Hey, I'm Ryan

I write articles for SaaS companies and online publishers. My writing is informed by a decade of marketing experience—working for an agency, running a small agency, and freelancing. 

I specialize in B2B, marketing, tech, and AI, and have been lucky enough to work with the content teams at great SaaS brands like Zapier, Dock, and Framer.

Frequent projects include in-depth articles on CX and marketing, along with hands-on reviews and comparisons of SaaS products. I'm a pro at creating product-led content that's useful to readers and incorporates the product without feeling overly promotional.

Below, check out my latest articles. To get in touch with me, use the contact form at the bottom of this page.

What my clients say about me

"Hey Ryan, this is absolutely awesome. I love the examples you sourced, and your writing is so clear, engaging, and personal—exactly what we're going for. Thanks for the amazing work!"

Deb Tennen
Managing Editor, Zapier.com Blog

"Thank you so much for writing this article, and for providing so much value within it! I love it when I'm reading an article and a question pops into my head, and then the next sentence answers it. I continuously find myself nodding along to everything you write."

Stephanie Hood
Editor, TheCMO.com

"Ryan was recommended to our organization by a mutual colleague and I'm so glad he was! Not only does Ryan produce high-quality work to spec, but working with him has also been a seamless experience with clear communication and respect for deadlines."

Hannah Clark
Editor, TheCXLead.com


Recent Articles

Airtable vs. Trello: Which should you use? [2025]

If you've heard of Kanban, you've heard of Trello. If you've heard of databases, you've heard of Airtable. How can you compare a Kanban app and a database tool?

Dig a little deeper, though, and the similarities surface. Both can be used to store data, track processes, collaborate with your team, and view your work in different ways. And while Trello is the reigning champ of Kanban project management apps, Airtable has Kanban too, along with Gantt visualizations and a dedicated project managemen...

ABM vs. Demand Generation: What's the Difference?

Which would you go with in the perennial ABM vs. demand generation debate? Times have changed. Gone are the days when selling software was more straightforward. When you could pick up the phone, charm your way past a few gatekeepers, and give a slick pitch that wins you a meeting with the sole decision-maker. Decision-makers are more numerous than ever before: these days, you’re likely to encounter 6-10 key stakeholders on average on any given deal (Gartner, 2019). Rather than addressing one pe...

11 Best Website Animations to Boost Engagement — Framer Blog

Animations do more than just look cool—they enhance the user experience. Whether it’s guiding attention, creating a sense of flow, or making interactions more intuitive, the right animations and interactivity can transform a static page into something that inspires users and drives action.To inspire your next project, we’ve collected a set of stunning website animation examples from the Framer gallery. Explore how different types of animations—like hover effects, scroll-triggered transitions, an...

Trello vs. Todoist: Which should you use? [2025]

I'm an avid user of both Trello and Todoist: I use these two apps to organize my entire life and my work. That means you don't necessarily have to choose between them—you can use both. But if you're looking to pick between them, I can help.

In one corner, we have Trello, the Kanban board tool that helps you see the status of all your projects at once and makes project management look like a work of art. Trello makes it easy to work with collaborators on multiple projects and create custom automations to streamline your workflow.

9 welcome email templates for different business types | Zapier

Welcome emails can make or break something you've worked so hard for.

You got the lead, but if you blow your welcome email, good luck getting that person's interest back. On the other hand, if you absolutely nail it, you might have not just a loyal customer, but a loyal customer who'll spread the word about your business.

I've helped all sorts of businesses with their marketing—everyone from eCommerce companies to folks promoting their newsletters—and I know that each business type needs a dif...

White-Glove Onboarding Guide: 5 ways to scale your process

If the term “white-glove service” brings to mind an English butler, you’re spot on.A century ago (before being co-opted by the business world), white-glove service described the refined level of care and attention provided by butlers and other posh service providers.SaaS providers, inspired by this elite association, tend to assume that a white-glove onboarding experience requires over-investing in long meetings, 1:1 walkthroughs with CSMs, and other forms of resource-intensive hand-holding.But...

What is a two-sided marketplace? [Definition + examples] | Zapier

Airbnb and Uber—two massively successful marketplace apps—have spawned countless imitators, from Plowz ("Uber for snow plows") to Swimply ("the Airbnb of swimming pools"). All of these are two-sided marketplaces, a platform that connects buyers and sellers.

For entrepreneurs, the marketplace model is appealing because of its scale and profitability. But for every Uber (now worth $160 billion dollars) there are countless examples like GearCommons, an outdoor gear rental marketplace that shut dow...

Everything you need to know about Google Chat | Zapier

Google Workspace is a one-stop shop for business productivity apps, but for a long time, Google didn't really offer customers any kind of team communication tool. Sure, there was Hangouts in Gmail, but that was a consumer tool that only really offered direct messages and video chat. Using it for any kind of group communication was chaos. As a result, many companies that pay for Google Workspace also pay for a separate workplace chat app like Slack.

Marketing Resource Management: A Complete Guide

Why bother about marketing resource management? Because marketing campaigns can be absolute chaos. Remember everything you juggled in your last campaign: resources, budgeting, external vendors, processes, digital assets, and timelines (Oh, and if it was a global multi-location campaign, go ahead and multiply the degree of difficulty by the number of campaign locations). Marketing resource management (MRM) is an attempt to control this chaos by organizing your marketing team’s resources more holi...

Reddit marketing: How to get it right—and wrong | Zapier

Reddit has been a staple of internet culture for two decades, spawning countless memes and offering wildly popular niche communities. (Reddit's subreddit for sneakers has five million members.) But compared with industry giants like Google and Facebook, Reddit has long been an afterthought for marketers.

Then, in 2024, two things happened: Reddit became a publicly traded company—raising its profile—and its monthly visitors tripled, thanks largely to a change in Google's algorithm prioritizing t...

Framer vs. Webflow: Which is best? [2024]

As a web designer in the mid-2010s, I used what everyone recommended at the time: WordPress. While it's a great tool, I found myself spending hours trying to fix spacing issues, reconcile bugs created by incompatible plugins, and troubleshoot server errors. (There's nothing quite as terrifying as WordPress's "White Screen of Death.") Because of this, I deeply understand the pain points that website building apps were created to solve. Most of those apps, though, are aimed at beginners and small...

Write a Marketing Automation RFP: The Complete Guide

If you take away the stress of the marketing automation RFP process, a lot of marketing leaders love to talk about how they’ve boosted efficiency and profitability using marketing automation. And it can be a lot - getting stakeholder buy-in, securing a budget, talking to vendors, reviewing proposals. It all adds up to months of work and significant back-and-forth with vendors. (Not to mention the incredible amount of paperwork involved).  So some bypass this critical part of the process. And th...

18 Marketing Automation Features Your Software Should Have

With thousands of marketing automation features and software options, it’s no wonder some companies experience “analysis paralysis” and decide to stick with what they know best.  However, considering that marketing automation is such a vast topic—from email to landing pages to lead scoring—it’s understandable how easy it is for marketers to get overwhelmed when thinking of the must-have features when looking to invest in marketing software. In this article, I’ll cover the 18 marketing automatio...

A complete guide to TikTok Ads

TikTok's evolution from a synchronized dance phenomenon to a diverse platform hosting trendsetting niche communities has turned it into an advertising powerhouse: in 2023, it reported $10.1 billion in ad revenue, trailing only Facebook and Instagram.

If all this momentum has you wanting to jump aboard the TikTok Ads train, copying and pasting ad campaigns from Facebook or Instagram won't get you far. For your TikTok Ads to succeed, you'll need to take time to understand what makes TikTok unique...

Wix vs. Squarespace: Which is best? [2024]

Web design isn't what it used to be. In 2003, I spent weeks hand-coding an HTML website. (With a physical copy of HTML for Dummies next to my keyboard, of course.) In 2016, I spent days designing a client's website in WordPress. Last weekend, I spent 60 seconds .css-12hxxzz-Link{all:unset;box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;cursor:pointer;-webkit-transition:all 300ms ease-in-out;transition:all 300ms ease-in-out;outline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-fill-co...

Enterprise Marketing Automation: The Complete Guide [2024]

Enterprise marketing automation used to be about one thing: email. Over the years, its scope has broadened, first to social media and later to omnichannel personalization. But now, with AI-powered technologies like predictive analytics and sophisticated chatbots, enterprise marketing automation is only becoming more essential—and more disruptive. In this article, I’ll explore what sets enterprise marketing automation platforms apart from automation tools for smaller businesses. I’ll also explai...

11 Benefits of Marketing Automation Backed By Data

The benefits of marketing automation, from saving time to boosting profits, have grown by the day as marketing technology continues to advance. And it's not surprising when you consider that the earliest marketing automation software hit the market in 1992. And in 30+ years, we now have 76% of companies using marketing automation, and there are thousands of martech tools to choose from (HubSpot’s 2021 State of Marketing). This article explores 11 data-backed marketing automation benefits, from...

11 Marketing Software Trends for 2024 and Why They Matter

Why bother about a marketing software trend? The iPhone was released in 2007. But as at 2016, mobile-friendly websites were still being touted as a “marketing software trend.” This lag—between introducing a new technology and its adoption—is common in the marketing world. There’s a certain logic: you don’t want to invest millions of dollars in a trend that fizzles out. (I’m looking at you, metaverse marketing). Still, no one wants their brand to show up last to the party. Late adoption means b...

Marketing Automation Market Size: Major Players & Insights

For a look at how the marketing automation industry has changed over time, I fired up the Wayback Machine, a database of old versions of websites, and dug through the internet archives. In 2001, here’s how Eloqua—creator of what’s now considered to be the first true marketing automation tool—described its product: a “web based sales application for lead generation.” In 2003, it was a “complete solution that leverages the Internet to acquire new customers.” (Accurate, but a bit vague). It wasn’t...

Marketing Automation History and Timeline Through The Years

Let me transport you back in time to marketing software’s earliest days: before Salesforce, before Marketo, and even (gasp!) before HubSpot. If you were organizing an enterprise marketing campaign in 1992, there’s one piece of software you’d turn to as you fired up Windows 3.1 on your Compaq computer: Unica. With features including marketing campaign management and lead management, it was a pioneer. We’ve come a long way since then. What we refer to today as “marketing automation” originally foc...

Google Chat vs. Slack: Which is best? [2024]

When Slack launched in 2014, it promised a better way of working: fewer emails, async communication, and easier remote collaboration. (Did you know that Slack stands for "Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge"?) It generated serious buzz, quickly gaining millions of users and inspiring competitors like Microsoft Teams.

All this was motivation for Google to join the party, too. It repurposed one of its existing consumer apps, Google Hangouts, for business use. Eventually, the app was...

Klaviyo vs. tinyEmail: Which is best? [2024]

If you're looking for a David-and-Goliath story in the world of email marketing, tinyEmail-and-Klaviyo might be as close as you'll get. (Although—spoiler alert—Goliath might win this round.) While both are eCommerce-focused email marketing apps that integrate tightly with .css-12hxxzz-Link{all:unset;box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;cursor:pointer;-webkit-transition:all 300ms ease-in-out;transition:all 300ms ease-in-out;outline-offset:1px;-webkit-t...

How to use Chatbase to build an AI chatbot | Zapier

Back in 2017—before the age of accessible AI tools—I launched a primitive Facebook Messenger chatbot. It used a manual "decision tree" structure, which took hours to set up and presented users with a handful of preset questions and answers. It wasn't particularly useful, but since chatbots were on the list of "the next big things in marketing," we launched it anyway. Users mostly ignored it (as they should have).

Enter the age of AI: models from OpenAI and others have been advancing rapidly (an...
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