How a traditional marketing manager built product analytics skills on a real PropTech SaaS platform, earned a CTO mentor, and used the portfolio to secure a promotion and 30% raise.
Marketing Manager – Traditional company, 7 years experience
Austin, Texas, United States
Role: Growth Analyst
Duration: 60 days
Michael was a solid marketing manager — campaigns ran on time, budgets were managed well, and the team respected him. But he'd hit a ceiling. The senior roles he wanted all required product analytics skills: understanding user behaviour in software products, building retention models, analysing feature adoption. His current company didn't give him access to that kind of work. He needed product analytics experience, but there was nowhere to get it without already having it.
A UK PropTech SaaS company building a property management platform — used by landlords and estate agents to manage tenants, maintenance, and finances.
A growth analyst to build dashboards and analyse user behaviour across the platform — understanding which features drove retention and which ones users abandoned.
The CTO had a strong data background and mentored the analytics function. Product managers used the insights to prioritise the roadmap. Engineers built the tracking infrastructure.
The platform was growing fast. Understanding why users stayed or left was critical to product decisions — the analytics work directly shaped what got built next.
"I was stuck in traditional marketing. The CTO I worked under building analytics for a PropTech platform became my mentor. When I asked for promotion, I showed product metrics work I did on real SaaS software — that carried weight."
— Michael, Austin
Michael brought his analytics portfolio to his boss. Four dashboards built on a real product. A retention model that had directly influenced a product decision. A CTO reference from a PropTech SaaS company who could speak to his data skills. His boss had said promotion required product analytics capability — Michael showed it existed, proven on a real product. He was promoted to Senior Marketing Manager (Product Analytics) with a 30% salary increase.
60 days of real product analytics work taught Michael more than months of self-study could have — because the data was real and the decisions mattered.
The CTO became a mentor because Michael was working on the same product, solving the same problems. That proximity created the relationship.
The portfolio wasn't just for external job searches — it became the evidence Michael needed to unlock a promotion at his existing company.
This hypothetical scenario shows how real product work creates leverage that traditional marketing experience alone can't. Your path to product analytics could start today.