 2.27M views and 530K likes a day later. Wayback Machine ↗
Drake's Instagram post tagging @highlighthub: Summer camp in the winter time. All net. 1,698,071 views
Drake's Instagram: "Summer camp in the winter time. All net. @highlighthub #hhtrickshot". 1,698,071 views and 3,835 comments.

How these numbers were measured

ResultHow it was measured
iOS and Android appshighlighthub.com, Oct 2018 (Wayback Machine): App Store and Google Play badges
1M+ followers, ~10M weekly impressionsCombined across several Instagram pages, Facebook and Twitter at peak. Some accounts went with the company sale, some were sold on their own. We kept @highlighthubtv (205K today).
Drake tags: 271K likes, 2.27M views, 1,698,071 viewsThe Sep 1, 2015 and Aug 24, 2016 posts are archived by the Wayback Machine and no longer live. The third is a screenshot of the post on Drake's Instagram, shown above.
$250K raised, 8-person marketing team in a 15-person company, private saleThe seed round and team at HighlightHub, 2012 to 2020. The company was sold in a private sale.
1M page views in 2016, no marketing spendhighlighthub.com traffic for 2016, all organic
178K early Instagram followers, Sports Illustrated and Complex, two offersOur early investor deck, made while we were still growing. The 1M+ came later

What I learned

With no budget, borrow distribution. Athletes, leagues and fans uploading their own clips got us reach we could never have bought.

Proves: builds and leads a marketing team, owns go-to-market for a launch, signs partnerships

How I lead

Systems only work when the people running them helped build them.

Co-design, then scale.

I interview the people who will run the system before I design it, pilot it small, and let results do the persuading.

Merrithew · piloted in 2 markets, then adopted across 3 regions

Write it so it runs without me.

Specs a developer can build from, briefs a coordinator can execute, dashboards a CEO can read.

Pillar · specs built by 3 freelancers

Measure the money, not the noise.

Every program gets a leading signal and a lagging one tied to acquisition cost or pipeline.

Dicentra · lead scoring agreed with Sales

Learn in short loops.

One bet, a test, a written lesson, then the next bet. Many small tests beat one big quarterly plan, and AI does the admin that used to slow them down.

Pillar · built in two-week sprints

Where I disagree with common adviceAutomate the follow-up, but keep a person on the reply.

2025 to now

Pillar Studio Systems · Fractional Marketing Lead, Growth Systems (contract)

2022 to 2025

Merrithew · Senior Social Media Manager, Marketing and Communications (3 direct reports, six-figure paid social budget)

2022

RATESDOTCA · Senior Social Media Lead (short-term role)

2021 to 2022

OTBX Air · Social Team Lead (team of 7, 15+ client accounts)

2020 to 2021

Dicentra · Digital Marketing Manager (trade shows to webinars pivot)

2012 to 2020

HighlightHub · Head of Marketing and Digital (co-founder)

Toolkit

The stack I build on.

CRM & automation

GoHighLevelHubSpotSalesforceManyChatn8nWebhooks

Paid & performance

Meta Ads ManagerGoogle AdsPinterestRedditAdvantage+

Analytics

GA4Looker StudioTalkwalkerBrandwatch

AI & build

Claude Codecustom skills & agentsPythonPerplexityCodexNotebookLM

Contact

Hiring a Head of Marketing, a marketing director or a growth lead?

I am looking for a growing company, roughly 20 to 200 people, where marketing is expected to drive revenue. I reply within a day.

felipeuasantos@gmail.com LinkedIn ↗ Resume (PDF) Case studies (PDF)