Case Study: How We Drove 75,000+ Subscribers at $0.03 Each to a Deals Channel on Telegram

SMITLINK — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 09:01:50 +0000

Hey, it’s Max, founder of SMIT.Link advertising agency. It’s been a while since I shared any case studies — time to fix that!

This one is especially worth talking about. We launched a campaign in an international market using the Telegram Ads Euro account and got some results worth sharing.

But let’s start from the beginning.

What’s the Euro account?
Telegram Ads has two main types of advertising accounts. One uses TON cryptocurrency for payments, the other uses euros. They differ not just in currency, but in capabilities.

The TON account has significantly fewer features, but you can start with any budget — even €10. The Euro account requires a minimum of €500 to get started, but unlocks advanced targeting options.

Who’s the client?
A large English-language channel that posts deals, promotions, and coupons for products from international marketplaces.

The business model is straightforward — the channel helps users track the best offers and earns affiliate commissions. India is the project’s primary market.

In addition to the deals channel, the client also had a chatbot that sent information about deals directly to users’ inboxes.

The client’s goal: acquire channel subscribers at no more than €0.05 each.

The client wanted to use only their own banners. Our job was simply to drive targeted traffic to them.

Preparation
The first thing we did was have a detailed conversation with the client and gather as much information as possible.

It turned out they had already tried running Telegram Ads before — two attempts with two different agencies — and neither had managed to hit the target CPL.

The client hadn’t saved the analytics from those campaigns, which was unfortunate.

Our advice: even if a campaign fails, save every piece of analytics you can. It will save you budget and time on future attempts.

The client did have one useful thing — a set of banners that had performed well in the previous campaigns.

They also shared a list of competitors, which we included in our early analysis to form working hypotheses.

How we prepared the launch
We started, as always, by studying the niche:

— Compiled a large list of similar thematic channels and adjacent topics

— Collected competitor chatbots

— Built a broad semantic keyword base — we narrowed it down during testing

The key insight from the preparation phase: the “deals / discounts” niche is vast, but fragmented and inconsistent.

We decided to split all channels into 4 groups by audience quality, so we could avoid mixing them together and compare results across each cohort.

Getting through moderation
With the launch mechanics figured out, we moved to moderation.

We first tried to run the chatbot through it — but it didn’t pass.

This is a common issue in India. The country has a significant problem with Telegram being used for fraud, so moderation treats chatbots more strictly there than elsewhere.

The client wasn’t willing to make major changes to their established bot funnel, so that direction hit a dead end.

We suggested redirecting traffic to the channel instead. The client agreed. The channel passed moderation without any issues.

Test hypotheses
We identified 6 traffic source hypotheses:

— Search results by keywords

— Competitor chatbots

— Thematic “Deals” topic targeting

— Broad India geo

— India geo + English language

— Competitor channels from our parsed list

The best result came from: India geo + English language + Target Users. Subscribers arrived steadily and were genuinely relevant.

The worst results came from chatbots — traffic was clearly low quality with very weak engagement.

Search-based targeting also disappointed us — users were relevant, but very expensive.

The remaining directions showed decent results, but fell far short of the main combination, so we didn’t scale them.

Working with creatives
The client insisted on using their own banners and videos, so our job was to test different text offers and ad formats.

We tested 5 variations:

— Text + video

— Text + image

— Ultra-short offers

— Offers without emoji

There was no clear winner among creatives — all formats produced nearly identical results. Ultra-short offers edged slightly ahead, but the difference was statistically insignificant.

How the tests ran
We started with the minimum viable CPM to avoid moderation cutting our impressions. We created several identical duplicate campaigns, which helped distribute impressions without reducing traffic quality.

Almost immediately after launching, we hit the client’s KPI — which was a very encouraging sign. The hypothesis was working.

After several rounds of tweaks, we managed to cut the cost per subscriber by nearly 2x. This wasn’t just within KPI — it was a genuine win.

We knew the cost would likely rise after scaling, but the chances of staying within KPI looked strong.

So, with some anticipation, we moved to scaling.

How we scaled
Scaling went smoothly — traffic grew proportionally with the budget, and the cost per subscriber increased only slightly and remained stable.

Final numbers
Budget: €1,954.22

Subscribers acquired: 75,342

Average cost per subscriber: €0.03

We didn’t just hit the KPI — we exceeded it by 40%.

That feels incredible. Especially knowing that two other teams had failed to hit this target before us.

Right now we’re actively scaling the project. In the past week alone, we’ve increased traffic volume by 5x while keeping the cost per subscriber virtually unchanged.

Key takeaways
1.We’re good at what we do.

2.The Euro account in the Indian market is extremely effective right now — competition for attention is low and the audience responds well to ads.

3.The deals and discounts niche resonates strongly with Indian audiences. The market is huge, and the cost of acquiring subscribers is minimal.

Share this case study with someone who might find it useful.

Have questions about this case? Want to see results from other niches? Want us to analyze your project and map out a concrete plan to hit your growth targets fast?

Reach out — we’ll walk through your project for free, identify growth opportunities, and outline a clear path to results.

SMITLink — 400+ successful projects, €8M+ in managed ad spend. We run campaigns worldwide. We’ll get your Telegram Ads through moderation in just 1 day — and our proprietary Telegram analytics system gives you the deepest, most reliable campaign data available.

DEV Community: SMITLINK

Case Study: How We Drove 75,000+ Subscribers at $0.03 Each to a Deals Channel on Telegram