Internal Comms & Meetings

How to write an exec brief as Small Marketing Teams

Internal Comms & MeetingsFor Small Marketing Teams3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Your CEO wants a one-pager on why MQL volume dropped 22% last month. You know the answer lives in four different places: HubSpot deal stages, GA4 session data, Meta Ads spend, and the LinkedIn campaign you paused mid-month. Pulling it together means exporting CSVs, pasting into a Google Doc, and writing the narrative from scratch — usually the night before the all-hands. You're a team of three running demand gen, content, lifecycle, events, and analytics simultaneously. Nobody has time to be the dedicated brief-writer, but the briefs still have to go out, they have to be accurate, and they have to not embarrass you in front of the leadership team.

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Internal Comms & MeetingsFor Small Marketing Teams3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A living exec brief template that pulls MQL counts, pipeline contribution, and paid spend from HubSpot, GA4, and your ad platforms automatically — so the numbers are already there when you sit down to write

A Starch app that drafts the narrative section of your weekly marketing brief in your voice, citing actual figures from last week's data instead of placeholders you have to fill in later

A repeatable workflow that takes the brief from data-pull to CEO-ready in under 30 minutes, with action items extracted and assigned before you hit send

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

Growth Analyst Email Agent Knowledge Management

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your HubSpot data on a schedule (contacts, companies, deals, owners) and your Gmail on a schedule (messages, labels, send capability). Connect Meta Ads, Google Ads, GA4, and Notion from Starch's integration catalog — the agent queries them live when your brief app runs. LinkedIn campaign data is pulled through browser automation — no API required.

Prompts to copy

Every Monday at 8am, pull last week's MQL count from HubSpot, total ad spend from Meta Ads and Google Ads, and organic session count from GA4. Compare each to the prior week and the monthly target. Write a 400-word exec brief with a one-sentence summary at the top, a section for each channel, and a 'what we're doing about it' paragraph at the bottom. Save it to Notion under 'Weekly Marketing Briefs' and email a draft to me.

When the CEO replies to a marketing brief with a question, draft a response using the data already in the brief plus any follow-up numbers from HubSpot or GA4. Flag it for my review before sending.

Keep a running doc of exec brief templates, past briefs, and the standard definitions we use (MQL threshold, pipeline contribution formula, paid ROAS target). When I'm writing a new brief, surface the most relevant past brief as context.

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

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect HubSpot to Starch — it syncs contacts, companies, and deals on a schedule so your MQL and pipeline data is always current without a manual export.

2 Connect Gmail so Starch can receive CEO replies to briefs and draft follow-up responses for your review before you send anything.

3 Connect Meta Ads, Google Ads, and GA4 from Starch's integration catalog — the agent queries spend, clicks, and session data live each time your brief runs.

4 Set up browser automation for LinkedIn Ads so Starch can pull impressions, clicks, and spend from your LinkedIn Campaign Manager without needing a formal API connection.

5 Connect Notion from Starch's integration catalog so completed briefs are saved automatically to your shared team wiki under 'Weekly Marketing Briefs.'

6 Start from the Growth Analyst app in the Starch App Store — it already knows how to pull from your marketing data sources. Customize it to match your MQL definition, pipeline contribution formula, and ROAS targets.

7 Tell Starch in plain language: 'Every Monday at 8am, compare last week's MQL count, total paid spend by platform, and organic session volume to the prior week and our monthly targets. Write a 400-word exec brief with a one-sentence summary at the top, one section per channel, and a recommendations paragraph. Save to Notion and email me a draft.' Starch builds the automation.

8 Use the Email Triage app to handle the back-and-forth after you send the brief — it surfaces CEO replies, drafts data-backed responses using the numbers already in the brief, and flags them for your approval so nothing gets missed.

9 Set up a Knowledge Management app that stores your standard brief template, MQL definition, and ROAS targets so every brief uses consistent language and the same formulas, even if different team members trigger it.

10 The first time the brief goes out, review the narrative section and tell Starch what to adjust — 'lead with the paid performance section instead of organic,' or 'use our internal naming for the LinkedIn campaign' — and it updates the template going forward.

11 Schedule a second automation for Friday afternoon that runs a mid-week check-in version of the brief, shorter (200 words, bullet format), so you're not walking into Monday cold.

12 When the CEO asks a follow-up question at the all-hands, you already have the data trail in Starch — pull the answer live from HubSpot or GA4 on the spot instead of saying 'I'll follow up after the meeting.'

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

March 2026 MQL dip brief — prepared in 28 minutes

Sample numbers from a real run

HubSpot MQLs (March)	147
HubSpot MQLs (February)	189
Meta Ads spend (March)	18,400
Google Ads spend (March)	11,200
GA4 organic sessions (March)	42,300
GA4 organic sessions (February)	51,800
LinkedIn Ads impressions (March)	94,000

On Monday April 6, Starch ran its weekly brief automation at 8am. It pulled 147 HubSpot MQLs for March against 189 in February — a 22% drop — and cross-referenced paid spend: Meta at $18,400 (flat vs. February), Google at $11,200 (down $2,100 after the brand campaign was paused March 18), and LinkedIn at 94,000 impressions with a 1.4% CTR. GA4 showed organic sessions fell from 51,800 to 42,300, which Starch flagged as the likely primary driver given the Google campaign pause and a content publishing gap in weeks two and three of March. By 8:06am, a 420-word brief landed in your inbox: one-sentence summary at the top ('MQL volume fell 22% in March, driven by a mid-month pause in brand search and a two-week content gap — paid efficiency held steady'), three channel sections with the actual numbers, and a recommendations paragraph noting the content calendar needed three net-new posts in April to recover organic velocity. You read it, made one edit to the recommendations section, and forwarded it to the CEO at 8:31am. When she replied asking what the pipeline impact was, Starch's Email Triage app flagged it, drafted a reply pulling the HubSpot deal data (14 fewer deals entered the pipeline, estimated $210,000 in influenced ARR below target), and had it ready for your one-click send before you finished your coffee.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

MQL volume week-over-week and vs. monthly target (from HubSpot)

Pipeline contribution by channel — deals influenced by marketing source (HubSpot deals)

Paid ROAS by platform — Meta, Google, LinkedIn Ads spend vs. attributed pipeline

Time from data-pull to brief delivered to CEO (current baseline vs. Starch baseline)

Brief follow-up resolution time — how quickly you can answer a CEO question with a data-backed response

Comparison

What this replaces

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

Notion + manual CSV exports

You can write a great brief in Notion, but someone on your three-person team has to pull four CSVs, paste the numbers, and write the narrative every single week — that's 90 minutes you don't have.

Looker Studio / Google Data Studio

Looker Studio can build a pipeline-contribution dashboard, but it won't write the narrative for you, it won't email the CEO a draft, and it takes a BI-literate person to set up the HubSpot-to-GA4 join correctly.

ChatGPT + copy-paste

ChatGPT will write a brief if you paste in the numbers, but you're still pulling the numbers manually — and next week you do it all again from scratch because there's no persistent automation.

Dedicated BI tool (Tableau, Metabase)

Full-featured attribution dashboards are possible, but they require budget for the tool, time to set up the data model, and ongoing maintenance — none of which a three-person marketing team realistically has.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — growth analyst, email agent, knowledge management 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 Customer.io for lifecycle email. Can Starch pull campaign performance data from it?

Yes — connect Customer.io from Starch's integration catalog and the agent queries campaign stats live when your brief runs. It won't store a historical archive of every send, but for a weekly brief showing open rates, click rates, and conversion events from the past 7 days, live query is exactly what you need.

Our LinkedIn Ads data is in Campaign Manager, not in the standard API. Can Starch still get it?

Yes. If LinkedIn's Campaign Manager isn't reachable via the integration catalog for your account setup, Starch automates it through your browser — no API required. It navigates Campaign Manager the same way you would and extracts impressions, spend, and CTR for the period you specify.

Will Starch actually write the narrative, or does it just pull a table of numbers?

It writes the narrative. You tell it what the sections should be, what voice to use, and what your targets are — and it composes sentences like 'MQL volume fell 22% in March, driven by a mid-month pause in brand search' rather than handing you a spreadsheet and letting you figure it out. You still review and edit, but the first draft is done.

Is my HubSpot data stored in Starch? What about our GA4 data?

HubSpot syncs to Starch on a schedule — contacts, companies, deals, and owners are stored in Starch's database and kept current. GA4 and ad platform data (Meta, Google, LinkedIn) are queried live from Starch's integration catalog when the brief runs; they're not stored in Starch. That means your brief will always show current data, but Starch isn't a long-horizon data warehouse for historical analytics.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? We have a procurement checklist.

Not yet — Starch is not currently SOC 2 Type II certified. If that's a hard requirement for your procurement process, it's worth knowing upfront. It's on the roadmap; if you need to flag it, that's the honest answer.

We already have a Notion doc where we keep brief templates. Can Starch use it?

Yes. Connect Notion from Starch's integration catalog and point the Knowledge Management app at your existing brief templates. Starch will pull the structure you already use, so your new automated briefs match the format your CEO already expects instead of starting from a blank template.

What happens if the CEO replies to the brief with a follow-up question at 7pm on a Friday?

The Email Triage app flags it, pulls the relevant data from HubSpot or whichever source answers the question, and drafts a response for your review. You don't have to touch a spreadsheet — you read the draft, tweak if needed, and send. If you're offline, it queues the draft so it's waiting for you Monday morning.