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Michelle McGovern StewartStrategy / Story / Systems

07 / Marketing Workflow & Automation

Building better marketing workflows.

Marketing and proposal teams spend a surprising amount of time rebuilding things that already exist. Across three organizations, I designed and built practical systems to fix that, making good marketing more efficient and consistent without making it generic.

Organizations
NBS Government Finance Group, Ruhnau Clarke Architects, Firefighters Community Credit Union
My role
Marketing leadership roles at each organization
Status
Each system implemented at its organization
Draws on
  • Strategy (not a focus)
  • Story
  • Systems
Capabilities
Proposal automationReusable contentContent librariesAirtable + AI agentsCRM & marketing automationWorkflow design
The Airtable proposal system at Ruhnau Clarke: AI agents read each RFP and trigger every next step. Representative recreation with sample data.

The challenge

The tension

The same answers get rewritten. The same details get re-entered. Senior people end up doing administrative work because nobody built a better way to do it.

The usual fix is a template, and templates make everything sound the same. The better fix is infrastructure: reusable content, structured information, and automation that handles the repetitive parts so people can spend their time on the parts that need judgment.

The work

Four systems, built for four problems

These are separate projects at different organizations. Each was designed for its own team and its own problem.

  • SmartDocs

    NBS Government Finance Group · Implemented

    Every proposal was built by hand. I designed, built and implemented SmartDocs, a proposal automation system of reusable content and variables, so the team stopped rebuilding the same answers. A $2,800 investment cut annual labor costs from about $86,000 to $28,000.

    03 / Less labor, more wins

  • Winning-content library

    Ruhnau Clarke Architects · Implemented

    Every proposal was designed for its client, so efficiency couldn’t come from a template. The language that won was collected into a library, so each new effort started from what already worked rather than a blank page.

    02 / A different kind of proposal

  • Airtable with AI agents

    Ruhnau Clarke Architects · Implemented, 2026

    I designed and built an Airtable system with AI agents that read each RFP and trigger the next steps. It moved administrative work to an admin, so senior staff could focus on development.

    02 / A different kind of proposal

  • Connections CRM

    Firefighters Community Credit Union · Implemented

    I designed, built and implemented Connections, the credit union’s CRM and marketing automation system, so the team could follow up with every lead in the same brand voice without doing it all by hand.

    01 / Not just for firefighters

The common thread

Efficient, not generic

None of these systems started with the technology. Each one started with a question about the team: where is time going, what keeps getting recreated, and who is doing work that someone or something else could do?

And each one protected what made the marketing good. SmartDocs reused answers without flattening them. The library made bespoke proposals faster to produce. Connections let a small team follow up in a distinctive voice at scale.

SmartDocs at NBS: client names, contacts and proposal details fill in from reusable variables.Shown with sample data.

My contribution

What I brought

At each organization I identified the workflow problem, designed the system, and built and implemented it. The full context for each one, including the results each organization saw, is in its own case study.

Good marketing shouldn’t depend on heroics. Practical infrastructure lets it happen on an ordinary Tuesday.

The work

Explore more work.

Back to the work

Brand, story & strategy

  1. 01Brand Strategy & ExperienceFirefighters Community Credit UnionNot just for firefighters.
  2. 02Strategic Marketing & DifferentiationRuhnau Clarke ArchitectsA different kind of proposal.
  3. 03Brand Voice & Demand GenerationNBS Government Finance GroupLess labor, more wins.
  4. 04Content Strategy & StorytellingRuhnau Clarke ArchitectsSeeing it from their side.

Systems building

  1. 05Information Organization & RetrievalRuhnau Clarke ArchitectsMaking project information searchable.
  2. 06Research & Opportunity IntelligenceRuhnau Clarke ArchitectsResearching the opportunity before writing the proposal.
  3. 07Marketing Workflow & AutomationNBS Government Finance Group, Ruhnau Clarke Architects, Firefighters Community Credit UnionYou’re reading this one

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