Company: Learning Pool, Portfolio Company of Marlin Equity Partners
Industry: HR and Compliance | Technology (SaaS)
Objective: Stabilise a leaderless marketing department, align the revenue engine, and build a scalable foundation for long-term growth
Solution: Fractional CMO & Strategic Transformation
Background
Learning Pool is a global leader in HR and compliance technology. Following its acquisition by Marlin Equity Partners, the platform became a critical tool for enterprises managing workforce challenges, including onboarding, upskilling, and organisational alignment.
With a premium product and a strong market position, the business set its sights on a significant multi-year revenue growth target.
The Challenge
As Learning Pool initiated its growth phase, the internal marketing function faced significant headwinds that threatened the broader business objectives:
- Leadership Instability: The departure of two CMOs in quick succession had left the team without a strategic roadmap or executive voice.
- Operational Silos: Marketing, Sales, and Product teams were disconnected, resulting in a fragmented customer journey and poor conversion across the funnel.
- Pipeline Stagnation: Without a scalable demand generation strategy, the business was struggling to build a sufficient pipeline in critical growth markets.
- Functional Gaps: The team needed support in data-driven growth marketing and sophisticated brand engagement.
The Solution
Growth Partners introduced a Fractional CMO to Marlin Equity Partners to act as a transformative leader. Holding a seat on the Executive Leadership team and reporting to the Board, the Fractional CMO’s remit was to stabilise the function, realign the business’s “Growth Blueprint,” and rebuild the marketing engine from the ground up to support the company’s ambitious expansion.
A complete marketing transformation was delivered by refocusing the team on high-impact commercial activities and cross-functional alignment.
Strategic Realignment & Growth Blueprint
Structural Optimisation & Capability Building
- Recognising that the existing structure was inefficient, the Fractional CMO reorganised the department to report directly into the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). This move ensured that marketing was no longer an island but a core component of the revenue function.
- Headcount was streamlined to improve agility while retaining core expertise, and key roles were recruited in Content Strategy, Senior Analytics, and Growth Marketing to provide the data management and brand engagement needed for a global scale-up.
Operationalising the Pipeline Engine
- To drive immediate impact in the market, the team executed a series of integrated multi-channel campaigns supported by newly appointed specialist agencies.
- A full audit of the tech stack was completed, removing redundant tools to reduce costs while improving collaboration across the sales and marketing funnel.
- Product marketing was merged with sales enablement to accelerate Go-To-Market initiatives and reduce the time-to-market for new product releases.
Establishing Revenue Operations (RevOps)
- The Fractional CMO introduced advanced analytics and streamlined reporting processes. This transition to a RevOps model empowered the leadership team with real-time insights into pipeline health, allowing for agile decision-making based on lead-to-close performance rather than vanity metrics.
Results
Learning Pool successfully transitioned from instability to a high-performance operation through decisive leadership. Key successes included stabilising the revenue pipeline, consistently meeting requirements via strategic ABM and lifecycle management optimisation.
The company achieved significant internal unity by breaking down silos between Sales, Marketing, and Product to form a cohesive, unified revenue team focused on a shared vision of the customer journey. Operational efficiency was also enhanced through a leaner, more productive departmental structure, delivering higher output with a more focused headcount.
A powerful cultural transformation was executed within 90 days, starting with rebuilding the global marketing team. This change was solidified by introducing mentoring and establishing a strong culture of accountability, which significantly boosted morale and improved cross-functional collaboration.
About Growth Partners
Growth Partners connect the very best marketing consultants with world-leading organisations. We specialise in marketing, sales, RevOps and commercial, offering a full range of flexible resourcing leadership solutions.
