A Chat with Helga Alvarez, CTO at Performance Marketing Solutions Company: Leaf

Leaf was founded in Newcastle by four Costa Ricans and one Northerner (our “fifth Beatle”).

We are a tech business that provides performance marketing solutions for eCommerce brands. What sets us apart is that we come from a software engineering background. That means we use code, data and creative, to solve complicated marketing challenges for our clients.

We build proprietary technology that automates signal processing, campaign management and reporting across web, marketing, creative and product sell-thru performance.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
Leaf started out life as a music app. In 2014 we had an idea to give artists the power to engage, grow and monetize fans, and for that we launch a consumer app for music fans – instead of playlists, we put artists back at the centre of the offering.

Once we had the app built, we knew we needed to get it in front of potential customers. We had no marketing experience, so we used our skillset to approach marketing as an engineering problem, iterating rapidly between audiences, messages, and creatives to find the right combination, allowing us to deliver momentous results with a fraction of the cost that it would take others to do the same.

What we built at that time became the foundation for Leaf as it is today – using data and tech to solve the same problems that we faced for other businesses.
 

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

 
Initially we set out to offer services to anybody with a service to sell or an audience to reach. Over time, we saw that eCommerce and retail brands were getting remarkable results from our platform and services, so we decided to double down on this path.

It’s been a natural progression for us to specialise in the ecommerce space, working with the likes of FootAsylum, VinoKilo, Snug Sofas, and GoCompare.
 

What can we hope to see from Leaf in the future?

 
Current times call for consolidation rather than growth. We are focused on driving efficiencies while in parallel we are accelerating our technology capability in ways that can secure value and results to our clients.

We’re software engineers at heart; we innovate, we build stuff – we’re currently bringing together a suite of tools we’ve built for eCommerce marketers into a single platform and we’re really excited about what that’s going to enable. With marketing budgets under scrutiny, inflation and suppressed consumer demand, driving operational efficiencies and better performance from media spend is even more key and we see technology and data at the very core of the solution. Ultimately this means our customers can reach their growth and consolidation goals in a consistent and sustainable manner.