Marketing & Growth

How to launch an email marketing campaign as Small Investor Relations Teams

Marketing & GrowthFor Small Investor Relations Teams2 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

Your two-person IR team sends quarterly LP communications and ad-hoc capital call notices using a combination of Mailchimp or Constant Contact for bulk sends, a manually maintained Excel or HubSpot contact list that your CFO keeps editing without telling you, and a copy-paste process to pull portfolio KPIs from QuickBooks, NetSuite, or your fund admin's reports. Every send cycle costs you a half-day of data reconciliation before you can write a word. Segmenting by LP tier, commitment size, or fund vintage means exporting, filtering, re-importing. If a capital call goes out with a stale commitment figure, you hear about it. You don't have time to build a real IR comms stack — but you also can't afford to keep doing it this way.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Marketing & GrowthFor Small Investor Relations Teams2 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

An LP contact list that stays current — synced from your CRM, enriched via LinkedIn, and segmented automatically by fund, tier, or commitment size — so you're never mailing a stale list before a capital call or quarterly letter

A campaign drafting workflow that pulls live portfolio data (balances from Plaid, revenue from Stripe, financials from QuickBooks or NetSuite) into personalized LP communications — so the numbers in your letter match your systems, not last month's export

An automated follow-up loop that tracks which LPs haven't opened or responded to a capital call notice and queues a reminder draft — so nothing falls through the cracks between you and your one colleague

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

CRM Email Agent

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your QuickBooks data on a schedule (invoices, payments, journal entries) and your NetSuite data on a schedule (income statements, balance sheets, expenses) for financial figures. Starch syncs your Plaid data on a schedule for cash movements and distribution tracking. Starch syncs your Stripe data on a schedule for portfolio revenue metrics. Starch syncs your HubSpot contacts on a schedule as the base LP list, and enriches LinkedIn profiles through browser automation — no LinkedIn API needed. Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign are connected from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries them live when a campaign is ready to send. Slack is synced on a schedule to receive follow-up alerts.

Prompts to copy

Build me an LP contact CRM with fields for: fund name, vintage year, commitment amount, LP tier (Anchor / Core / Standard), primary contact name, email, last communication date, and preferred communication channel. Sync contacts from HubSpot and enrich LinkedIn profiles on a schedule. I want to be able to ask 'which LPs in Fund III haven't received a Q1 2026 update yet?' and get a list.

Draft a Q1 2026 LP letter for our Core-tier investors in Fund II. Pull net asset value and cash-on-cash from QuickBooks, distributions paid this quarter from Plaid, and portfolio company revenue growth from Stripe. Use a formal but direct tone. Flag any LP where commitment pacing is more than 10% behind plan so I can add a note.

Set up a follow-up automation: after I send any capital call email, check each LP's open status after 48 hours. For anyone who hasn't opened it, draft a follow-up subject line and first paragraph and Slack me the list so I can review before sending.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect QuickBooks and NetSuite as scheduled-sync providers in Starch. These power the financial figures — NAV, distributions, commitment balances — that go into every LP communication. Data refreshes on a schedule so your next draft pulls current numbers, not last month's export.

2 Connect Plaid as a scheduled-sync provider to track cash movements: capital calls funded, distributions paid, and reserve balances. This is the source of truth for the cash-flow section of your quarterly letter.

3 Connect Stripe as a scheduled-sync provider if any portfolio companies report revenue through Stripe or if you invoice management fees through it. Starch pulls charges and subscription data to populate portfolio performance sections.

4 Connect HubSpot from Starch's integration catalog as your LP contact base. The agent queries it live when building campaign segments. Tell Starch: 'Sync my HubSpot contacts into the LP CRM and add fields for fund vintage, tier, and commitment amount.'

5 Run LinkedIn enrichment through browser automation to keep LP profiles current. Tell Starch: 'For each LP contact missing a current title or firm, update their LinkedIn profile data through browser automation on a weekly schedule.' No LinkedIn API required.

6 Build your LP CRM app using Starch's pre-built CRM template as a starting point, then describe your IR-specific schema: fund assignments, LP tier, commitment pacing, last-touched date. Tell Starch: 'Fork the CRM app and add a Commitment Pacing field that calculates called capital divided by total commitment, flagging anything below 85% of schedule.'

7 Draft your quarterly LP letter by telling Starch what to pull and how to frame it. The agent combines your scheduled-sync financial data with the LP segment you specify. Example prompt: 'Write a Q1 2026 update for Fund II Core LPs. Include: NAV as of March 31 from QuickBooks, total distributions in Q1 from Plaid, top 3 portfolio companies by revenue growth from Stripe, and a one-paragraph outlook. Flag any LP where we have an open capital call that hasn't been funded.'

8 Connect Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign from Starch's integration catalog to handle the actual send. Tell Starch: 'When I approve this letter draft, push it to Mailchimp as a campaign to the Fund II Core LP segment and schedule it for 8am Tuesday.'

9 Set up a follow-up automation in Starch. Tell Starch: 'After each capital call email sends, wait 48 hours, check open rates from Mailchimp, and for any LP who hasn't opened it, draft a short follow-up email and send me a Slack message with the list for approval before anything goes out.'

10 Build a campaign-history view inside your LP CRM so you have a per-LP record of every communication sent, opened, and replied to. Tell Starch: 'Add a Communications tab to each LP record showing the date, subject, open status, and any reply of every email we've sent them, pulled from Gmail.'

11 Set a quarterly cadence automation. Tell Starch: 'On the first Monday of each quarter, pull the prior quarter's financials from QuickBooks and Plaid, pre-populate a draft LP letter template, and Slack me a link to review it.' You still write the letter — but the data assembly happens without you.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

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Worked example

Q1 2026 LP Letter — Fund II Capital Call + Quarterly Update

Sample numbers from a real run

Called capital this quarter (Plaid)	3,200,000
Remaining unfunded commitments (QuickBooks)	18,500,000
Q1 distributions paid (Plaid)	740,000
NAV as of March 31 (QuickBooks / NetSuite)	47,600,000
Portfolio revenue growth — top 3 companies (Stripe)	0

It's the first week of April. Your Fund II quarterly letter is due to 34 LPs by Friday. Normally this takes a day and a half: you export QuickBooks journal entries, reconcile them with your fund admin's NAV figure, pull Plaid for the $740K in Q1 distributions, chase the CFO for the Stripe revenue figures on the three portfolio companies you highlight, then manually update the letter template and pray nothing changed overnight. With Starch, you open your LP CRM app and type: 'Draft the Q1 2026 Fund II letter for Core and Anchor LPs. Pull Q1 NAV from QuickBooks ($47.6M), distributions from Plaid ($740K), called capital from Plaid ($3.2M), unfunded commitments from QuickBooks ($18.5M), and Q1 revenue growth for Acme, BetaCo, and Gamma from Stripe.' The agent assembles the financial section in under two minutes. It also flags that two Core LPs — representing $2.1M in unfunded commitments — are more than 10% behind their call schedule, so you can add a note before the letter goes out. You review, approve, and Starch pushes it to Mailchimp as a segmented campaign. Forty-eight hours later, you get a Slack message: three LPs haven't opened it. Starch has already drafted a short follow-up for each. You approve two, edit one, and the reminders go out. Friday deadline met; no all-nighter.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

LP open rate on quarterly letters and capital call notices (target: >75% within 48 hours)

Time from quarter-close to letter sent (target: under 5 business days)

Unfunded commitment pacing — called capital as % of schedule per LP

Follow-up rate on unanswered capital call notices before funding deadline

LP contact data completeness — % of records with current title, email, and fund assignment

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Juniper Square or Addepar

Purpose-built for LP reporting at scale, but costs $50k+ per year, assumes a dedicated IR-ops analyst to configure, and doesn't let you build the custom surfaces your specific fund's workflow actually needs.

HubSpot + Mailchimp (manual)

Works for basic contact management and sends, but requires manual data pulls from QuickBooks and NetSuite before every campaign — the reconciliation overhead is the problem Starch eliminates.

Notion + Google Sheets + a VA

Flexible and cheap, but you're spending partner time on spreadsheet hygiene instead of investor relationships, and the data is always one export behind your actual financials.

Constant Contact or Campaign Monitor

Good bulk-send tools with decent segmentation, but no connection to your financial systems — you still copy-paste NAV and distribution figures by hand before every send.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — crm, email agent all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

We use NetSuite for fund accounting. Can Starch actually pull current NAV and distribution data from it, or do we still have to export?

Starch syncs your NetSuite data on a schedule — income statements, balance sheets, invoices, journal entries, and expenses. When you draft a quarterly letter, the agent pulls current figures directly from that sync. No export required. Note: QuickBooks P&L report views are temporarily unavailable due to an upstream connector issue, but entity-level data (journal entries, invoices, payments) syncs normally and covers most of what an LP letter needs.

Our LP list lives partly in HubSpot and partly in a spreadsheet the CFO owns. Can Starch consolidate that without us doing it manually?

Yes. Tell Starch: 'Import my LP contacts from HubSpot and from this Google Sheet. Deduplicate by email address, flag conflicts where the same LP has different commitment figures in each source, and build me a unified LP CRM with fund, vintage, and tier fields.' The agent handles the merge and surfaces the conflicts for you to resolve — it doesn't silently pick one.

We send capital call notices that reference specific wire instructions and legal language. Can Starch draft those, or just the narrative update letters?

Starch can draft both. For capital call notices, give it a template with your standard legal language and wire instructions as fixed fields, then tell it: 'For each LP in Fund III with an outstanding commitment, generate a capital call notice using this template, inserting their called amount from QuickBooks and the wire deadline.' You review every draft before anything sends — Starch doesn't auto-send legal communications without your approval.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? Some of our LPs are institutions with vendor security requirements.

Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. If you're at a fund where institutional LPs require a SOC 2 report before you can route financial data through a vendor, that's a real blocker to name upfront. It's on the roadmap.

We use DocSend or Intralinks for our data room. Can Starch automate access requests or track who's viewed what?

Starch can automate DocSend and Intralinks through browser automation — no API needed. For example: 'When an LP emails me requesting data room access, extract their name and email, grant them viewer access in DocSend through browser automation, and reply confirming access.' View tracking data that's exportable from DocSend can also be pulled via browser automation into your LP CRM.

We already pay for Mailchimp. Do we have to switch?

No. Connect Mailchimp from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries it live when your campaign is ready to send. Starch builds the LP segment, assembles the draft, and pushes it to Mailchimp for the actual send. Your existing Mailchimp account, templates, and send history stay as-is.