Fail Fast, Learn Faster: Lessons From a Marketing Campaign

In business and in technology, we’re often told to “fail fast.” The strategy encourages organizations to quickly test and learn from ideas rather than investing excessive time making sure everything is perfect before taking action.

“In the early stages of building a business, experimentation is everything,” according to Harvard Business School Online’s Business Insights Blog. “It’s a fast-paced cycle of testing ideas, learning from mistakes, and making rapid adjustments.”

While it’s a principle that startups often embrace to ensure agility, it also applies to established enterprises like Actian that continuously innovate. This innovation can span experimenting with new technology, testing new AI use cases, or even trying a new marketing approach.

Failing fast isn’t about carelessness. It’s about trying novel ideas, gathering data quickly, and learning what to do next. That’s exactly what happened when Actian’s Americas Field Marketing team, which included a summer intern, launched a campaign designed to cut through digital noise with a unique approach in today’s business environment—direct mail.

Making a Bold Hypothesis

The marketing campaign was built on a simple but ambitious hypothesis. We anticipated that with so many executives inundated by email, digital ads, and automated outreach, a highly creative, physical, direct mail piece would stand out.

Our intern designed a “healthcare maze.” It was a two-by-three-foot canvas that visualized the complex compliance and fragmented data challenges that healthcare provider CDAOs are facing. The canvas showcased how Actian can help decision-makers navigate out of the maze to achieve data-driven success.

The campaign was hyper-personalized, targeting 20 enterprise healthcare provider CDAOs in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states in the U.S. These are large systems with more than $1 billion in revenue. Each account was chosen based on technographic fit, including the platforms they’re currently using, along with industry challenges and alignment with Actian’s strengths in data governance, lineage, and trust.

The strategy was rigorous and aggressive:

• Pre-mailing outreach from sales development reps to establish awareness.
• The physical maze mailer as a conversation-starting centerpiece.
• Post-mailing follow-up to convert engagement into one-to-one meetings.

Our expectations were high. We wanted to secure 80% acknowledgment, convert half of those into meetings, and generate opportunities with at least 30% of recipients.

What Happens When Hypotheses Don’t Hold

Our reality didn’t match our plan.

Many recipients weren’t in their offices when the canvases arrived. Remote and hybrid work schedules, coupled with August vacations, created challenges for physically delivering the canvases. Even when packages did land as intended, responses were limited.

Instead of creating frustration, this became a lesson in what “fail fast” looks like in practice for marketing. Our team quickly realized that while the creative execution of the campaign was strong, the assumption about office presence was not. The hypothesis was tested, the outcome was clear, and the learning was immediate—direct mail is not a sure-fire channel in today’s hybrid workplace.

This insight is valuable. It means the next time we consider direct mail, we’ll also look at alternative paths to connect with our target audience.

Why Failing Fast Matters

Failing fast doesn’t mean failure. It means progress. Here’s what came out of our project:

• Data-driven targeting expertise. We segmented accounts based on revenue, geography, and technology adoption, giving us real-world insights into changing healthcare markets and account-based marketing strategies.
• Creative asset value. The “healthcare maze” continues to live on in digital formats, social content, and brand awareness campaigns. Even when the initial delivery method fell short of our goals, the content itself remains a valuable asset.
• Brand recognition. Whether or not the canvases landed on executives’ desks, Actian’s outreach ensures healthcare provider CDAOs now better recognize our brand. That awareness can pay off at events we attend throughout the year, in digital campaigns, and in future sales cycles.
• Cross-functional collaboration. Our team worked with sales development reps, product marketers, and the creative team to bring the idea to life, illustrating how collaborative approaches lead to stellar content.

Together, these outcomes remind us that even when a campaign doesn’t hit its intended goal, the lessons, assets, and brand equity it generates move us forward. Failing fast isn’t about the miss. It’s about accelerating progress, building resilience, and setting the stage for smarter, more impactful campaigns ahead.

Lessons Learned for Business and Technology

The parallels in our campaign to failing fast with technology are striking. Just like in software development, where agile teams release early versions to test market fit and operability, marketing experiments thrive on iteration that discovers what resonates with the target audience. If something doesn’t land, teams pivot quickly, armed with new data to make the next attempt stronger.

At Actian, the takeaway is clear—innovation requires risk, and risk sometimes means not achieving success in the short-term. However, the long-term gain is agility, knowledge, and resilience.

For example, fail fast lessons from our healthcare maze campaign include:

• Validate assumptions early. Don’t just test the creative content. Also test logistics such as office presence and delivery feasibility.
• Treat content as reusable assets. Even if the initial channel falters, strong creative can both support and enhance digital, social, and sales channels.
• Measure everything. Use data to refine targeting, messaging, and next steps.
• Build resilience into the process. Failure isn’t wasted effort when it accelerates learning for the next campaign.

Our team won’t invest in direct mail again until we see proof it’s effective. At the same time, our collective work, including research, analysis, and messaging, continues to inform marketing decisions.

Building a Culture of Ongoing Learning

At its core, failing fast only works if every outcome is treated as a learning opportunity. This requires:

• A willingness to experiment. Try new channels, formats, and tactics—even if the payoff is uncertain.
• Data-driven reflection. Collect data and analyze what happened, just as we did with account segmentation, competitor technographics, and industry research.
• A culture of support. Provide interns, new hires, and seasoned employees alike with the freedom to take creative risks—and the safety to learn from the results.

This is what keeps Actian innovative. It’s what allows us to approach both marketing and technology with a startup-like mindset that’s bold, fast, and resilient.

From Failure to Forward Momentum

Direct mail may not be the future of enterprise outreach in a hybrid world, yet our efforts were not wasted. They are an accelerant for learning.

The maze campaign reminded us that every experiment, whether it drives our pipeline immediately or not, adds to the knowledge base that makes future campaigns smarter. It also reinforces the truth at the heart of innovation—success is built on a foundation of fast, frequent, and ongoing learning.

That’s why at Actian, we’ll keep testing, keep iterating, and keep turning ideas into stronger strategies. Failing fast isn’t the end of the story. It’s the beginning of progress.

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About Liz Brown

Liz Brown is a high-energy, results-driven marketing professional with a proven track record of driving business growth and inspiring, mentoring, and enabling colleagues and peers. Known for her strategic thinking and collaborative leadership, Liz excels at building impactful marketing strategies, ABM programs, and enablement initiatives tailored to top accounts and industries. She has extensive experience in brand positioning, integrated campaigns, and customer engagement, from large-scale events to targeted digital initiatives.