Dana Thompson, Founder of Moonstone Marketing, helps community brands unlock sustainable growth through retention-focused strategies.
The challenge: How to move beyond basic automation
Most marketing platforms promise automation, but Dana needed a platform that did more than automation, showing a full, holistic picture of her member, subscriber, and customer bases.
"I needed something that was gonna give [my clients] a clear picture of their customers, subscribers, members, from acquisition all the way to lifetime value," Dana explains. Her clients were using platforms that couldn't connect the dots between marketing efforts and actual business results.
From assumptions to actionable insights
The turning point came with a medical practice client Dana had worked with for three years. They used a homegrown CRM that was "basically a black box."
"We weren't able to see where anyone was coming from, what anybody was doing. And really weren't able to show any measurable ROI from our marketing efforts," Dana recalls.
“Once we moved them into ActiveCampaign, suddenly we had event tracking for identifying key conversion points and attribution reporting for channel ROI. That completely shifted how I'm able to serve my clients—data and accountability have to be the foundation."
The transformation was immediate. Using ActiveCampaign's site tracking and attribution reporting, Dana could finally highlight the ROI for her marketing efforts. The result? Her client invested more in marketing because he finally understood where his marketing dollars were going.
Clarity over confusion
"The biggest thing that I promise to all of my clients, community-driven brand founders, is clarity. Clarity around the marketing, clarity around their business." This means understanding what's working, what's not working, and where they need to go to make that change.
Her method leverages ActiveCampaign's autonomous marketing capabilities, including:
- Churn predictors and lifetime value for holistic business health measurement
- Predictive sending and lead scoring to identify and engage MVPs
- Attribution tracking to connect every marketing effort to results
What sets Dana apart is her focus on retention over acquisition: "I’m not a marketer who uses quick wins or growth hacks. And my path to growth is not necessarily looking at net new. Everyone loves shiny acquisition, but I am all about retention and community-led growth."
The crystal ball moment: AI-powered predictions
Dana is particularly excited about ActiveCampaign's AI capabilities, seeing them as transformative for community-driven brands.
"Every marketer wishes they had a crystal ball. But AI and automation is giving us as close as possible to it," she says.
"Some of the predictive analytics tools, like lead scoring and win probability, keep us on the ball. Not just the imagination part of what we're currently doing with our clients, but also activating for [the] future and validating and understanding exactly what that next step is gonna be."
This perfectly captures the imagine, activate, validate framework that drives Dana's success:
- Imagine: Using predictive analytics to envision what customers will need next
- Activate: Implementing personalized campaigns based on those insights
- Validate: Measuring success through comprehensive attribution and ROI tracking
Community growth through retention
Moonstone’s retention-first approach delivers remarkable results. By focusing on existing community members rather than chasing new leads, Dana and her team have helped clients achieve sustainable growth. "Typically, your next leads are just sitting there waiting for you because they are connected somehow to your existing community," she explains.
Using ActiveCampaign's lead scoring to identify MVPs and predictive sending for optimal timing, Dana helped clients triple their community in a couple of months just using their existing audience as their lead base.
A partnership of true collaboration
For Dana, choosing ActiveCampaign extends beyond software features to genuine partnership support.
“I love that ActiveCampaign is as invested in my success as I am for the success of using it for my clients,” she says. “Ever since my first conversation with the ActiveCampaign team, I have been invested in as a partner and as a user from education to onboarding to ongoing support.”
This support gives her confidence when recommending platforms to clients: “I’m really going to bat for my platform and vendor partners to my clients and staking my reputation on recommending certain platforms over others.”
The vision for community-driven growth
With her boutique fitness background, Dana understands that the community brands that will succeed in the future understand the hybrid of digital convenience and real-life community building.
ActiveCampaign enables this vision through personalization tools that make digital and in-person experiences feel seamless. “We’re able to leverage things like lead scoring and predictive sending[...] to make things as personalized as possible.”
Dana also shared her advice for early-stage founders, including clear guidelines for founders just starting their growth journey:
"My recommendation, as spicy as it may sound, is not to hire an internal marketing manager. Yet. I would always recommend starting with an outside consultant. We have the bells, the whistles, the experience, the tools, things like ActiveCampaign, the platforms that you need to build the foundation for your marketing."
Her philosophy is simple: "You really need to identify the right partners, the right tools, the right systems, the right platforms, and from there you can build a sustainable foundation."
Ready to transform your marketing partnership?
Dana’s success demonstrated how the right partnership can revolutionize both your business and clients’ results. By combining deep industry expertise with ActiveCampaign’s AI-driven perspective, she’s delivering the clarity and growth that community-driven brands need to thrive.
This combination of strategic expertise and powerful autonomous marketing can take your marketing effectiveness to new heights.
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