EVRAZ hackathon

The task

Attract registrations for the EVRAZ corporate hackathon. Hackathons are one of the hardest niches for lead generation: the audience is narrow (developers and IT professionals), competition for its attention is high, and a registration is a decision to spend several days participating, not a click on a promo. So a hackathon lead is by default more expensive than in mass niches.

What we did

Collected traffic from three platforms where the Russian-speaking IT audience concentrates: VK, Yandex Direct and Telegram. The multi-channel launch made it possible not to hit the capacity ceiling of a single platform and to top up registration volume from different audience segments.

Results

• Ad budget — $4,074
• Registrations — 842
• CPL — $4.84

Insights

842 registrations at $4.84 is working economics for a hackathon: a narrow professional audience is never cheap, and the task comes down to recruiting the required number of participants without pushing up the bid. The VK + Yandex Direct + Telegram combo delivered the plan within the $4,074 budget. For corporate hackathon organizers this is a benchmark for the recruitment funnel: a budget of around $4,071 converts into 800+ registrations of IT professionals from Russia.