THE BRIEF
Find new demand without simply buying more traffic.
General Assembly needed cost-efficient ways to reach prospective students beyond paid media. I inherited sweepstakes as a high-volume email acquisition channel, then expanded the mix through lifecycle nurture, direct mail, influencer marketing, events, and co-branded campaigns.
My job was to turn limited budgets and underused assets into testable growth ideas, follow each one beyond the initial lead, and invest further only when the downstream signal justified it.
THE CHALLENGE
More leads did not always mean more growth.
Sweepstakes could add thousands of contacts quickly, but many entrants were motivated by the prize rather than an education. After dozens of campaigns, the same audiences began to saturate and returns declined.
Every alternative channel carried different costs, conversion windows, and definitions of success. The challenge was separating reach from intent: understanding which sources created valuable prospects, improving the journey after acquisition, and knowing when to optimize, scale, or stop.
THE EXPERIMENTATION LOOP
From small bet to scalable channel
I used the same decision path across very different channels: isolate the problem, build the lightest credible test, measure downstream quality, and let the evidence determine the next investment.
01 DIAGNOSE
Identify saturated channels, funnel gaps, and audiences paid media was not reaching.
02 FRAME
Define the audience, offer, hypothesis, and signal that would justify more investment.
03 ASSEMBLE
Recombine available distribution, content, relationships, and tools into a low-cost test.
04 LAUNCH
Activate the smallest credible version before committing meaningful budget.
05 MEASURE
Follow leads through engagement, conversion, enrollment value, and cost.
06 REALLOCATE
Scale winners, refine promising tests, and retire channels with declining returns.
RESULTS
From experiments to measurable growth.
Across these acquisition channels, we generated 370K+ net-new leads. I ran 30+ sweepstakes and separately tested influencer partnerships by offering classes in exchange for promotion.
30+
Sweepstakes launches
370K+
Net-new leads
$0
influencer test
budget
WHAT I LEARNED
Resourcefulness gets the test live. Measurement decides what scales.
Experimentation is not trying everything at once. It is making the smallest credible bet, defining what would count as evidence, and staying honest about the result.
Sweepstakes taught me about audience saturation. Lifecycle taught me that lead quality can change after acquisition. Direct mail and influencer marketing taught me to use the tools already available to me. Co-marketing taught me that the right audience match can outperform a larger budget.