Revived a UK expert’s “dead” Telegram channel — 259% ROAS on cold traffic

We helped an expert with no experience running a Telegram channel gain 4,956 subscribers and earn $10,942 on their own products.

If you are growing a Telegram channel, this case will show how the right video creatives and a well-thought-out product line help new subscribers from cold traffic pay back — and, most importantly, make Telegram a source of new customers, sales and useful contacts.

1. Context and problems

The client is an expert in market research and business ideas. They had a “dead” Telegram channel with 1,000+ subscribers and a burned-out base consisting mostly of long-time clients and acquaintances. No activity in the channel, no new posts.

The client has strong expertise in their field, but little experience running a Telegram channel and selling. The current subscribers had come mostly from organic reach and word of mouth. Paid traffic had never been used.

The client had a strong desire to start monetizing their expertise online. At the start of our cooperation the client had a simple product line of two products:

A mini-product for £50
A starter product for £300

2. The task

Our task was to launch traffic to the Telegram channel — to get new subscribers and pay back the traffic spend through the mini-product. Payback was the absolute priority. The client noted more than once that the number of subscribers stops mattering if they do not pay back. At the same time, the cost per subscriber was not to exceed $1.30.

In theory this sounded quite realistic, but in practice we ran into non-obvious nuances that affected payback very strongly.

3. Solution and implementation

The initial funnel looked like this: ad → landing page → pinned post in the Telegram channel → mini-product website

Since our focus was traffic payback, we definitely needed landing pages for the Telegram channel. Some media buyers do not use them, but in our case the landing pages act as an element that warms up the audience and filters out those who may not be that interested in the channel’s topic. That way we reduce future unsubscribes.

We prepared 3 versions of landing pages for the Telegram channel with different emphases and wording — from directly advertising the channel to advertising the mini-product itself.

For these landing pages we prepared several sets of banners and decided to start the traffic with them. This would let us quickly find the winning landing page and then redirect all the traffic to it.

3.1. The first weeks of launch and tests

In the very first launch we ran into a high cost per subscriber of $2, instead of the maximum allowed $1.30.

Still, for a first launch that is a normal picture, considering that on average across the market the cost per subscriber can easily be above $2–3, and that is considered normal.

At the end of the first week a positive trend began — one of the banner sets clearly started outperforming the others, and we switched all landing pages to it.

The converting messages for the creatives were becoming clearer, and we started preparing videos based on them.

3.2. Video ads and subscriber growth

Videos work great for us in most similar projects, so we placed a special bet on them here.

And indeed, the very first video cut our cost per subscriber by about 40%. From then on we stopped using banners and ran only video ads.

By that time we had collected enough data on landing page conversion, and we decided to focus on the single best one — its CR reached 80% on some days.

3.3. Payback and additional measures

A few weeks later we got feedback on the number of mini-product purchases. By the interim results of the first month the ROAS was 66%, which was not enough yet.

Still, we had warned that given the tests, the channel’s long inactivity and the client’s limited experience in sales and content writing, this could well happen. Nevertheless, we decided to play it safe and take additional measures to raise payback in the following months.

We rewrote the pinned post the traffic went to — reoriented it entirely toward presenting the mini-product. We also suggested that the client introduce a high-ticket flagship product. Besides that, we advised the client on content and sales.

The expert’s skills in selling through chats and writing posts played no small part. In a few weeks the client learned to engage with the audience and sell better.

As the traffic ran, all these measures had a cumulative effect, and in the end we managed to increase payback almost 4 times.

Sharing the results for the whole period of work: