Ready to build your own Founder-Led Growth engine? Book a Strategy Call
Frontlines.io | Where B2B Founders Talk GTM.
Strategic Communications Advisory For Visionary Founders
Actionable
Takeaways
Earn the sales team's trust before you earn their cooperation.
Kamron inherited 70 years of marketing being treated as a cost center. His approach wasn't to rebrand the marketing function — it was to show up with data, clear asks, and direct answers to the question every sales leader is already thinking: "What's in it for us?" That shift, done consistently, is what converts marketing from a creative group with big ideas to an actual growth partner.
Pipeline influence is only measurable if you build the infrastructure for it.
Kamron's team creates campaign IDs directly in Salesforce at the start of every initiative, then does regular check-ins with sales reps to keep attribution intact across the deal journey. This requires building real relationships with salespeople — because salespeople don't update CRMs unless someone they trust asks them to. The data doesn't track itself.
Own NPS even when you didn't build it.
Kamron treats NPS as a marketing metric, not just a customer success metric. His reasoning: the score tells you whether marketing is making promises the company can actually deliver on. At RJ Young, NPS sits above 90 — a number he attributes to the DNA of the company, not any single campaign or team.
Use AI to close the customer listening loop, not to replace it.
RJ Young runs AI agents on inbound customer calls to generate transcripts and analyze sentiment. That data doesn't stay in a dashboard — it flows back into marketing decisions, from FAQ content on the website to identifying product-level friction points. The technology is useful specifically because someone is responsible for acting on what it surfaces.
Test small, cut fast, scale what works.
Kamron's team runs constant small-scale tests and has a firm cultural rule: when something isn't working, they cut it and move on. When pitching internally, he always presents pros and cons together — not to undersell the idea, but to protect credibility when things evolve or don't go as expected.
The best campaigns start with a conversation, not a spreadsheet.
Kamron's top priority for 2026: getting closer to the customer before getting closer to the data. Numbers tell you what happened. Customers tell you why. Every high-impact campaign he's been part of started with a real conversation — with a customer, a prospect, or a sales rep who knew the territory.
Conversation
Highlights
In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with Kamron Kunce, the first-ever CMO in the 70-year history of RJ Young, a Southeast-based leader in print and technology solutions. Kamron was brought in to do something no one had done before: transform a sales-driven organization’s marketing function from a silo into a genuine revenue growth partner. He shares how he’s built a lean, high-ownership marketing team, how he approaches pipeline attribution in a company that runs on field sales, why he owns NPS as a marketing metric, and how RJ Young’s COVID-era pivot to tech solutions became the foundation for an entirely new national brand — VelocityOne.
Topics Discussed:
- How RJ Young doubled from $100M to $200M in revenue by launching new tech solutions post-COVID
- The genesis and strategy behind the soft launch of VelocityOne, RJ Young’s new national managed services brand
- What it looks like to be the first CMO in a 70-year-old sales-first company
- How Kamron builds and structures a small marketing team with broad ownership
- Why he favors generalists and “hardcore passionate problem solvers” over specialists
- How marketing earns trust from sales by speaking their language and bringing data to every conversation
- Using campaign IDs in Salesforce to build genuine pipeline attribution
- Why Kamron owns NPS as a marketing metric — and how RJ Young scores above 90
- Using AI-powered call transcripts to close the customer feedback loop
- The three-pronged framework: data, customer conversations, and the human element
- Why the best campaigns start with a real conversation, not a spreadsheet
Recommended Founder
Interviews
Marc Bernstein
CEO and Founder of Balto
Marc Bernstein, CEO and Founder of Balto: $52 Million Raised to Power the Future of Contact Centers
Tine Karlsen
Co-Founder & CEO of Vev
Tine Karlsen, CEO and Co-Founder of Vev: $7 Million Raised to Power the Future of No-Code Visual Design
Pulkit Agrawal
CEO & Co-Founder of Chameleon
Pulkit Agrawal, CEO & Co-Founder of Chameleon: $15 Million Raised to Build the Product Adoption Category
Dan Malgran
VP of Marketing of Steno
Dan Malgran, VP of Marketing at Steno: Elevating Legal Tech with Revenue-Driven Marketing Strategies
Franklin Morris
Vice President, Marketing of Alloy.ai
Why ChatGPT Converts 30x Better Than Your Website
Rebecca Corliss
VP of Marketing of GrowthLoop
Why GrowthLoop Ditched Paid Ads for Influencer Marketing
Corey Kleinbauer
Founder & Principal Advisor of ScaleISV
The 3-question rule Corey Kleinbauer uses to diagnose a broken pipeline | Corey Kleinbauer
Andrea Bailiff-Gush
Head of Marketing of Reco
Why Category Creation Is a Trap (And What Actually Works)
Jonathan Legge
Co-Founder and CEO of &Open
Jonathan Legge, Co-Founder and CEO at &Open: Over $35 Million Raised to Create the Future of Corporate Gifting
Woody Klemetson
Founder of AskElephant
How AskElephant achieved 400% growth with zero marketing spend | Woody Klemetson
Robert Thelen
CEO & Founder of Rownd
Robert Thelen, CEO & Founder of Rownd: $3.3 Million Raised to Build the Future of App Onboarding
Omar Tawakol
CEO of Rembrand
How Rembrand repositioned away from “product placement” to unlock a completely different media buyer and budget | Omar Tawakol
Avi Avital
VP of Customer Success of Nimble
How Nimble evolved CSMs from technical support to revenue owners with NRR/NGR targets | Avi Avital
Pierce Ujjainwalla
CEO of Knak
Pierce Ujjainwalla, CEO of Knak: $25 Million Raised to Empower Enterprise Marketers with Codeless Email and Landing Page Creation
Matt Martin
CEO & Co-Founder of Clockwise
Why organic referrals drive 80% of Clockwise’s growth after a decade of marketing experiments | Matt Martin
Dirk Wolf
CEO of Market Logic Software
How Market Logic rebuilt customer segmentation to stop optimizing for the loudest accounts | Dirk Wolf
Tyler Strand
Co-Founder and CTO of Air
Tyler Strand, Co-Founder and CTO at Air: $38 Million raised to Build the Creative Operations Category
Omed Habib
VP of Sapient AI
Omed Habib, VP of Marketing at Sapient AI: A Technical Founder’s Guide to B2B SaaS Marketing
Vitaly Pecherskiy
CEO and Co-founder of StackAdapt
Building stackadapt: how three founders turned failure into a 1,600-person company | Vitaly Pecherskiy
Jason Zintak
CEO of 6sense
Jason Zintak: The GTM Story of 6sense ($5.2 Billion Valuation)
Ksenija Rohrkamp
Director of Marketing of Buynomics
Why Product Marketing Should Be Your First Category Creation Hire
Daniel Frohnen
Founder and Fractional CMO of FrohnenGTM
Category Design Is a Company Strategy, Not a Marketing Exercise
Johannes Hoech
CMO of Sift
How Sift’s CMO measures pipeline ROI by lead source all the way to revenue — 6 months downstream | Johannes Hoech
Sam Mallikarjunan
Co-Founder & CEO of OneScreen
Sam Mallikarjunan, Co-Founder & CEO of OneScreen: $10 Million Raised to Power the Future of Offline Advertising
Cory Schmidt
Head of Marketing of Heyflow
Mastering Organic Growth: Insights from Heyflow’s Head of Marketing
Rush Shahani
Co-Founder & CTO of Persana AI
Rush Shahani, Co-Founder & CTO of Persana AI: $2.3 Million Raised to Power the Future of GTM
Vinay Jain
Founder of MadMen AI
Vinay Jain, Founder of MadMen AI: $4.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI-Powered Marketing Platforms
Chris Golec
CEO and Founder of Channel99
Chris Golec, CEO and Founder of Channel99: $5 Million Raised to Power the Future of B2B Marketing
CEO and Co-Founder of Sendoso
Creating the Sending Management Category with Sendoso’s Kris Rudeegraap
Hikari Senju
CEO and Founder of Omneky
Hikari Senju, CEO and Founder of Omneky: $10 Million Raised to Empower Brands With AI-Powered Ads To Maximize Performance
Chris Strahl
CEO of Knapsack
Chris Strahl, CEO of Knapsack: $7 Million Raised to Build the Future of Design Systems
Justas Malinauskas
CEO & Co-Founder of Whatagraph
How Whatagraph generates 500+ marketing qualified leads monthly through competitor pain point SEO | Justas Malinauskas ($10+ Million Raised)
David DeWolf
CEO & President of Knownwell
David DeWolf, CEO & President of Knownwell: $2 Million Raised to Build the Future of Commercial Intelligence
Dan Rua
CEO of Admiral
Dan Rua, CEO of Admiral: $28 Million Raised to Build the Future of Visitor Relationship Management
Rajat Mishra
Founder & CEO of Prezent
Rajat Mishra, Founder & CEO at Prezent: Over $24 Million Raised to Build the Presentation Productivity Platform Category
Daniel Erickson
Founder and CEO of Viable
Daniel Erickson, CEO of Viable: $9 Million Raised to Build the Future of Customer Feedback Analysis
Zack Rosenberg
CEO and Founder of Qortex
Zack Rosenberg, CEO & Founder of Qortex: $11 Million Raised to Build the Future of Video Analytics
Sam Kellett
Head of Marketing of ProfitMetrics.io
Why ROAS Is Lying to Your CFO About Campaign Performance
Marc-Alexander Christ
Co-Founder of SumUp
Marc-Alexander Christ: the Story of SumUp ($8.5 Billion Valuation)
Anthony Lye
Chairman & CEO of Quid
Why the next great tech companies will sell outcomes, not software | Anthony Lye
Elio Narciso
Co-Founder & CEO of Scalestack
How Scalestack landed MongoDB as their first enterprise customer through cold email | Elio Narciso ($3.1 Million Raised)
Jonas Rinde
CEO of Nomono
Jonas Rinde, CEO of Nomono: $15 million Raised to Power the Future of Podcasting
Canay Deniz
CEO & Co-Founder of Ren Systems
Canay Deniz, CEO & Co-Founder of Ren Systems: $8.8 Million Raised to Build the Future of Relationship Intelligence for Dealmakers
David Walsh
Founder & CEO of Limelight
How Limelight validated the B2B creator market by interviewing 100+ creators before building | David Walsh
David Zhu
CEO and Co-Founder of Reevo
How Reevo mapped every GTM persona as a node-edge graph to find its product wedge before building anything | David Zhu
Creating the Go to Market Category with ZoomInfo’s Bryan Law
CMO of ZoomInfo
Creating the Go to Market Category with ZoomInfo’s Bryan Law
Stephen Karaolis
Marketing Director of Cleary
Stephen Karaolis, Marketing Director at Cleary: Mastering Speed to Market – The Key to Dynamic Content Strategy
Tom Lee
Co-Founder of LOVO AI
Tom Lee, Co-Founder of LOVO AI: $7 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI Voiceovers
Ashish Nagar
Founder & CEO of Level AI
Ashish Nagar, CEO of Level AI: $35 Million Raised to Power Contact Centers of the Future
Lars Grønnegaard Hansen
CEO and Co-Founder of Dreamdata
Lars Grønnegaard Hansen, CEO & Co-Founder of Dreamdata: $12 Million Raised to Build the Future of B2B Revenue Attribution
Sam Fonoimoana
Founder & CEO of Datajoin
Sam Fonoimoana, Founder & CEO of Datajoin: $3.5 Million Raised to Help Brands Leverage Customer Behavioral Insights
Andrew Forman
Founder of Givz
Andrew Forman, CEO of Givz: $3 Million Raised to Make Donating, Not Discounts, eCommerce Brands Ultimate Growth Lever
Max Elster
CEO & Founder of Minoa
Max Elster, CEO & Founder of Minoa: $2.7 Million Raised to Build the Go-to-Market Value Intelligence Platform
Kevin White
Why Scrunch reframed bot traffic as a first-class website visitor — and what that means for B2B site architecture | Kevin White
Cassandra Gholston
CEO & Founder of PartnerTap
Cassandra Gholston, CEO & Founder of PartnerTap: $9 Million Raised to Revolutionize Partner Orchestration
Alex Mann
Head of Growth of Lunos
What’s the ROI of Bringing a Horse to Wall Street? (Ft. Alex Mann)
Taylor Lint
CEO and Founder of Swantide
Taylor Lint, CEO and Founder of Swantide: $7 Million Raised to Revolutionize How Companies Design and Build Their GTM Infrastructure
Jerome Stewart
Chief Marketing Officer of Conviva
How AI is changing the role of the CMO | Jerome Stewart
Danielle Pederson
Chief Marketing Officer of Amaze
Why Amaze Markets Experiences Over Channels
Natasha Woods
Senior Director Communications of The Linux Foundation
How GitLab’s comms team workshopped the “iPhone for DevOps” analogy for CNBC’s IPO interview | Natasha Woods
Daniel Saks
CEO & Co-Founder of Landbase
Daniel Saks, CEO & Co-Founder of Landbase: $12.5 Million Raised to Power the Future of GTM Automation
John Jahnke
CEO and Co-Founder of Tackle.io
John Jahnke, CEO and Co-Founder of Tackle.io: $148 Million Raised to Build the Future of Cloud Go-to-Market
Steve Keifer
Chief Marketing Officer of Ordway
100K Outbound Emails Monthly Without Getting Blocked
Andy Mowat
CEO and Co-Founder of Gated
Andy Mowat, CEO and Co-Founder of Gated: Over $3 Million Raised to Build Noise Cancelling Headphones for Email
Parry Bedi
Co-Founder and CEO of Tingono
Parry Bedi, CEO of Tingono: $7 Million Raised to Help Companies Boost Net Revenue Retention
Alex Reynolds
Alex Reynolds, CEO & Co-Founder of Vendelux: $20 Million Raised to Build the Future of Event Intelligence
Ori Entis
CEO and Co-Founder of Staircase AI
Ori Entis, CEO and Co-Founder of Staircase AI: $5 Million Raised to Power the Future of Customer Revenue Growth
Jonathan Corbin
CEO & Co-Founder of Maven AGI
Jonathan Corbin, CEO and Co-Founder of Maven AGI: $28 Million Raised to Build the Future of Customer Experience
Sangram Vajre
Co Founder and CEO of GTM Partners
Behind the Category: Creating the Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Category with Sangram Vajre
Ishveen Jolly
CEO and Co-Founder of OpenSponsorship
Ishveen Jolly, CEO and Co-Founder of OpenSponsorship: Over $5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Sports Influencer Marketing
Mark Keaney
Chief Revenue Officer of Greenfly
How Greenfly doubled revenue and headcount by staying inside three tightly defined verticals instead of expanding TAM | Mark Keaney
Michael Bamberger
CEO and Founder of Tetra Insights
Michael Bamberger, CEO and Founder of Tetra Insights: $7 Million Raised to Power the Future of Qualitative Research
Marty Kausas
CEO & Co-Founder of Pylon
Marty Kausas, CEO & Co-Founder of Pylon: $20 Million Raised to Build the First B2B Support Platform
Sarah Gavin
Interim Chief Marketing Officer; Chief Communications Officer of Zendesk
How Zendesk rebuilt a 40-person in-house comms team in 9 months and eliminated all agency spend | Sarah Gavin
Jared Siegal
CEO and Founder of Aditude
Jared Siegal, CEO and Founder of Aditude: $15 Million Raised to Build the Future of Publisher Monetization
Leena Joshi
CEO of CloseFactor
Leena Joshi, CEO of CloseFactor: $15+ Million Raised to Automate Repetitive Sales Processes
Philipp de la Haye
Senior Vice President of Marketin of FrontNow
AI Will Cut Marketing Teams to 2 People – Here’s the Playbook
Patrick Woods
CEO and Co-Founder of Orbit
Patrick Woods, CEO and Co-Founder of Orbit: Over $22 Million Raised to Power the Future of Communities
Thomas Millay
CEO of DemandJump
Thomas Millay, CEO at DemandJump: Over $25 Million Raised to Power the Future of Content Strategy
Katy Carrigan
CEO of Goody
Katy Carrigan, CEO of Goody: $32 Million Raised to Build the Future of Corporate Gifting
Matt Krebsbach
Senior Vice President of Thought Leadership & Brand Awareness of Acquia
From Politics to PR: Building Unassailable Market Position
Adrien Menard
CEO and Co-Founder of Botify
Adrien Menard, CEO and Co-Founder of Botify: $82 Million Raised to Build the Future of SEO
Adam Haskew
Associate Director, Brand Experience at Redis of Redis
How Redis trained a custom GPT on rebrand documentation to automate brand compliance | Adam Haskew
Creating the Marketing Automation Category with Mark Organ
CEO of Eloqua
Creating the Marketing Automation Category with Mark Organ
Tara Robertson
Director of Marketing of ContactMonkey
Why ContactMonkey Spent 50% of Marketing Budget on Events in 2025
Marty Ringlein
CEO & Co-Founder of Agree.com
Marty Ringlein, CEO & Co-Founder of Agree.com: $3M Raised to Transform Contract-Based Revenue Management