Fractional AI and MarTech lead · one quarter
A fractional AI and MarTech lead, embedded for a quarter.
For marketing and operations leaders with a team and a stack. An audit of your CRM, data and automation, two to four AI use cases in production with approval gates, your team enabled, and a readout to leadership.
Is this you?
For leaders with a stack and no owner for AI.
- A CRM, marketing automation and reporting that mostly work, with people filling the gaps by hand.
- Several people trying AI on their own, no shared rules, nothing in production.
- Leadership asking what the plan is, and you need a ranked answer with owners, not a vendor pitch.
- You can give it one hour a week; your team four to six.
Probably not you
Not a fit when
- There is no team yet. Start with the 90-day setup.
- You want a strategy document and no change to how work runs.
- Nobody on the team can take over the runbooks at the end of the quarter.
What you get
Running use cases, enabled people, a readout.
Week 2
Stack map and ranked use cases
Where hours go, what the CRM and automation actually do, five use cases ranked by payoff against risk, each with an owner.
Week 5
Two use cases in production
Built inside your CRM and automation tools, with human approval before anything reaches a customer, and logging.
Week 7
Your team enabled
Role-based sessions on live work, a prompt library in a shared doc, office hours twice a week.
Week 11
Use cases three and four, plus a vendor review
Operated inside your existing weekly meeting. Tool and vendor cost reviewed.
Week 13
Leadership readout
Hours, throughput, quality, cost, and a next-quarter roadmap.
Always
Runbooks for everything live
So the team runs it without me, whether I stay or hand off to a hire.
Week by week
One quarter, five stages.
I join as a fractional AI and MarTech lead, embedded in your week. Your meeting rhythm, no new standing calls.
- Weeks 1–2Assess
Audit stack and workload
- Interview the team; map where hours go
- Audit CRM, marketing automation, data flows
- Shortlist five use cases, rank by payoff vs. risk
You get: stack map and ranked use-case list with owners
- Weeks 3–5Implement
Ship the first two
- Build inside your CRM and automation tools
- Data hygiene fixes that block the rest
- Approval gates before anything reaches a customer
You get: two use cases in production with gates and logging
- Weeks 6–7Train
Enable the team
- Role-based sessions on the team's live work
- Prompt library in a shared doc
- Office hours twice a week
You get: prompt library, role guides, office-hours cadence
- Weeks 8–11Run
Operate and extend
- Weekly ops review inside your existing meeting
- Use cases three and four
- Vendor and cost review
You get: runbooks for every live use case; vendor recommendation
- Weeks 12–13Improve
Report to leadership
- Hours, throughput, quality, cost
- Roadmap for next quarter
- Decide: extend, hand off, or hire
You get: leadership readout and next-quarter roadmap
Your time
1 hour a week, your team 4–6
You set direction. I work with the people doing the work.
Pricing
One quote for the quarter
Set after the stack conversation, with use-case count and cadence written in. Renews quarter to quarter or hands off to a hire.
Measured by
Hours, throughput, quality, cost
Per use case. Baselined in weeks 1–2, reported in week 13 with vendor cost alongside.
After the quarter
Extend, hand off, or hire
I will help write the job description.
Tools we work in
Your stack, extended.
CRM
HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho
Marketing automation
Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Constant Contact, and the native automation in your CRM
Data
Snowflake, customer data platforms, identity resolution, the flows between systems
Office and team
Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, Teams, Asana, Trello, Monday
AI
ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot seats, and AI already inside the tools above
Proof
Twenty years of marketing technology at enterprise scale.
Fortune 500 transformation
At Merkle / Dentsu, multi-year programs moving enterprise marketing organizations from on-premises systems to multi-cloud on Snowflake.
Executive advisory
A privacy and preference audit presented directly to Dell's CMO; governance designed across 60+ systems.
Revenue impact
At Acxiom, the customer marketing database Harley-Davidson used to target and measure its marketing.
Program and product leadership at Acoustic: five global engineering scrum teams and a Snowflake-based multi-tenant migration. Full history, results and skills on Corey's profile.
Questions
Straight answers.
What does it cost?
One quote for the quarter, set after a stack conversation, with the use-case count and cadence written into it. It renews quarter to quarter or hands off to a hire; I will help write the job description.
Who is this for?
Marketing and operations leaders who have a team and a stack: a CRM, marketing automation, data flowing between them, and people whose hours go into the gaps. If you have neither a team nor a stack yet, the 90-day setup is the better door.
How is this different from an agency or a consultant deck?
I work inside your meetings and your tools, with the people doing the work. The deliverables are running use cases with approval gates and logging, not a slide deck. The readout to leadership comes at the end, from the numbers.
How do you measure the quarter?
Four numbers per use case, baselined in weeks 1 to 2 and reported in week 13: hours, throughput, quality, and cost. Vendor and tool cost is reviewed in weeks 8 to 11 and goes in the same report.
Which tools do you work in?
HubSpot, Salesforce and Zoho; Mailchimp, Klaviyo and Constant Contact; Google Workspace and Microsoft 365; Slack and Teams; Snowflake and the data flows between them. New tools are proposed in the readout, not bought in week 3.
Can this turn into a full-time or executive role?
Yes. Corey is open to fractional and executive roles in marketing technology, analytics and applied AI. The quarter is a working interview in both directions.
Tell me about your stack.
Thirty minutes is enough to say whether a quarter is the right shape, and which two use cases would go first.
Prefer the form? Tell me what's not working, or email corey@talewatersandtides.com.
Open to
Fractional and executive roles
Marketing technology, analytics and applied AI. Profile and one-page PDF →