MEET RAFAEL ZABALA

At Interactive Marketing, we believe growth comes from innovation — and no one embodies that more than our founder, Rafael Zabala.

Pioneering Growth in the Age of AI

Over the last 20+ years, Rafa has built, scaled, and exited multiple businesses while helping clients achieve breakthroughs in sales, marketing, and revenue growth. Recognized among the top 1% of lead generation and funnel-building marketers worldwide, Rafa is a skilled public speaker and award-winning innovator, honored by ClickFunnels, Go High Level, and CloseBot for his pioneering work in marketing automation and AI-driven sales strategies.

Product Marketing Leader & AI Storyteller

Rafael Zabala is not only a seasoned marketing executive, but also a product marketing leader who excels at transforming complex solutions into customer success stories that drive adoption and impact. With a career spanning over two decades, he has co-founded and scaled companies, built brands from the ground up, and guided organizations through the adoption of cutting-edge technologies.

At the heart of Rafael’s work is customer storytelling. He has a proven ability to uncover business challenges, design AI-powered solutions, and then craft multi-channel narratives—across web, social, video, live events, and sales enablement—that demonstrate real-world transformation. Unlike many who simply talk about adoption, Rafael has personally led organizations through it, architecting and implementing AI systems that delivered measurable results such as doubling appointment bookings, streamlining customer journeys, and generating millions in revenue.

As a hands-on innovator, Rafael thrives at the intersection of marketing strategy and technology. He collaborates with executives, sales teams, developers, and product managers to align customer needs with business outcomes. His leadership style reflects Amazon’s own values: ownership, customer obsession, bias for action, and a relentless curiosity to learn, simplify, and invent.

Whether building scalable AI adoption journeys, producing keynote presentations that inspire audiences, or driving enterprise-wide change, Rafael brings both the vision of a strategist and the execution of an operator. This unique blend of product marketing expertise, executive leadership, and applied AI innovation positions him as a leader who not only tells adoption stories, but creates them.

Awards & Recognition

Rafa’s leadership and innovation have been recognized with some of the most prestigious honors in the marketing industry. These awards reflect his proven ability to scale businesses, pioneer AI-driven strategies, and deliver results that set new benchmarks for growth and performance.

  • ClickFunnels 10X Million Dollar Award
  • ClickFunnels Two Comma Club Award
  • Go High Level SaaSPreneur Award
  • CloseBot AI God of Bookings Award
  • Marine Corps Honor Graduate
  • Magna Cum Laude, Kappa Beta Delta Honor Society

A Track Record
of Transforming Businesses

Throughout his career, Rafa has turned vision into measurable growth. By blending entrepreneurial drive with data-driven strategy, he has transformed startups into multi-million-dollar enterprises and helped established companies unlock new levels of performance. His track record demonstrates a consistent ability to integrate technology, streamline systems, and build revenue engines that scale.

Built AI-powered sales systems that generated 82,000+ qualified appointments and delivered tens of millions in client revenue

Managed 7-figure advertising budgets across Google, Meta, LinkedIn, and TikTok — consistently achieving 7x+ ROAS.

Developed funnels, campaigns, and marketing automation that replaced manual processes with scalable, automated growth engines.

Scaled startup to multi-million dollar annual revenues in just a few years, leading through successful exit.

Beyond Marketing

Rafa is high-performance driven, bringing the same intensity to his personal life that he applies to business. A Marine Corps Honor Graduate and lifelong learner, he has consistently earned recognition and awards for excelling in whatever he pursues. Whether testing new frontiers in marketing automation and artificial intelligence or pushing his limits through Wim Hof breathwork, cold plunging, fitness, and yoga, Rafa thrives on challenge and breakthrough performance.

Born in Venezuela and shaped by a global perspective, Rafa has traveled widely and lived abroad with his wife, Chelsea, and their two young adult children. His experiences across cultures and continents have fueled his adaptability, curiosity, and drive to embrace new frontiers in both life and business. Today, living in Atlanta, he continues to blend innovation, discipline, and adventure in everything he does, making him uniquely equipped to lead growth in the age of artificial intelligence.