What I Worked On: September 2026

August was a month of getting back into a stronger demand generation rhythm after a slow July. September has been about sharpening it.

A lot of my work this month has pushed me to get more specific about the problem behind the message. That meant building trade show campaigns for very different verticals, and refining nurture programs so they create more opportunities for prospects to raise their hands.

That theme also carried into some of the broader vertical SaaS content I worked on around solving the right business problem and explaining foundational concepts.

Here’s what stood out.

Trade show season had me switchin’ up

September has been heavy on trade show outreach, and the audiences have covered a lot of ground.

I worked on campaigns targeting software companies serving nonprofits, medical billing organizations, roofing businesses, zoos and aquariums, marine businesses, and other vertical markets.

Going from one industry to another this quickly has become an interesting exercise in context switching. The underlying payments capabilities may stay similar across industries, but the business story around them changes.

For a nonprofit platform, payments might connect to donations, recurring giving, event registration, or membership.

For medical billing software, the conversation may be closer to patient payments, reconciliation, or revenue-cycle workflows.

Roofing software companies may care more about collections, mobile or jobsite payments, and improving cash flow.

The more of these campaigns I build, the more obvious it becomes that saying “embedded payments can help you grow” isn’t enough. Instead, I need to understand where money actually moves through the software. That’s usually where the better messaging starts.

Getting more intentional about raise-your-hand moments

I also continued building additional nurture campaigns on top of our usual ones this month, targeting newer-to-us verticals we historically neglected. In turn, I’ve become more aware of the balance these campaigns need.

A 90-day nurture sequence can’t ask someone for a meeting in every email. Prospects need useful information, different perspectives, and enough space to learn before they’re ready to talk.

But the opposite can become a problem too. A campaign can educate someone for three months without ever creating a strong reason for them to respond.

So I’ve been more deliberate about building in what I think of as raise-your-hand moments.

Some emails still focus on education or content. Others ask a more direct question, introduce a business problem with a little more urgency, or give someone a clear opportunity to talk with our sales development team.

I’m not expecting every touchpoint to convert, but I do want to make sure that when someone is ready, the campaign makes it easy for them to tell us.

That distinction has become especially important after what I learned from July’s zero-MQL month. Engagement matters, but nurture programs also need clear paths from interest to conversation.

The importance of solving the right problem clearly

Our September Payment Pulse episodes approached payments from very different angles, but they ended up reinforcing the same lesson for me.

The first, “Are You Solving the Right Customer Problem?”, focused on something that applies well beyond product development: the first problem you notice may only be the symptom.

Hearing that “customers aren’t adopting this” tells you something is wrong, but it doesn’t tell you why. The real issue could be the product itself. But it could also be pricing, onboarding, positioning, customer experience, or another point of friction around the product.

Marketing has a similar problem.

If a campaign isn’t generating meetings, my instinct could be to rewrite the emails. Sometimes that’s exactly what needs to happen, but there are other questions worth asking first:

• Is the audience right?

• Is the timing right?

• Does the prospect have a reason to act?

The second episode, “Card Present vs. Card Not Present: What’s the Difference?”, came at the problem from another direction. It’s a foundational payments topic, but that doesn’t make it less useful.

Working in a technical industry makes it easy to forget that audiences don’t all start with the same level of knowledge. Some people are deeply familiar with payments terminology. Others understand their vertical SaaS customers incredibly well but may not spend much time thinking about the mechanics behind a transaction.

That means solving the right problem sometimes starts with making sure everyone understands the problem in the first place.

Not every piece of content needs to introduce a new framework. Sometimes the most useful thing marketing can do is explain an important concept clearly enough that someone can connect it to their own business.

Once that foundation is in place, it becomes easier to have more complicated conversations about checkout experiences, transaction costs, fraud, product design, or payments strategy.

That’s probably the main lesson I’m taking from both episodes: good marketing requires getting closer to the real problem, then explaining it at the level the audience actually needs.

When demand gets quieter

July is still fresh enough that I haven’t forgotten how uncomfortable a slow demand generation month can feel.

So in September, I also started thinking more intentionally about what we can do when our usual sources of MQLs slow down. Trade shows are a major part of my program, but the calendar isn’t equally busy all year. July was light, and November and December can present similar challenges. Long nurture campaigns are useful, but they aren’t always reliable sources of immediate MQLs either.

Instead of creating more activity for the sake of activity, I’m interested in finding stronger signals of intent within the audience we already have.

• Who has engaged with previous campaigns but never converted?

• Could a short campaign around one specific payments problem create more urgency than a long nurture?

• Could educational content lead into an assessment or conversation that helps prospects understand where their current payments program may have gaps?

Those are some of the questions I’m carrying into future planning.

What September Taught Me

A few lessons I’m taking from this month:

The business workflow gives you the messaging. The more I understand how payments actually show up inside a vertical, the easier it becomes to move away from generic product language and explain something the audience recognizes.

Education and conversion need to coexist. Nurture content can build familiarity over time, but campaigns still need clear opportunities for interested prospects to take the next step.

A symptom isn’t the same as a diagnosis. Whether I’m looking at product adoption or campaign performance, the first explanation isn’t always the right one. Better questions usually lead to better decisions.

Clarity matters at every level. Sometimes the challenge is diagnosing the right business problem. Other times, it’s explaining a foundational concept simply enough that the audience can participate in the larger conversation.

September has felt like a month of getting closer to:

• The workflow behind the vertical.

• The friction behind low adoption.

• The reason someone might respond to a campaign.

That’s useful practice for a demand generation marketer because clearer problems usually lead to clearer messaging.