67% Revenue Growth Over Four Years as CMO
How a $1.5B entertainment technology company at 1/ST Technology rebuilt marketing around data-driven commercial discipline, growing revenue 67% while cutting customer acquisition cost 56%. This result reflects Zachary Leifer's prior executive role, not a State of Mind Strategies client engagement.
The challenge
The organization needed a marketing function that could drive predictable, profitable growth, not just spend. The operating model lacked commercial discipline, and acquisition and retention were not connected to unit economics.
The approach
As CMO, Zachary restructured the marketing organization and replaced the operating model with data-driven commercial discipline, rebuilding acquisition and retention marketing from the ground up. Business data was connected to a customer data platform, enabling personalization and hyper-segmentation, and reinvestment shifted toward high-intent, high-lifetime-value customers. The result was lower cost and accelerating revenue and EBITDA at the same time.
What was done
- Restructured the marketing organization
- Installed a data-driven operating model
- Rebuilt acquisition and retention marketing
- Connected a customer data platform for segmentation
- Shifted reinvestment toward high-LTV customers
- Built board and executive reporting
The outcomes
The principle behind it
Growth followed discipline, not volume: connect spend to customer economics, concentrate resources on the customers worth acquiring, and report in terms leadership can decide from. The same discipline drives every State of Mind Strategies engagement.
“Zach has excellent marketing experience and is always well attuned to the business needs. He built a great team at 1/ST and allowed us to move our revenue and profits considerably over the last 4 years.”
