Marketing systems: CRM, data & AI

Systems, activated.

Content, ads, website, CRM and analytics work as one system. I connect them, measure what moves between them, and keep it in motion.

01

What I do

CRM & automation

I made the case for a CRM for years. When HubSpot finally came in, the data side was mine: the migration, and keeping it clean enough that colleagues can run it without me.

HubSpot · Forms · Workflows

Search & content

Paid campaigns run in-house, articles written to rank, and what people search for fed back to the team developing courses.

Around 11× return on non-brand search (estimated)

Google Ads · SEO · Content

Analytics & reporting

Ads, website and course bookings in one picture, behind budget decisions, tooling choices and a stronger hand in negotiations.

GA4 · Google Ads · Meta · Eventbrite

AI adoption & governance

Choosing the tools, running the pilot, writing the rules, and training colleagues to use them.

Claude for creation, Copilot for coordination

Claude · Copilot · Training

02

Selected work

80,000 Contacts sortedLifecycle stages, marketing status and duplicates cleaned across the whole database, then the same for companies. Now marketing and sales know where their time is worth spending. CRM · Data
5 Data sources read togetherAd platforms, website analytics, CRM and bookings used to live in separate spreadsheets. Now they sit together in shared dashboards, first built in Excel and now with AI tooling. They’re faster to update, and because the numbers sit side by side, colleagues use them. Reporting · AI tooling
Top 3 On GoogleAn article on the Ben Franklin effect, written in Dutch for The School of Life Amsterdam. It ranks in Google’s top three for its topic, and Google’s AI Overview cites it alongside Wikipedia.Read the article Content · SEO
03

How I work

Follow what moves

In ecology I studied what moves between systems. In marketing it’s the same question: what happens between the page, the form, the CRM and the inbox.

Design the rules

Automation and AI are only as good as the rules behind them. I write those rules down, so colleagues can follow and change them.

Know what you don’t

Saying “I don’t know” beats a confident guess. Good data work shows where it stops.

04Story

Counting, listening, and other ways of knowing

Four studies on two continents, measured and heard: soil and isotopes on a desert coast in Peru, long interviews in Dutch forests, green space across European cities.

An Amsterdam canal at blue hour, a red light trail from a passing boat crossing in front of a bridge
Portrait of Gilles Havik
05About

Dutch-born, raised in Luxembourg, trained as an ecologist and later as a science journalist. Now working on marketing systems in Amsterdam.

Speaks Dutch, English, French and Spanish.

06Contact

Let’s talk.

Available for roles in marketing systems, analytics and AI adoption. Freelance projects welcome.

Gilles on the phone