iPEC Demand Engine: Edward Chalupa

The short version

What I built

A full demand engine from nothing: HubSpot automation, intent-based scoring, multi-channel acquisition across three revenue streams, and a B2B intent pipeline built with n8n and ZoomInfo. No inherited infrastructure.

What it produced

6,913 MQLs, 1,557 meetings, 316 deals, 5.95x ROAS — all maintained through a 58% mid-year budget cut. The same architecture ran at Uplift Education the year before with the same results.

Why it's relevant

The same architecture ran at two organizations in two different verticals, coaching certification and K–12 education, both built from nothing. The trigger logic, scoring model, sales alignment, and spend discipline aren't tied to what's being sold. They transfer to any considered-purchase funnel.

The Starting Point

What I Inherited

iPEC had strong product, an engaged community, and a $3.3M enrollment goal. Marketing infrastructure to hit it: none.

State on Day One

No automation infrastructure: every campaign was manual
No intent-based segmentation: everyone got the same message
Marketing and sales operated in separate lanes
Pipeline tracked by MQL volume, not opportunity creation
Vague positioning, no repeatable campaign framework

What I Was Asked to Build

End-to-end demand generation program for coaching certification
Scalable HubSpot automation with behavioral scoring
Multi-channel acquisition across paid, organic, and AI pilots
Weekly pipeline reporting tied to sales and RevOps
4-person team aligned to pipeline contribution, not vanity metrics

This wasn't the first build. The year before iPEC, I ran the same playbook at Uplift Education, a 23,000-student, 20-campus charter school network with a $20M+ per-pupil funding target tied to enrollment. HubSpot automation built from scratch, behavior-based lead scoring, dynamic audience segmentation. Result: 4,000+ enrollment applications and 75% student re-enrollment rate. Different product, same system.

Campaign Scope

Three Revenue Streams. One Team. Concurrent.

The iPEC marketing function wasn't one campaign type. It was three distinct businesses running in parallel, each with separate buyers, offer structures, sales motions, and campaign cadences.

B2C Enrollment

CTP Certification

High-consideration, long-cycle enrollment product. Buyers research 3–6 months before committing. Webinar-anchored campaigns, behavioral lead scoring, admissions handoff, and multi-touch attribution across 3–4 cycles per year.

Program value~$12K per student

Annual enrollment goal$3.3M

Campaign cycles per year3–4

Primary channelPaid search + email sequences

eCommerce

ELI Assessments

Direct-to-coach assessment tools sold via Shopify-style checkout. Two SKUs (Self $60, 360 $119) plus two courses ($210/$299). Promotional flash sales layered onto the enrollment calendar, each with dedicated email, social, and landing page campaigns.

Jan–Sep 2025 gross sales$601,482

Orders in period2,065

Units sold9,546

Sale campaigns per year3 cycles

B2B / Corporate

Conscious Leadership

Corporate workshop program targeting HR leaders and L&D buyers. $1,500 live virtual sessions for 12–50 attendees. Supported with a dedicated sell sheet, B2B landing page on ipeccoaching.com, and a dedicated sales rep pipeline. Separate buyer persona, separate campaign motion.

Workshop price$1,500 per session

Target audienceHR, L&D, team leads

Assets builtSell sheet, 1-pager, landing page

Sales motionDedicated B2B rep + marketing support

The Approach

Three Layers. One System.

Every piece of the campaign was designed to trigger from behavior, not schedules, not gut feel.

Layer 01

Audience Architecture

Three behavioral segments. Three distinct nurture tracks. Automatically routed by HubSpot based on real interaction signals.

Engaged (opened + clicked): resource sequences + next step CTAs
Hesitant (opened, no click): value prop + FAQ + social proof
Unaware (no open): subject line A/B + incentive + feedback loop

Layer 02

Intent-Based Infrastructure

AI-assisted lead scoring tied to behavioral thresholds, not time-in-funnel. Score hit means sequence enrollment and BDR task, simultaneously.

Page visit patterns, content downloads, email engagement as signals
Trigger-based nurture: threshold hit: sequence + BDR task
Multi-touch attribution across every stage to pipeline
Scaled to 4,918 active contacts at 32.4% open rate

Layer 03

Multi-Channel Activation

Five channels running in parallel, all tied to meetings booked and deals won, not cost per click.

Google Ads: 6.3% blended CTR, 920 conversions, $66.65 avg CPA (Q1 2026, account-level)
Waste rate held to 4.1% (industry avg: 10%) via weekly negative keyword audits
Meta + Pinterest optimized by funnel-stage conversion, not CTR
AI pilots: quiz funnels + chatbot lead magnets for top-of-funnel qualification
Replay email: 15.74% CTR vs. 0.5% on initial invite

B2B Intent Stack: How the Sales Rep Got a Warm List

The B2B side had no inbound. Tanya was working a cold list. I built her a better one. n8n scraped job boards daily for companies posting Leadership Development or L&D Manager roles. Those postings are a reliable signal: the company is actively investing in people development, which is the same budget that funds coaching workshops. ZoomInfo enriched each hit with firmographics, org depth, and the right contact to call. When a company cleared the size and industry threshold, n8n dropped a HubSpot task with the job posting attached as context. Tanya's queue went from a spreadsheet to a prioritized list where every row had a reason to reach out.

Signal sourceJob board postings (Indeed, LinkedIn Jobs)

EnrichmentZoomInfo firmographics + decision-maker contacts

Orchestrationn8n + crawl4ai + HubSpot

OutputPrioritized HubSpot task queue with posting evidence

What Makes It Repeatable

The Framework

A single quarter of results isn't a system. I built this to run at Uplift Education and then brought it to iPEC with minor adjustments. A new vertical or product line could be onboarded to the same architecture in a few days.

Campaign Brief Template

Vertical, use case, offer, channel mix, and measurement plan in one doc. Co-authored with sales before launch, not distributed after.

Trigger Hierarchy

Behavioral signals defined before campaigns launch, not added post-hoc. Each threshold maps to a specific sequence entry and BDR action.

Weekly Pipeline Review

Sales in the room. Pipeline contribution as the metric: not MQLs, not CTR. Every channel decision made with field signal from reps.

Post-Mortem Cadence

Which signals predicted conversion, which didn't. Reweighted scoring model after each cycle. Attribution agreed with RevOps before launch.

Campaign Spotlight

Elevate Your Next Chapter

Late-cycle CTP enrollment campaign, March 2026. A webinar-anchored, multi-channel push across paid search, email, social, and landing pages over a 3-week enrollment window.

Campaign Type Late-Cycle Enrollment Webinar

Window March 7 - 27, 2026 (3 weeks)

Goal CTP Enrollments, Late Cohort

Channels Active Paid Search, Email, Social, Landing Pages, YouTube

Team Running It 4-person squad (email, design, social, copy)

Paid Search

Campaign YCTJYC / LPT/CTP

Spend (90-day) $24,074

Conversions 339

Avg CPA $71.02

ROAS 3.19x

Blended CTR 6.3%

Invite Delivered 19,896

Invite Open Rate 23.52%

Invite CTR 0.5%

Replay Open Rate 43.52%

Replay CTR 15.74%

Sequences Active 3 (Attended / Not-Attended / Referral)

Organic Social

Platforms LI, IG, Reddit, FB Community

YouTube Replay Published Elevate Your Next Chapter webinar

Testimonial Asset Nathan “3x investment” clip

Community Posts Late-cycle urgency posts, daily FBCC

Daily Cadence M-F engagement maintained

Influencer Program Pilot launched 3/18

Email Performance: Why the Replay Beat the Invite by 31x on CTR

The behavioral segmentation built in HubSpot is why this happened: each contact got the right message at the right moment, not a broadcast.

Webinar Invite

23.52%

Open rate, 19,896 delivered

0.5%

CTR, cold audience, no prior intent signal

Replay Email (Post-Webinar)

43.52%

Open rate, +85% lift over invite

15.74%

CTR, 31x the invite CTR

Behavioral Segmentation

Post-webinar contacts were routed into attended vs. not-attended tracks with distinct subject lines, copy angles, and CTA timing, before any broadcast went out.

The insight that changed sequencing strategy: On-demand content outperforms live invites by a wide margin for a considered-purchase audience. After seeing the replay data, we restructured future webinar campaigns to treat replay distribution as the primary conversion event, not the live session.

Assets Produced

EmailWebinar invite (2 versions), replay email, "What You Missed" clip email

SequencesAttended track, Not-Attended track, Ambassador referral sequence

Landing PagesReplay page (dual CTA: Watch / Talk to Admissions), late-cycle enrollment page

Paid SearchYCTJYC / LPT/CTP campaign across 7 ad groups, negative keyword list

VideoYouTube replay upload (Elevate webinar), Nathan testimonial clip, "What You Missed" short-form clip

Social7 Days of ELI FBCC series (7 posts), daily LI/IG/Reddit engagement cadence

DesignEmail thumbnails, static ad creative, video stills, replay page layout

HubSpot OpsZapier integration, HS registration workflow, active segment refresh, contact upload

Creative Examples

Static ad creatives produced across concurrent campaigns running alongside the Elevate webinar, each mapped to a distinct audience segment and funnel stage.

5 Mindset Shifts: Webinar Series

5 Mindset Shifts: Variant 2

5 Mindset Shifts: Variant 3

AI Chat Lead Magnet

AYMTBAC Quiz Funnel

7 Levels of Energy Webinar

CTP PoC Webinar, V2

The Constraint

Then the budget got cut by 58%.

Mid-year. Without warning. Pipeline commitments unchanged.

The wrong response: reduce spend evenly, maintain breadth, hope for the best. That burned two weeks before I stopped it.

Step 1: Diagnose

Ran funnel conversion analysis by channel. Which dollars were producing closed deals, not MQLs, not meetings, deals.

Step 2: Concentrate

Cut Pinterest, reduced Meta, concentrated spend on Google Ads and top HubSpot sequences. Leaned into organic + partnerships as zero-cost layer.

Step 3: Tighten the Cadence

Weekly optimization reviews became non-negotiable. Every channel decision justified by pipeline data, not media habits.

Example: Paid Media QS Audit

"Coaching certification" was our highest-spend keyword at QS 3 with $8,600 in spend. Identified that improving to QS 7 would cut CPC by ~64%, saving $5,500 annually at existing volume.

5.95x

ROAS held for the full year

Why It Transfers

Built Once. Proven Twice. Portable.

This system wasn't built for one industry. It ran at Uplift Education, a 23,000-student school network, and at iPEC, a global coaching certification company: two different verticals, the same architecture, both built from nothing. The mechanics don't care what you sell. Here's how each component transfers to a new business.

Component	What I built at iPEC	The transferable principle
Intent Scoring	Custom intent pipeline: job board monitoring (n8n + crawl4ai) and ZoomInfo enrichment feeding scored HubSpot tasks to the sales rep, with the triggering evidence attached.	Score on behavior, not time in funnel. Whatever signals predict a purchase in your business — page paths, content downloads, product usage, renewal windows — feed the same trigger model.
Multi-Stakeholder Routing	Three buyer types (individual candidate, L&D sponsor, admissions decision-maker) on separate HubSpot tracks triggered by role signal.	Most considered purchases involve more than one decision-maker. Each role gets its own track, sequenced by where they sit in the decision, instead of one broadcast to everyone.
Sales Handoff Logic	Score threshold hit = a sales task created in HubSpot with context. No manual queue, no lag between signal and outreach.	Signal hits the threshold, the system creates a sales task with context attached, automatically. No manual queue, no lag between intent and outreach, in any CRM.
Spend Decisions	58% budget cut: pulled conversion data by channel and stage, cut channels that generated MQLs but not deals, concentrated on what closed.	Cut what generates activity but not revenue, concentrate on what closes. The discipline holds whether the budget is growing or gets cut 58% mid-year.
Sales Alignment	Weekly pipeline reviews with Admissions: every channel justified by meetings booked and deals won, not MQL volume.	Marketing and sales in the same weekly review, measured on pipeline contribution rather than vanity metrics. Every channel decision made with field signal from reps.
Content Architecture	Replay outperformed invite (15.74% vs 0.5% CTR): on-demand content sequenced by behavioral signal, not a broadcast calendar.	On-demand, behaviorally-sequenced content beats broadcast for any considered purchase. The right message at the right moment, triggered by what each contact actually did.

First 90 Days, Any Build

Days 1–30: Audit

Map where the funnel leaks. Identify what marketing contributes at each stage versus what sales absorbs manually. Establish an attribution baseline before touching spend.

Days 31–60: Architecture

Define the scoring model and segment tracks with sales. Map the behavioral signals that predict a purchase in this business to CRM properties. Wire trigger logic to the score thresholds.

Days 61–90: Pilot

Run one campaign end to end against a real target segment. Measure by pipeline movement and conversion, not impressions. Prove the model before scaling it.

A Campaign Architecture Built to Scale: Proven Across Two Verticals