EdTech Growth Marketing: 2,040% ROAS and an Acquisition

Imagine Learning (LearnZillion)

Nationwide ABM, tracking infrastructure, in-product ads, and sales automation that generated 28% of new business at 2,040% ROAS and helped position the business for acquisition.

At a glance

28%

Share of new business

2,040%

ROAS

5%

New product revenue Y1

Capabilities used

AcquireABMPaid SearchMeasureAutomate

The problem

• LearnZillion needed to penetrate the top 10% of U.S. school districts — a long-cycle, high-stakes ABM motion with no existing tracking infrastructure. • No UTM discipline or experiment protocol meant attribution was invisible to executives and investors — they couldn't prove what was working. • 85% of districts were unreachable by the existing sales motion, and sales was the bottleneck on the long tail of smaller opportunities. • The org was preparing for a potential acquisition — the pipeline needed to be clean enough to survive diligence.

The fulcrum

The highest-leverage change we could make

• Built UTM discipline and experiment protocol before scaling spend — so every dollar was attributable from day one. • Launched a nationwide ABM motion across 25+ products with exec-ready dashboards and custom visualizations for C-level reporting. • Installed in-app advertising inventory, enabling upsell to the thousands of districts already using LearnZillion's free content — an owned channel at scale. • Built online order → CRM automation and a semi-automated live chat on the ordering page, so marketing-generated demand didn't die in handoffs to sales.

Applying force

What happened, and what we scaled into

• 28% of all new business generated by the growth program — not a support function, a primary revenue driver. • 2,040% ROAS — 6x the prior year's 340% ROAS, a year-over-year improvement that showed the system was compounding, not just performing. • LearnZillion Pro hit 5% of subsidiary revenue in its first year — a new product launched from zero to meaningful contribution. • LearnZillion was acquired by a major education company, with a pipeline that could survive diligence because the attribution was clean.

Why this matters

• The ROAS number is the headline. The real story is that none of it was possible without building the tracking infrastructure first. • You can't prove 2,040% ROAS if you don't have UTM discipline. You can't attract an acquirer if you can't show them a clean, attributable pipeline. • Most growth programs skip the infrastructure because it's unglamorous. That's exactly why most growth programs can't prove their value when it matters most — in a board meeting or a due diligence process. • If you're scaling spend or preparing for a raise or acquisition, the measurement layer isn't optional. It's the foundation everything else is built on.

Most engagements fail at the handoff between strategy and execution. Levered doesn't hand off — we own both.

Ready for a roadmap you can ship?

If this study matched your situation, the usual next step is a channel audit — we map bottlenecks, prioritize the highest-leverage sprint, and can begin execution the same week.