Jason Appelbaum

Fractional CMO for early to mid-stage startups, Founder of music festival ecommerce site, readyfestgo.com

• Working with early to mid-stage startup clients, focused on providing full CMO marketing services
• Key deliverables include branding, target audience definition, messaging, site optimization, demand generation, SEO, content strategy, sales funnel optimization, sales enablement, campaign planning, defining KPIs and optimizing all marketing efforts
• Providing mentoring for startups at Capital Factory and Station Houston startup incubators
• Created readyfestgo.com to provide music festival goers with cutting edge accessories online.

Revamped all of iteach’s marketing branding, processes and messaging leading to annual growth of over 20% and launched Passage Preparation from zero to profitability in less than 12 months

• Initially focusing on shoring up all marketing processes. Updated all automations in HubSpot, set up reporting and KPI measurements, initiated marketing processes around content creation, project management and prioritization
• Once processes were in place, iteach needed a new brand. This led to a full overhaul of messaging, branding and website
• These changes helped SQLs grow by over 30% and MQLs improve by over 20%. SEO traffic was up over 25% y/y and total keywords almost doubled
• Email health was at an all time high with open rates over 60%
• 2024 saw a 28% y/y growth with marketing spend up only 18% y/y while dropping CPLs from nearly $90 down to $35
• Passage Preparation launched in mid 2023; by May of 2024 the company was profitable and surpassing all growth trajectory goals.

Led initiatives and exceeded company goals that increased client base, improved the product and led to better ways to reach the target market

• Own all aspects of marketing and demand generation focused on acquiring and nurturing district contacts (demand) as well as teacher candidates (supply) leading to 30+% revenue growth in year one and 50+% in year two
• Revamped entire marketing strategy, branding, led generation process, reporting analytics, and messaging increasing organic traffic by 25% year over year, lead generation by over 300% and revenue by over 40%
• Established core marketing foundational elements like content calendar, established lead funnel process and reporting, SEO optimized site structure and content and developed KPIs and reporting for all marketing efforts
• Brought conference and event strategy under marketing team to optimize and manage effectiveness and transparency in ROI of event spend.

Led API’s Marketing org through major transition across technology, branding and business expansion

• Adopted marketing automation tools, new site launch, SEO strategy and implementation of paid digital strategy
• Ran all aspects of marketing from branding to demand gen, events to digital, content, social and everything in between
• Launched a new site that drove a 20%+ increase in organic traffic and 15% increase in lead generation
• Developed plans and strategies that drove 10% higher social engagement
• Established all reporting and sales funnel KPIs to measure success of all lead sources
• Worked with field sales organization to digitize lead capture at hundreds of university fairs to improve time to first touch from nearly a week to less than 2 minutes
• Designed entire marketing strategy to meet growth projections for the next 3-5 years.

Managed team of 28, responsible for lead capture, SEO content, testing for over a dozen websites

• Owned all aspects of SEO operations and organic lead capture
• Managed teams of link-builders, content creators, website developers, review collectors, and SEO operations
• Leveraged SEO tools (Ahrefs, Moz, SEMRush), Google Analytics, and Search Console to guide content and link-building strategy
• Conducted SEO keyword research, working with SEM team, to inform blogging, content creation and optimization
• Performed regular SEO audits of owned websites vs
• Competitor sites to look for optimization opportunities
• Monitored on-site SEO and direct on-site updates, including site architecture, and development needs
• Created, managed and measured dozens of SEO tests spanning across our family of websites
• Launched and actively managed the inaugural ad sales revenue stream for digital ad placement on aplaceformom.com generating over $100,000 in annual revenue.

• Created Q1Media’s first marketing team
• Owned all marketing strategy and demand/lead generation plans
• Executed re-brand of all aspects of Q1Media’s brand identity, creating continuity among all touch points
• Launched new web infrastructure, and SEO optimized website resulting in a 53% lift in leads and a 27% lift in traffic
• Established first ROI benchmarks for company, leveraging HubSpot for marketing program metrics and measurement
• Grew social followers and content marketing by 200% while increasing engagement by establishing a robust editorial calendar, finding influential employees to create content and educating the entire company on social best practices
• Created Q1Media’s first ever video content, blog, lead capture program, inbound lead program, standardized brand guidelines, social strategy, sales/marketing alignment, and event strategy
• Managed all PR and Influencer media relations, and executed entire PR media strategy.

• Tasked with growing market share, brand awareness and increasing subscribers for Pandora for Business
• Drove the GTM/campaign process from strategy, planning, execution to post-launch analysis meeting campaign objectives ensuring tight alignment across all internal stakeholders
• Created and executed a digital demand strategy that grew Pandora for Business subscribers more than 77%
• Created campaigns that expanded market share in experiential music, voice messaging, display advertising, mobile and scent marketing services
• Launched door opener campaign that produced over 15 face-to-face meetings with top-tier retail companies.

• Enabled sales to reach sales goals, sped up time to market for campaigns and hit growing financial goals
• Mapped segment leads to funnel stages for sales rep prioritization and messaging alignment resulting in a 43% increase in revenue quarter over quarter
• Led cross-functional efforts to streamline lead gen program process resulting in 2x faster time-to-market
• Created new processes within the organization to increase marketing effectiveness for Lattice Engines Sales plays resulting in a 40% increase in revenue and margin
• Established strong relationships with sales leaders and over 200 reps increasing collaboration in all lead gen and marketing efforts enabling our segment to outperform other public segments in nearly all KPIs
• Managed all reporting and analytics for program process and effectiveness across the entire segment.

• Recruited by previous manager to run efforts focused on shifting key Gen Y mindshare from Apple to Dell
• Developed and executed the contact, engagement and media strategies for integrating experiential, social media, and traditional marketing efforts
• Led Social Media program changes that resulted in growing affinity, engagement and followers from 200,000 to over 1,000,000 in less than 4 months and generated a 3x increase in engagement rates
• Utilized grassroots and guerrilla marketing tactics to engage and lead over 100 brand ambassadors responsible for driving the Dell brand across US-based universities
• This revamp of the “Dell Ambassador” program resulted in an increase in revenue and brand awareness by over 50%
• Overall program improvements and creation of “Buy a Dell, Get an Xbox” back to school offer resulted in Dell’s most successful back-to-school season in history, growing 150% year over year.

• Recruited to join Sun’s first ever Medium Business Marketing team tasked with finding and nurturing new leads
• Created first Server Promotion strategy targeted to generate increase in revenue, margin and market share globally
• Managed and created Medium Business offers and promotions on a global scale
• Built strong cross-functional relationships to bridge gaps between large corporate account marketing and Mid-Market needs
• Drove overall marketing strategy and long-term contact strategy for BU acquisition program that encompassed marketing, pricing, sales, customer nurturing and partner strategies.

• Executed, and managed the email marketing and advertising strategy for Dell’s $3 Billion a year Small and Medium business divisions
• Owned entire email marketing contact strategy and plan for Dell’s Medium Business Division
• Grew email opt-ins by nearly 50% and increased share of wallet among accounts by 15%
• Created unified marketing message across all touch points including email, site, direct mail, catalog and sales
• Owned and established year-long marketing content calendars in conjunction with sales and other marketing peers
• Increased catalog circulation by 30% through numerous list, offer and format testing
• Reduced direct mail costs by 17% via processes I created to optimize production
• Won Michael Dell’s Chairman Customer Experience Award (presented by Michael Dell) after creating an automated email reminder program that generated open rates that were 6x industry averages.

• Promoted Several Times
• Pioneered Dell’s first promotion process and held to ever-growing quota and daily goals in sales
• Created and perfected the process of managing tens of thousands of promotional SKUs that is still used today
• Owned all new hire sales training writing content and presentations that impacted more than 500 new sales reps
• Built relationships with over 300 accounts to acquire business across all Dell product lines
• Maintained a 145% quota attainment with a strategy that grew Medium Businesses into Large Business accounts
• Won Dell’s “Circle of Excellence” sales trip to London for being the top relationship rep across 300 sales reps.