Case Study 04 / RevOps
A CRM audit that caught a duplicate send before it reached clients
A 15-phase audit of the company's Mailchimp CRM mapped every tag, journey, segment and draft across 285 subscribed contacts, built 8 live segments without retagging a single contact, and found that the same five-email sales sequence existed both as a live automation and as 14+ unsent drafts. That collision would have sent clients the same pitch twice.
Founder track record: this work was led by Clarafold's founder before founding Clarafold, while working as marketing manager at a maritime compliance software company. The client's name is withheld until it approves publication; every figure comes from its own systems. Clarafold client engagements are added as they complete.
- subscribed contacts audited
- 285
- live segments built, zero contacts retagged
- 8
- duplicate drafts found behind a live journey
- 14+
- internal/test contacts caught in a send list
- 9
01 · Client
Maritime compliance software company
Maritime compliance software and services company running newsletter, lead magnet and nurture programs in Mailchimp. Name withheld until the client approves publication.
The challenge
Six months of fast campaign work had left the CRM with overlapping tags, near-empty fields and several people building send lists independently. Before the first issue of a new community newsletter went out, nobody could say with confidence who would receive what, or whether existing clients would get prospect-style pitches.
02 · System
What existed before.
- Role tags inferred from email prefixes ('captain@', 'qhse@'), too coarse to target on
- A 'companies to exclude' list that was really the master relationship list: clients, lapsed clients and prospects mixed together
- Multiple people creating send segments on the same day without knowing about each other
03 · Intervention
What was built and run.
Audited before touching anything
A read-only pass over every tag, merge field, journey, campaign draft and segment, documented in a 24-section report.
Built segments additively
Eight saved segments from existing data (existing clients, active nurtures, warm and cold pools, ICP by job title, personal-email domains), with no bulk retagging and no change to any running send.
Re-based targeting on job titles
Replaced prefix-guessed roles with the actual job-title field for the core ICP of marine managers and DPAs.
Classified the launch list
All 285 contacts sorted into send, send-with-client-CTA, suppress and do-not-send for the newsletter's first issue.
Escalated decisions instead of making them
A proposed relationship field (prospect, active client, former client, partner, internal) was documented with migration steps but left for leadership to sign off, because it changes how every contact is treated.
04 · Outcome
What changed.
8 live segments in production, built in one session with zero contacts retagged and zero sends disrupted.
Found that a mooring-software X7 sales journey had been live since 25 June 2026 while the same content sat in 14+ unsent draft campaigns recreated across four days. Any of those drafts going out would have hit people already in the journey.
Caught four competing 'issue 1' send segments created on the same day, one of which still held 9 internal and test contacts.
The newsletter launch list was classified by relationship, so existing clients would receive an account-expansion CTA instead of a lead magnet pitch.
05 · Lessons
What we would tell you.
- Audit before you architect. Every serious problem here was invisible from the dashboard and obvious from a full inventory.
- Additive changes first. Segments can be built from existing data without touching contacts; retagging can wait for decisions that belong to the business.
- A CTA tells people whether you know them. Pitching a lead magnet to an existing client reads as if you don't track your own relationships.
Put It To Work