How The Private Markets Forum brought 50,000 LinkedIn contacts and 1,000+ event signups into one data flow

The client

The Private Markets Forum brings together the people building the infrastructure of private capital markets. Founded by Marc Andrew, the platform runs summits and roundtables for operations, technology and data leaders on both the GP and LP side, such as the LP Tech Summit in Toronto and the Private Markets AI Summit in New York. Add to that a newsletter with several thousand subscribers, a podcast, and regular market research publications.

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The thesis behind it is simple: private markets now manage around $25 trillion, but the operational infrastructure underneath them is still being built in real time. The systems, the data, the workflows. The Private Markets Forum is where the people doing that work convene. Not the deal partners, who already have plenty of conferences built for them, but the operational and technology layer those events overlook.

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The business model runs on contacts. Every event signup, every report download, every newsletter subscriber is a data point: who is interested in which topic? Is this a technology lead at a GP firm, an LP tech lead, a software vendor who might fit as a sponsor? For a platform whose value lies in getting the right people into one room, this data is the actual capital.

The problem: a new website, but no data flows behind it

At the beginning of the year, The Private Markets Forum relaunched its entire website. The new Webflow site was meant to properly reflect the platform’s grown offering: events, event summary reports, market research, newsletter, podcast. The relaunch itself was handled by magier; bakedwith came on board for the automation layer behind it.

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Because a relaunch means more than a new design. Every form, every signup flow, every connection to the systems behind the site has to be rethought and rebuilt. And that is exactly where the challenge was.

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An events business produces signups continuously: for summits, for webinars, for recordings of past events, for reports and other content. Each of those signups triggers two things. First, an expectation on the user’s side: someone who signs up for a recording wants to receive it immediately, not whenever someone gets around to sending an email. Second, a task in the background: the contact needs to go into the CRM, with context, properly categorized, ideally with an assessment of how relevant they are.

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Without automation, that means: form entries land in an inbox or a spreadsheet, someone sends content manually, transfers contacts by hand and judges by gut feeling who is interesting. With a handful of signups, that works. With a growing event calendar, multiple formats and over a thousand signups, it doesn’t.

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On top of that, there was a second, untapped source: Marc Andrew’s LinkedIn profile. As founder and face of the platform, he posts regularly on private markets topics, with engagement from exactly the audience The Private Markets Forum wants to reach. Anyone liking and commenting there has signaled interest in the topic. But nobody was systematically checking who these people are and in what role they would be relevant to the platform.

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And there was one particularity that made all of this more complicated than for most companies: The Private Markets Forum doesn’t have one target audience, it has several. A technology and operations lead at a large GP firm is a relevant contact, as an attendee. An LP tech lead modernizing an institutional portfolio, too. A software vendor is relevant as well, but for an entirely different reason: as a potential sponsor. A single “fits / doesn’t fit” score would not have reflected that reality.

The solution: one data flow from signup to scored contact

bakedwith built the automation layer behind the new website and extended it step by step with LinkedIn as a second lead source. The relaunch became the opportunity to set up the data flows properly once, instead of rebuilding old manual processes on a new website.

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Step 1: Signup flows that deliver

Automations were built for the forms on the new website: event registrations, access to recordings, report downloads. Each of them does two things at once. The user immediately receives what they requested, and the contact automatically lands in the CRM, with context on where they came from and what they were interested in.

That sounds unspectacular, and it is the foundation of everything. A form that only generates an email notification produces work. A form that delivers and documents produces data.

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Step 2: Five ICPs instead of one score

Every new contact is scored automatically, not against a single ideal profile but against five different ICPs. The reason: for The Private Markets Forum, there are several kinds of “perfect fit” that don’t substitute for each other. The profiles range from technology and operations leads at large GP firms to LP tech leads to software vendors and advisors who might fit as sponsors or partners.

The system checks every contact against all profiles and records where they fit best. At a glance, the team sees not just that a contact is relevant, but in what role: as an attendee for the next summit, as a potential partner, as a sponsor candidate.

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Step 3: LinkedIn engagement as a lead source

In parallel, Marc Andrew’s LinkedIn engagement was tapped. The system pulls the profiles interacting with his posts, enriches them with company and position data, and scores them against the same five ICPs. 50,000+ contacts were identified and categorized this way: people who signaled interest on their own, and whose role in the ecosystem the system has already assessed.

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Step 4: The directory nobody planned

Then, out of the ongoing collaboration, something emerged that wasn’t part of the original brief at all. The Private Markets Forum already curates knowledge about which technology providers are shaping the market: in research, at events, on the podcast. What was missing was a place where that knowledge is accessible in structured form.

bakedwith helped building the Private Markets Technology Directory: a searchable database of technology providers across private credit and private markets, filterable by category, region, deployment and buyer type, including a complete backend. Providers can claim their profile or submit new entries; The Private Markets Forum team curates.

Today, the directory covers 518 providers across 14 categories and 6 regions, from underwriting and portfolio monitoring to fund administration and AI workflows. What started as a side thought became a standalone product that directly supports the platform’s positioning as the home of private markets infrastructure.

The results: forms became a system

1,000+ event signups processed automatically. Every registration delivered, documented and scored in the CRM, without anyone sending an email by hand.

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50,000+ LinkedIn contacts identified and scored. From the engagement on Marc Andrew’s posts, matched against five different ICPs. A data set that simply could not have been built manually.

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Every contact categorized instead of guessed at. The scoring shows not just whether a contact is relevant, but in what role: attendee, partner or sponsor.

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A directory with 518 providers as a standalone product. Including backend, claim function and submission process. Built out of the collaboration; today a core part of the platform.

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No more manual sending. The time that would have gone into delivery, contact maintenance and assessment stays with the team for what the platform runs on: events, research and relationships.

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A website that pulls its weight. The relaunch renewed not just the design but the processes behind it. New formats, new events and new content can be connected without creating new manual work.

What we learned

A relaunch is the right moment for automation. Anyone building a new website has to touch every form and every flow anyway. That is the opportunity to set up the processes behind them properly, instead of repeating the old manual routines on a new surface.

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A form is not a database. A signup that only generates a notification postpones work. Delivery, CRM entry and scoring belong in the same automated flow. Otherwise the most valuable part of the data goes unused.

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Multiple audiences need multiple scores. A single ICP score works when there is one ideal customer. The Private Markets Forum has several: attendees, partners, sponsors, each with their own profile. The scoring had to reflect that reality. Otherwise relevant contacts would have fallen through the cracks, not because they didn’t fit, but because they fit differently.

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Engagement is a signal you have to pick up. The people interacting with Marc Andrew’s posts have already shown their interest. Identifying and categorizing them systematically costs almost nothing when automated. Ignoring them costs contacts you never get to know.

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The best projects sometimes emerge along the way. The directory wasn’t in any briefing. It emerged because the ongoing collaboration made visible what fits the platform. Starting with a clearly scoped automation project doesn’t mean stopping there.

Is your website just running, or is it pulling its weight?

You collect signups, downloads and inquiries through your website, but that is where the manual work starts? Contacts land in inboxes instead of the CRM, and gut feeling decides who is actually relevant? There is engagement sitting on your channels that never turns into conversations?

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We build the automation layer behind it: forms that deliver and document. Contacts that are automatically enriched and scored. And if it turns out along the way that a product is missing, we build that too.

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Let’s talk about your specific data flows in a no-obligation conversation.

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