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Content Strategy & Marketing Automation for a Physician-Led Substack
Client: A physician-authored health publication
Role: Content Strategist & Marketing Automation Builder
Overview
Foundational Health is a physician-led Substack publication. I was brought on to turn a strong body of medical writing into a repeatable growth engine, building the content system, the automation behind it, and the analytics loop that tells us what actually converts paid subscribers.
I own the publication's content pipeline end to end: Substack strategy, Instagram content and DM automation in GoHighLevel, and the email marketing sequences, all produced in the author's voice.
What I Built
Data-driven content strategy
Ran a full analysis of 241 published Substack posts against email and conversion stats to find what drives paid subscriptions.
Identified that named-condition posts (e.g. specific conditions and protocols) and first-person transformation stories convert paid subscribers most efficiently and rebuilt the content calendar around that insight.
Documented findings in a Notion conversion-analysis page that now guides every content decision.
Content production system
Produce full content batches from each article: Instagram carousels, image posts, Substack notes, and link posts.
Run an ongoing reel format (short b-roll clip + on-screen hook + comment/DM call-to-action) designed to feed the automation rather than rely on link-in-bio.
Produce podcast clip reels from guest episodes.
Coverage to date spans articles on blood pressure, PPI side effects, home birth, sunscreen, and a shift worker's guide.
Marketing automation (GoHighLevel)
Built Instagram DM automation triggered by comment keywords that delivers the right article to the right reader automatically.
Designed sequenced follow-ups, e.g. deliver the article first, then the paired podcast episode a couple of hours later, to warm readers before the ask.
Email marketing
Wrote onboarding and nurture sequences in the author's voice.
Executed a full email migration from GoHighLevel to native Substack, consolidating the stack and cutting tool overhead.
Built the launch email sequence for the publication's first live monthly paid-subscriber Q&A session.
Central operations hub (Notion)
Built and populated a complete Notion workspace as the single source of truth:
Content calendar and Substack content board
Reader testimonials database (500+ entries)
Content strategy and conversion-analysis pages
Email marketing sequence library
Skills & Tools
Content strategy · Marketing automation · Email marketing · Copywriting (ghostwriting in client voice) · Social media management · Data analysis · GoHighLevel · Substack · Instagram · Notion
Results
Growth (May 1 → Aug 25, 2026):
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR: +21.8%
Substack followers: +6.3%
Total subscribers: +5.2%
Paid subscribers: +4.7%
System & foundations:
241 posts analyzed to build the conversion-focused content strategy from evidence, not guesswork.
500+ reader testimonials organized into a reusable social-proof database.
Full content-to-automation pipeline built from scratch — every article now spins out into a coordinated set of posts, reels, DM flows, and emails.
Email infrastructure consolidated onto a single native platform.
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
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Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
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