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Will your GTM playbook work in 2026?
A marketing director I know just spent six months optimizing workflows. But cleaner data, faster automation, and better dashboards didn't
That's why 2026 Go-To-Market Predictions from ZoomInfo matters. It shows what's actually driving revenue now, not what worked two years ago.
Inside, you'll find:
- Why programmatic content is your bridge to early buyer intent (before they ghost you)
- Where to redeploy efficiency savings for maximum impact
- How to close the execution gap between strategy and action
The report delivers 12 predictions backed by GTM executives who are already executing these plays.
See all 12 predictions here to learn if you're on the right path — or need to course correct.
A couple months ago, I started advising for a company called Lightfield.
They're an AI CRM startup. Their head of GTM, Matt, hired me to help them with their content strategy.
As we're mapping out their content system, I asked him "What are you doing with email?"
"Not much. Just this ugly changelog email that goes out once a week."
I pried.
If you're unfamiliar, a changelog is basically a raw list of product updates — straight from the engineering team. Matt wanted to cut it. He forwarded me a recent example, and I agreed. It was dry, didn't tell any sort of story, and would make me unsubscribe immediately.
But before he dropped the guillotine, I encouraged him to dig in. Look at the stats, talk to the person who started it, and see why it exists in the first place.
Matt goes and digs in. And he comes back to me and says:
"So... This thing is really popular."
Really? Why?
Maybe we'd stumbled into gold thinking it was trash.
Turns out, it was Keith's idea — the founder and CEO. And if I'm being honest, that made me trust it less. I've seen this movie before. Typically when a CEO has a pet project that only they love, it needs to go.
But Keith isn't just a CEO. He's a technical founder himself. And in this case, he understood his audience better than we did.
I already knew Lightfield sold to technical founders with less than 50 employees in the Bay Area. Almost dangerously niche (but in a good way.) What I didn't know was that this ugly changelog was the proof that it was working.
And for that audience, a changelog isn't ugly. Shipping speed, feature depth, iteration pace — that's what they care about. Think of it like a case study for an enterprise buyer except raw and unpolished. Which makes it more credible to this crowd, not less.
Matt and I are marketers, so we don't speak that dialect. To us, it looked like junk. But to their audience, it was a signal: These people are building fast. They're shipping cool stuff. They're like us.
That "ugly" email was pulling more weight than any of us expected.
So we kept it.
I recommened testing a simple CTA at the bottom. Something like "Want to see these updates live? Start a free trial" and let interested readers self-select into the product.
Next up is a companion email alongside it that could carry the brand story, educational content, and promote events and programs. The changelog couldn't do all of that on its own. And forcing it would ruin it.
But the bigger lesson isn't what we did with the email. It's what the email taught us about the audience.
Matt and I almost killed something because it didn't resonate with us. But we aren't the audience.
And that's a gap that starts small. Almost invisible.
You make one decision based on your own taste instead of your buyer's. Maybe it's intentional, maybe not. But then it happens again. And again. And over time, it compounds. You drift further and further from true north until your messaging, your content, and your entire marketing isn't working at all — and you can't figure out why.
The answer is usually simple: somewhere along the way, you started marketing to yourself.
So before you kill something that doesn't make sense to you, heat check it with your audience first.
The ugliest thing in your marketing might be the one thing your buyers actually love. And if it is, don't just keep it — study it.
It'll teach you more about your buyers than any persona doc ever will.
Pen by Devin Reed
Founder, The Reeder
Follow me on LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok | Instagram
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