// Writing Essays, guides & field notes
From the blog
Marketing Automation with n8n: How to Build a Self-Hosted Stack That Replaces $500/mo in SaaS Subscriptions
Replace $500/mo in SaaS subscriptions with a self-hosted n8n instance. Includes a 15-minute Docker deployment guide and three production-ready workflow templates you can import today.
Build a Real-Time Marketing Dashboard: Pull 5 Ad Platforms Into One Looker Studio Report
Stop manually exporting spreadsheets from five ad platforms every week. This guide walks through building a Python + BigQuery + Looker Studio pipeline that consolidates Meta, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Microsoft Ads into one real-time marketing dashboard—cutting reporting time from hours to near-zero.
Predictive Lead Scoring With AI: Stop Guessing Which Leads Will Close
Your hand-built lead score is a guess dressed up as data. This guide shows RevOps teams how predictive lead scoring with AI learns from actual won/lost deals — and which features actually predict close.
AI Email Personalization Beyond Hi First Name: Real 1:1 Personalization at Scale
True 1:1 email personalization is a data engineering problem, not a copywriting trick. Here's how to build real personalization pipelines from warehouse to ESP using LLMs.
Incrementality Testing for Paid Media: Did Your Ad Actually Drive the Sale?
Platform ROAS inflates your results. Learn how to run incrementality tests — holdout, geo-lift, and ghost ads — to prove your ads actually drove the sale, not just took credit for it.
AI Ad Creative at Scale: Generate Hundreds of Variations With Midjourney, DALL-E, and Runway
Build a production pipeline that ships 50+ ad variants a week using Midjourney for base imagery, DALL-E for text and batch variations, and Runway for video—drawn from $50M+ in real ad spend experience.
Meta Advantage+ Campaigns in 2026: When Full AI Automation Works (and When It Burns Money)
A no-BS breakdown of when Meta's Advantage+ AI automation earns its budget and when it silently burns through it — based on $50M+ in real ad spend, not platform marketing claims.
Google Performance Max: How to Actually Control the AI Black Box (Asset Groups, Audience Signals, Budget Caps)
Performance Max campaigns burn budget when you can't see the levers. Here's how to actually control PMax using asset group structure, audience signals, exclusions, and budget caps — with real before/after numbers.
Build vs Buy vs Automate: A Decision Framework for 2026
The build-vs-buy binary is obsolete. This 5-factor scoring framework helps you choose between custom code, SaaS, and self-hosted automation — with real examples and a downloadable decision matrix.
Meta Ads MCP: What It Actually Lets You Do, How to Set It Up Safely, and Why I'm Not Trusting It With Live Spend Yet
A practical walkthrough of Meta's official MCP server for ads — what it actually lets you do with Claude and ChatGPT, how to set it up safely, and where conversational ad operations still break down.