It was a sweltering late-summer afternoon in Boston, and I was on my way to the HubSpot Inbound conference—ready to dig into the latest B2B marketing trends—when I struck up a conversation with a fellow marketer named Rachel Gleiberman. Little did I know that our brief walk to the convention center would turn into a deep dive into one of the most intriguing B2B campaigns I’ve encountered all year.
Rachel is the Marketing Manager at Profire Energy, a burner management and combustion controls company in the oil-and-gas-heavy province of Alberta, Canada. That might sound technical (and maybe a bit daunting), but what truly hooked me was Rachel’s passion for aligning marketing with sales to drive real results. By “real results,” I mean tripling their leads in the span of just a few months.
Below, I’m sharing the full story of how they pulled it off—told through a genuine human-to-human lens. In a world where AI churns out content at scale, it’s refreshing to hear a tale of marketers who pick up the phone, chat with sales, and even risk a bit of humor (cue a Jerry Seinfeld meme) to make their message stick.
Rachel’s journey into marketing wasn’t your typical route. She began studying analytical chemistry at university, only to discover her true calling in marketing while juggling part-time work at a B2C company. That might sound like a left turn, but ironically, her analytical background became a perfect match for marketing—especially in an industry where technical accuracy is paramount.
“I realized I had an analytical mindset but also loved the creative side. Turns out that’s exactly what I needed for B2B marketing,” Rachel told me.
Key Takeaway: Don’t underestimate a unique background. Sometimes, the person with the unexpected skill set makes the best marketer—especially in highly specialized B2B verticals.
Profire Energy’s core mission is to build “really fancy thermostats” (Rachel’s words!) for large industrial heaters. Safety is at the heart of their product, and it was fascinating to hear how UI/UX factors heavily into their engineering process. That focus on user-friendly design translates directly into easier storytelling for the marketing team.
Rachel’s Role: As Marketing Manager, she wears many hats—managing collateral, guiding content strategy, syncing with R&D, and, crucially, partnering with the sales team to generate leads.
“We’re at a point where we want to position ourselves as experts. People said, ‘No one’s going to read an industrial blog,’ but if you make it relatable, they do.”
Key Takeaway: Even the most technical products can hook an audience if you humanize the narrative. Profire’s emphasis on a friendly user experience made it simpler for Rachel to develop approachable, resonant campaigns.
When Rachel talked about measuring campaign success, she highlighted leads. In her first quarter of 2024 alone, Profire Energy exceeded its total lead count from the entire previous year. That staggering jump didn’t happen by accident—it’s the direct result of close collaboration between marketing and sales.
“We’re a service department to sales,” she told me. “We support them. Without sales, we wouldn’t exist.”
Their marketing team keeps an open forum with sales, encouraging reps to share insights fresh from conferences or customer calls. Rachel even sits in on sales calls (when possible) to hear questions directly from prospects. That fluid line of communication helps the marketing team create content that addresses real-world pain points.
Key Takeaway: True synergy with sales is not just about distributing leads; it’s about ongoing, two-way dialogue. If you listen closely to your sales team’s stories, you’ll uncover golden marketing ideas no spreadsheet can provide.
One campaign that exemplified this sales-enabled mindset centered around a concept called “methane abatement.” The idea? Convert harmful methane emissions into a functional energy source—turning a negative into a net positive. Profire Energy partnered with a company to do just that, and Rachel’s team seized the moment.
The Result: Three times their usual engagement on every channel, higher delivery rates, longer read times, and a significant uptick in web visits and contact forms.
“It was scary to put out humor like that, but people loved it because it felt human and different.”
Key Takeaway: If you’re in a traditional industry, a dash of unexpected humor can cut through the noise. Just make sure the comedic angle aligns with your audience’s sensibilities—Rachel’s team double-checked their demographic to ensure a Seinfeld meme would resonate.
Despite all the talk about corporate structures, budgets, and ROI, marketing ultimately remains a human-centered discipline. Rachel calls it “B2H”—business-to-human. Behind those “B2B” acronyms are real people with questions, opinions, and a sense of humor.
“One of the biggest lessons we learned at Inbound is that B2B is actually B2H. There’s still one person making the call, even if they have a team behind them.”
By framing the campaign around real-life concerns—like net-zero emissions goals—Rachel’s team showed empathy and provided tangible, actionable information.
Key Takeaway: Toss out the cold, robotic language. Yes, you must maintain accuracy, but meeting your audience on a human level fosters trust and engagement.
Marketing a product with safety implications can be tricky. One false step, and you might misrepresent the technology or overpromise. The Profire team invests time in fact-checking every piece of content with engineers and sales staff. Using synonyms might seem harmless, but in technical fields, it can change the entire meaning of a sentence.
Key Takeaway: Don’t let creativity overshadow correctness. Pull in experts from R&D or your quality control team to validate messaging. Otherwise, you risk eroding trust before your prospects even finish reading.
Rachel’s final big lesson involved treating the campaign like a “hub and spoke” system. The main piece of cornerstone content (an article) branched out into emails, social posts, and other assets, each tailored to a slightly different angle. Consistency in theme but variety in voice kept their audience intrigued.
“We gave them a beginning, a middle, and an end. They never knew what was coming next, and they stayed tuned.”
Key Takeaway: Don’t rely on a single blog post or press release. Map out a cohesive narrative that unfolds across different channels to snag attention at multiple touchpoints.
As we wrapped up our conversation, Rachel emphasized that not every piece of marketing gold is found in an analytics dashboard. She urges marketers to “go old school” sometimes—pick up the phone, attend events, meet your sales team face-to-face, and form real relationships. Those personal interactions can spark campaign ideas you’d never uncover by sifting through metrics alone.
Parting Advice: “Don’t be afraid to go old school. Talk to people in real life. And yeah, keep it human—people don’t want to read content that feels like it came from a robot.”
My biggest takeaway from Profire Energy’s campaign is simple yet powerful: When sales and marketing collaborate seamlessly, magic happens. Rachel’s story proves that no industry is too technical or too “boring” to engage with if you treat your audience like real people and leverage the insights your sales team brings back from the field.
Ready to crack the code on your next campaign? Take a page from Rachel’s playbook: embrace humor, anchor your message to real-life successes, and work hand-in-hand with your sales team. You might just 3x your leads while you’re at it.
For the complete story straight from Rachel, check out the Sales-Enabled Marketing: Profire Energy’s Blueprint for Triple the Leads episode on the Campaign Code Breakers podcast. You’ll hear how they overcame technical hurdles, discovered new markets, and delivered massive ROI—all by keeping marketing human.