How Newsela's RevOps Team Uses Pursuit to Save Time, Target Better, and Book More Meetings

In K–12 education, sales cycles can be long, decision-making is complex, and public data—while abundant—is often overwhelming. For Danny Clune, Revenue Operations Manager at Newsela, the challenge was clear: help the sales team spend less time digging for information and more time connecting with the right people.

Newsela, a leader in digital reading platforms for K–12 schools, delivers leveled nonfiction content, comprehension assessments, and teacher resources to millions of classrooms. The product is powerful, but selling into public school systems comes with a unique set of operational headaches—exactly the kind Pursuit was built to solve.

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The RevOps Mission in EdTech

Like any RevOps leader, Clune’s mission is to maximize time spent on revenue-generating activities. But selling to school districts means navigating layers of public information, frequent staff turnover, and data that becomes outdated almost as soon as it’s entered into a CRM.

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” Clune said. “There’s so much information available that it’s easy for reps to get lost in the research. We needed a way to surface the most relevant data fast.”

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The Contact Data Problem

Before Pursuit, Newsela relied on a public-sector data provider with biweekly updates. The data was solid, but the lag time created a bloat problem—district records would list six or seven superintendents because old contacts weren’t removed quickly enough.

That meant sellers had to manually research and clean lists before doing any outreach. Valuable hours were spent updating spreadsheets instead of building pipeline.

Pursuit changed that:

“With Pursuit, our sellers and CSMs can find the most up-to-date contacts instantly and push them straight into Salesforce,” Clune said. “It saves us an incredible amount of time, and we can clean up outdated entries on the back end without slowing down our team.”

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Turning Signals into Pipeline

Newsela is a multi-product company, with different products appealing to different decision-makers within a district. Pursuit’s Radar and Pipeline Mode give the team the ability to create opportunity profiles that align with each product and persona.

For example:

• Pursuit identifies districts discussing assessment initiatives
• It flags decision-makers with “assessment” or “testing” in their title.
• AI-generated messaging—tailored to those initiatives—gives sellers a ready-made starting point.

“That’s an entire motion we’ve shrunk down to minutes,” Clune said. “And the content isn’t generic—it’s specific and relevant, which makes outreach more effective.”

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Clean CRM Data, Without the Headaches

When adding any enrichment tool to Salesforce, bad data is the fastest way to lose trust. Clune’s team rolled out Pursuit cautiously—activating duplicate blocking, running matching exercises, and only syncing once they were confident.

That extra care paid off:

“We haven’t had any issues with duplicates or overload,” Clune said. “Now, reps can confidently work in Pursuit knowing the contacts they add aren’t already in Salesforce.”

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The Results: More Speed, More Meetings

Within months of adopting Pursuit, Newsela saw measurable impact. Meeting volume rose year-over-year, with the biggest gains coming from SDRs—who can now move faster, spend less time on research, and dedicate more energy to calls and sequences.

“When an SDR can move faster, they book more meetings. And more meetings mean more pipeline,” Clune said. “We expect the dollar impact to become clear as those opportunities move down the funnel.”

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Danny’s Advice for Other EdTech Teams

For other RevOps leaders considering AI-powered tools, Clune’s advice is simple:

“Know exactly what problem you’re solving. For us, it was research time. For others, it might be email generation or contact cleanup. Go sit with your reps, shadow their workflow, and see where they’re losing time. Then find a tool—like Pursuit—that directly solves for that.”

In the fast-paced, high-turnover world of K–12 sales, Pursuit gives Newsela’s team exactly what they need: clean data, relevant opportunities, and more time in front of the people who matter most.

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