SAM Labs Results
The role: Head of Marketing and Insights.
The work: Leadership team of 5 member, Player/Coach on Marketing team of 4, Data team of 2.
The functions: Marketing, Data, Leadership Team.
The setting: Startup, Series A, Edtech, 1.75 Years.
Setting the Scene
SAM Labs launched into the US education market in 2018, after closing a series A round in 2017. SAM Labs then raised a second series A in 2019, on the back of new market growth and potential. The new funding did not lead to faster growth:
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2019 annual revenue was down 20-30% YoY.
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2020 Annual revenue was down 30-40% YoY.
This stood in contrast to the global edtech market, growing at roughly 20% YoY. I was brought in to turn the revenue contraction into growth (not alone, but you get the idea).
At time of joining, we had 10-12 months of runway left, assuming the revenue decrease improved to flat YoY. Once I finished research, created the marketing plan, gained board approvals, and started hiring (executing along the way), we had 6-8 months left.
In the next 12 months, we successfully turned the revenue contraction into 2.5x growth on 70% of the prior year's budget, transformed the business model and GTM motion, and delivered 21st century tools to classrooms in 66 countries and all 50 US states.
2021 Results:
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Revenue growth: 264% YoY (+112% to plan)
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ARR: $323K ($0 in 2020)
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CAC: -18% YoY (better)
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Revenue budget ROI: 1.64 (0.52 in 2020)
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Traffic growth: +42% YoY
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Traffic conversion rate: +524% YoY
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Contact/Lead Growth: +462% YoY
Hubspot
Traffic and Conversion
Leads and Site Engagement
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These provide a window into the TOFU and MOFU during my time at SAM Labs.
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Figure 1 shows increases to traffic, channel diversity, organic/direct sources with an improving conversion rate.
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It also shows several spike periods, which correspond to marketing activity concentrations.
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Figure 2 shows increases to contact acquisition and new contact site engagement.
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The spikes to contact acquisition correlate with the traffic and conversion spikes seen in figure 1.
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Google Analytics
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Figure 3 illuminates TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU performance YoY through website metrics.
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Substantial improvements to traffic - both new and existing users, bounce rate, and conversion rate.
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Session Duration decrease was driven by the introduction of SAM Studio, our SaaS product offering, using a subdomain not tracked in the same GA view.
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Time on page decrease driven by the software subdomain and paid media expansion.
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Organic Search
Figures 4, 5, and 6 show Google Analytics data from all channel sources.
Seen in figures 4 and 5 is the growth we experienced due to demand capture and creation efforts of my team.
Demand creation efforts started in Q4 of 2020 when I realized there wasn't enough demand for us to capture.
I was able to drive this increase in volume without an offsetting degradation in TOFU conversion.
Shown in figure 6 is the consistency of branded KW strength throughout the growth.
This is due to the holistic approach (omni-channel) and demand creation efforts occurring upstream of search.
MOZ - SEO
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Figure 7 shows SEO ranking data from Moz, an SEO tool, spanning from March 2020 to March 2021.
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Impactful improvements to keyword position, keyword quantity, and overall search viz.
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SEO was the first channel I went after due to attractive CAC and conversion rates, long term results orientation, and leverage gain from content creation and website performance.
Google Search Console
Impressions
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Figures 8 and 9 show similar SEO data.
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In figure 8, the organic impressions increase due to the search channel work.
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In figure 9, the conversion increase due to the same efforts.
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Clicks
