Five ways to get marketing done

An agency, a fractional CMO, ChatGPT on your own, an AI marketing agent you run from your assistant, or HeyCMO: what each is good at for a B2B SaaS founder, and when HeyCMO is the wrong choice. HeyCMO is a marketing factory for B2B SaaS, and its invitation-only, $0 operational Alpha does one job today.

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Last checked October 2026. We describe agencies, fractional CMOs, ChatGPT and AI marketing agents in general terms, not any one company. What you get from any of them depends on your agreement or plan.

The short version

A marketing agency

An agency is great at producing a lot of finished work at once: campaigns, design, ads and content, made by specialists you don’t have to hire. But you brief it, wait for it and review it on its schedule, and what it watches between reports depends on the scope you pay for.

Choose an agency if you need a brand, a campaign or creative work made by people, and you have the budget for a monthly retainer.

Choose HeyCMO if what you need is one recurring job that runs on your Stripe numbers: the follow-up email when a payment fails, drafted for you to approve.

A fractional CMO

A fractional CMO is great at judgement: positioning, pricing, hiring and a plan your team believes in, from someone who has done it before. But you get part of their week, and the plan still needs someone to carry out the daily work.

Choose a fractional CMO if you face a big decision, such as how to position the product, a pricing change or your first marketing hire.

Choose HeyCMO if you know what to do about failed payments and want the follow-up emails drafted, with you making each call. You can also use both.

Doing it yourself with ChatGPT

ChatGPT is great for one-off writing and thinking out loud, and you may already pay for it. But on its own it only knows what you paste in, it doesn’t check your numbers between conversations, and every send, post and follow-up is still yours to do and remember.

Choose ChatGPT on its own if you have the time, you enjoy the work, and your marketing is a few emails and posts a month.

Choose HeyCMO if you want failed-payment emails drafted from your real Stripe invoices, instead of details you paste in.

An agent in your assistant

An AI marketing agent you run from your assistant is great at reach: from one chat in Claude, ChatGPT, Codex or Cursor, it uses many tools and a long list of connected accounts, often starting with a free audit of your site, and some add a browser extension for sites with no connection. But what it may do without asking is a setting an admin can open as far as “allow all”. It is usually priced in credits that each run uses, and its results often come as scores, sometimes with a forecast of what its work will do.

Choose one if you want to work only in your assistant, connect many tools in one place, or let the agent act without asking once you trust it.

Choose HeyCMO if you want each failed-payment email to wait for a signed-in person, and results counted from Stripe rather than forecast. In the Alpha it does that one job.

HeyCMO

HeyCMO is great at one job today: recovery emails for failed Stripe payments, drafted from the invoice’s own facts. A person approves every message before it is sent, through your own Resend sender. But it is new, it is an invitation-only, $0 operational Alpha for a small number of B2B SaaS companies, and it does nothing else yet: WordPress publishing and the other jobs on What it does are not available. It needs a person on your team to read and approve each draft.

Choose something else if you want marketing done with no review from you, you don’t bill through Stripe or send through Resend, you want more than failed-payment emails today, or you need a SOC 2 report or single sign-on today.

Choose HeyCMO if you run a B2B SaaS on Stripe, you do the marketing yourself or with one or two people, and you want the failed-payment follow-up drafted and the decisions left to you.

Payment reminder to Brightkite, $1,200.00Drafted from a failed Stripe invoice Action needed: your $1,200.00 payment didn’t go throughHi Brightkite team, the $1,200.00 payment for your Parcelwise Scale plan didn’t go through a week ago. Your bank asked for an extra security check, and it hasn’t been completed yet.

Why: The invoice failed 7 days ago (from Stripe).
How to undo: A sent email can’t be unsent. If Brightkite pays, the next reminder is cancelled.

Approve and sendEditDecline

Side by side

What each option does for a founder-sized setup, grouped by what you’ll ask about first.

Show HeyCMO next to

HeyCMO compared with an agency, a fractional CMO, ChatGPT on your own and an AI marketing agent you run from your assistant
Question	An agency	A fractional CMO	ChatGPT on your own	An AI marketing agent you run from your assistant	HeyCMO
What it does without asking you
Work it does before you ask	What the scope you agreed covers, on the schedule you agreed	Plans and decisions in the hours you buy. The daily work usually falls to your team or freelancers.	Nothing. It answers when you ask.	What you ask for in a chat. Some plans add a hosted agent that runs workflows on a schedule.	Reads your Stripe invoices, and drafts a service email when a payment fails. It writes nothing else in the Alpha.
Watching your numbers between meetings	Depends on the reporting in your agreement	Depends on their hours with you	Only what you paste into a conversation	Scheduled audits and briefs, on the plans that include them	Checks Stripe for failed payments every day, and reports which payments came back, with email-driven, automatic-retry and unknown kept apart
Approval and undo
Who presses send	Often the agency, under the agreement you sign	Them or your team	You, after copying each draft into the right tool	It asks you first by default. An admin can open its permissions as far as “allow all”, after a strong confirmation.	You. A person approves every message before it is sent, and it sends exactly what was approved. There is no setting that lets an email go out without a click.
Limits on what goes out	What you agree with them	What you agree with them	None of its own. It can’t send, so the limits are yours.	Budgets and the guardrails in its settings. Check for a daily send limit and one switch that pauses everything.	Each company starts in Practice mode and gets daily send limits before it goes live. It sends failed-payment emails and nothing else.
Undo and a record	Their reports, and the history inside each tool	Their notes, and the history inside each tool	Your chat history	A history of what it asked and what it did, inside the product	A history of every decision. Each entry is chained to the one before, so an edit shows up when you check. Signed daily checkpoints outside the database were enabled on 28 October 2026; see the security page for their limits. A sent email can’t be unsent.
Where you use it
Where the work happens	Email, calls and their reports	Meetings, email and Slack	The ChatGPT app	Inside your assistant, such as Claude, ChatGPT, Codex or Cursor, through many tools	The web app, where you review and approve each draft.
What it reads
What it can see	The accounts and documents you give them access to	What you share with them	What you paste or upload into a conversation	The accounts you connect, from a long list, plus its own data tools. With a browser extension, also sites you’re signed in to.	Stripe through a restricted key you create, and your own Resend account’s delivery results. What it reads is treated as data, never as instructions.
How it reports results
Scores and forecasts	Their reports, in the measures you agree with them	Their judgement, from your numbers	Whatever you work out yourself	Often a score out of 100 for each area, sometimes with a projected score for after its work	Counts, each with its source, such as how many failed payments came back after an email.
Cost for a founder-sized setup
What you pay	A monthly retainer or a fee per project, scoped by hours or deliverables	A monthly retainer for part of someone’s week	An assistant subscription you may already pay for	A monthly plan with credits. Each run uses some, so a job’s cost varies.	Nothing. There is no charge in the Alpha.
Your time	Briefing, waiting and reviewing on their schedule	Meetings, then carrying out the plan	All of it: prompting, checking numbers, copying, sending and following up	Asking in your assistant and answering what it asks; less once you let it act without asking	Reading and approving each drafted email

Last checked October 2026. There is no charge in the Alpha. See what the Alpha includes and what it costs, and how HeyCMO stays under your control.

When HeyCMO is the wrong choice

Don’t switch if

Your agency is delivering and you’d rather not review drafts yourself. HeyCMO asks a person before every email it sends.
You need positioning, brand or creative work led by a senior person. Hire for that.
You don’t bill through Stripe, or don’t send through Resend. The Alpha works with both and nothing else.
You sell to consumers or run an online shop. HeyCMO is built for B2B SaaS.
You’d rather run an agent only from your assistant, pay by what each run uses, and let it act without asking. An AI marketing agent built that way suits you better.
You need more than failed-payment emails today. WordPress publishing and HeyCMO’s other jobs open one at a time, and are not available yet.
You need a SOC 2 report, single sign-on or EU hosting today. We don’t have them yet.

HeyCMO fits if

You run a B2B SaaS that bills through Stripe and sends email through Resend.
You do the marketing yourself, or with one or two people, alongside everything else.
You want the work drafted and the decisions left to you.
You are happy to start in Practice mode and go live only once the limits are agreed with you.

If something already emails these customers

Stripe’s own customer emails, your billing tool or a person on your team may already write to customers about failed payments. Before any live send, we record who does, so a customer isn’t emailed twice.

What we ask you

Which invoices should be eligible, and which should not
Whether Stripe’s own customer emails are on, and who else writes about failed payments
Which customers are already suppressed, or must never be contacted
Who approves, and who can stop it

What stays with you

Stripe’s card retries, and what your Stripe settings do after the last retry. They are Stripe’s, and HeyCMO doesn’t change them.
Your Stripe and Resend accounts. Revoke a key and HeyCMO stops.

Questions

Can I use HeyCMO alongside an agency or a fractional CMO?

Yes. A fractional CMO can set the plan while HeyCMO drafts the failed-payment emails. An agency can keep making creative work while HeyCMO follows up on failed payments for your OK.

Does HeyCMO replace a CMO?

No. In the Alpha it does one recurring job: drafting failed-payment emails for a person to approve. Positioning, pricing and hiring are decisions for you or a senior person you trust.

Does it send from my own domain?

Yes, through your own authenticated Resend sender, once it is live. Until then each company runs in Practice mode: approved emails are checked and logged, and not sent.

How is HeyCMO different from an AI marketing agent in my assistant?

With HeyCMO, a signed-in person approves every message before it is sent, and no setting lets an email go out without a click. Results are counts from Stripe, never forecasts. In the Alpha it does one job, failed-payment emails, from the web app. An agent like that often connects to more tools and acts in more places.