Building an Enrolment Waitlist of 1400+ Leads in 6 Days
...without spending a penny!
Summary
I led a referral marketing campaign for an education startup, building a waitlist of over 1400 learners across seven languages in six days – without spending a penny. Faced with time constraints, we tapped into existing networks, with a referral campaign to engage our target audience and simultaneously train our advertising pixels for future lead generation at no cost.
CLIENT
MY ROLE
Growth & Digital Marketing Lead
PROJECT THEMES
Referral Marketing
Retargeting
Lead Generation
INDUSTRY
🩺 Healthcare, 💻 EdTech, 🎓Education
Growth Strategy
The Challenge
The challenge was to build a globally targeted course waitlist while adhering to the following brief:
Data Collection
Collect essential qualification data
Minimum Sign-ups
At least 350 sign-ups
Global Target
Target audience worldwide
Launch in seven languages
Multilingual Launch
Speed
Build course waitlist quickly
Results
leads on the waitlist
day campaign
unique referrers
referral links shared
languages deployed
As the lead strategist behind this campaign, my primary focus was on choosing the most efficient growth lever for rapid results. The organisation had a unique superpower – highly networked staff members that had trusted relationships with our target audience.
So, rather than relying solely on our advertising budget, I chose a referral campaign to leverage the organisation's organically robust networks.Choosing the right channel and strategy
Referral Campaign
Time was of the essence, so we needed a campaign setup that was both swift and effective. The approach was simple yet impactful:
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I set up a master sheet of unique links, enabling each referrer to claim and distribute their personalised link within their network.
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We created a comprehensive promo pack containing our key message, complete with social media tiles and pre written tweets in seven languages for easy sharing, so the referrers simply had to copy and paste.
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The call-to-action directed prospects to join the waitlist by completing a survey, enabling us to collect essential demographic and qualification data efficiently.
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2
Training Retargeting Pixels
Our shortlinks weren't just for tracking. They contained 12 retargeting pixels, allowing us to reach leads across multiple ad platforms. This strategic use of martech tools allowed us to “train” our pixels for free.
3
Building a Custom Audience for Lookalike Targeting
In addition to tracking individual referrers, the pixel training established the groundwork for building a custom audience from everyone who clicked on our links; enabling us to develop lookalike audiences, refine our targeting for future campaigns, and maximize our ad spend efficiency.
1
Tracking Referral Power
I developed a series of custom shortlinks leading to our survey and provided referrers with a simple tutorial for easy sharing. By overseeing the tracking of which referrers drove the most sign-ups, I identified our most effective advocates for future campaigns.
The Solution
Tracking the success of our campaign was essential for future scalability. We implemented a multi-faceted tracking system to gather valuable insights and optimize our lead generation efforts down the line.
"
I had the pleasure of working with Dayle at the World Health Organization Academy during its set-up and start-up phases. Dayle led the development of the Academy's growth and digital marketing strategy, applying the latest in data-driven and design thinking approaches towards supporting the Academy to achieve the goal of reaching 10 million digital learners. Digital marketing and growth was new to the WHO at the time and Dayle has been instrumental in leading the team's capacity and broader WHO thinking in this area.
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Tana Wuliji
Former Project Lead at the World Health Organisation Academy
