GitLab

Scope: integrated growth and inbound

From June 2020 to Aug 2024, I was Director of Integrated Growth and Inbound Marketing at GitLab. My charter was to rebuild inbound and integrated growth as an operating unit, reverse a marketing site traffic decline, and tighten the conversion and lifecycle loop across the funnel.

Most of the work wasn’t channel optimisation. It was alignment, ownership, and instrumentation.

I treated inbound and integrated growth as an operating system problem. The unit of work was the journey from first touch to product action, not a list of channels.

The scope was cross functional by default. Core partners were Digital Strategy, Digital Experience, and Growth, with consistent collaboration across Content, SEO, Lifecycle, Paid, Campaigns, and Social.

Operating problem: inbound decline and reactive execution

Inbound was trending the wrong way, and execution was too reactive. Too many parallel initiatives, not enough shared prioritization, and not enough instrumentation to make tradeoffs explicit.

Operating system: quarterly planning and scorecard

Quarterly planning was the forcing function. It let us pick a small set of bets, assign DRIs, review results against one scorecard, and say no to ad hoc work.

• Reframed the Digital Experience team scope to own inbound outcomes (purpose, vision, mission, objectives).
• Quarterly planning and OKRs as the forcing function, with a single set of priorities, DRIs, and a shared scorecard.
• A unified To/Through/In PLG motion across Digital Strategy, Digital Experience, and Growth.
• Commercial vs Enterprise segmentation to focus experimentation and conversion depth where it mattered most.

Initiatives: traffic recovery and funnel unification

My default move was a ship and review loop. Agree on the target pages and levers, ship changes weekly, review impact in the scorecard, and cut what didn’t move sessions and conversion.

When the traffic decline became undeniable, I pulled together the cross-functional owners and ran that loop until the trend broke.

In parallel, we unified the funnel. One set of stage definitions across PLG and sales-assisted paths, a short list of conversion moments, and an experiment cadence tied to activation and revenue.

• Revitalized the inbound engine: cross-functional working group, weekly ship/review cadence, and a traffic recovery plan that reversed decline.
• Unified funnel definition and conversion lift: instrumented the end-to-end journey, removed friction, and ran an experiment cadence that compounded learning.
• Lifecycle programs that tied intent to next steps, with clearer stage entry and exit criteria.

Leadership: ownership, cadence, and tradeoffs

I did less "own the channel" work and more "make the system run" work:

• Took over stalled initiatives, reset the cadence, and made ownership explicit.
• Wrote the memos and quarterly plans to get exec sponsorship, DRIs, and shared metrics.
• Protected focus by cutting parallel work and forcing prioritization through quarterly planning.

The tradeoff was focus. We reduced parallel initiatives, prioritized Commercial experimentation, and used quarterly planning to protect execution quality.

What changed: a shared operating loop, clearer tradeoffs, and a more reliable inbound engine.

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Results: traffic, conversion, and operating cadence

These outcomes come from the Integrated Growth and Inbound Marketing operating scorecard and quarterly planning reviews from this period. This page is the primary published record of this work.

• Stopped and reversed inbound traffic decline on GitLab’s marketing site.
• Delivered 20% annual growth in site traffic and a 30% increase in site sessions.
• Improved trial conversion by 40% and account sign-ups by 22% after funnel unification.
• Established quarterly planning and a unified To/Through/In PLG motion across Digital Strategy, Digital Experience, and Growth.
• Improved cross-functional coordination and execution quality for Commercial and Enterprise lifecycle programs.