About

I spent my career on the inside. Now I build the part that stays.

I am Neely Thomson, a fractional CMO and marketing systems architect based in Atlanta. I build marketing engines for B2B software companies selling into regulated and institutional buyers, and then I hand them to the client's own team.

Twenty years in B2B SaaS and fintech marketing. Four of them most recently as Head of Marketing at a B2B fintech payments company, where I led a company-wide AI marketing transformation, stepped in as interim sales leader, and helped execute the sale when the company was acquired. Before that, the B2B side of a $70M nonprofit marketing organization, and before that, sales enablement and marketing automation, which is where I learned what the plumbing actually is.

Track record · a selection

2020 – present

Independent

Fractional CMO and marketing systems architect. B2B software companies selling into regulated and institutional buyers.

2022 – 2026

B2B fintech payments

Head of Marketing. Led a company-wide AI marketing transformation, served as interim sales leader, and helped execute the sale when the company was acquired.

2018 – 2022

National nonprofit

Director of B2B Engagement inside a $70M marketing organization, on the corporate partnerships side.

2014 – 2016

Enterprise collaboration software

Senior Sales Enablement Marketing Manager. The first job where the marketing to sales handshake was the whole problem.

2013 – 2014

B2B marketing automation software

Marketing Manager. Learned the plumbing from inside the tools that do it.

What I believe about this work

Three things I would say on any first call.

Plumbing over production

AI made content cheap. It did not make routing, scoring, attribution or a weekly decision cadence cheap, and those are what turn work into pipeline. Most marketing help still sells harder into the half that got commoditized.

Build and leave

A fixed scope and a fixed end date. I train one named person on the client's team to run the engine while I build it, and then I am out. No open-ended retainer, and nothing that only works while I am in the room.

Compliance is architecture

Legal reading your landing page is not friction to route around. Review states, approval routing and claim substantiation belong inside the workflow, which is what makes marketing move faster in a regulated company, not slower.

The full definition of the thing I build is on the marketing engine page, and three engagements are written up in the case studies, with the client names withheld.

Elsewhere

Every other Tuesday I publish an essay about what building a marketing engine looks like from the inside: what I saw, what I decided, what the scoreboard said. Names changed, numbers real.

Start here

Two weeks, $7,500, and you'll know what's broken.

Everything starts with the same audit. Two weeks, a fixed fee, and a written plan at the end of it, yours either way.

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