$42,800 in 60 days:
a Dubai agency case study.

This is one of our most thoroughly documented case studies. The client agreed to share metrics on condition of anonymity (no agency or team name). We got access to their platform dashboard and ran 2 interviews (start of the period and the finale). The numbers below are verified.

Who the client is

• Agency: Web3 marketing, 8 people on staff, 3 years in market
• Base: Dubai (UAE), serves clients globally
• Niche: services for DeFi and L2 protocols — audits, community management, marketing campaigns
• Average deal: $3,000 – $15,000 (one-off projects); retainer $2,000 – $8,000/month
• Before TG:ON: outreach via email + LinkedIn, team of 4 SDRs. Conversion ~1.5%, CAC ~$120
• Why they tried Telegram: Web3 audiences concentrate in TG, not email

Preparation · week 1

Week one — infrastructure and tests.

1. Purchased accounts: 20 of them, all aged 30–60 days, residential proxy per account
2. 3-day warmup on each (via TG:ON's behavioral warmup)
3. Identified 14 target channels: not "crypto in general", but "channels of smart-contract auditors, security researchers, DeFi founders". Narrowed to 14 by criteria: 3K–50K subscribers, active discussion group, English-language conversations.
4. Ran parsing: collected 4,200 potential leads (after filters for online + activity in the last 7 days)
5. Offer tests: 100 messages across 3 different angles — "free pre-audit", "case study breakdown", "partnership". Winner — pre-audit (28% response).

Weeks 2–4

By the end of week 4 — first $18,000. AI triage (Qualifier agent) cut manual time from 30 to 10 hours/week for the team.

Weeks 5–8

In the second half of the period — scaling to 4 parallel stacks (different angles, different audience segments). By the end of week 8 — $42,800 cumulatively.

How CAC was calculated

Total costs over 60 days: TG:ON Agency tier $338 (2 months) + accounts $200 + proxies $400 + team TIME 80 hours × $40 = $3,200. Total: $4,138 costs.
Got 229 deals = $18 CAC.

How LTV was calculated

Of 229 deals: 180 one-offs ($150–500 average), 49 retainers (new, $1,200+/month). Total first-month gross: $42,800. LTV presumably 2–4× higher over a 6-month horizon (retainers continue).
Current LTV = $240 per deal in the first month.

Key decisions

1. Narrow niche instead of "broad". If we'd written to "all crypto channels", conversion would have been ~2–3%. Narrow segmentation pushed it to 26%.
2. AI only on cold leads. Anyone who replied "yes, let's discuss" → straight to human. Budget clients ($5K+) always talked with people.
3. Retargeting after 72 hours, not 24. First A/B: 24h retargeting added only +3% extra leads. 72h — +11%.
4. Different angles for different segments. Founders → "partnership". Researchers → "case study". Paid agents → "free audit". Not one template for everyone.
5. Daily 15-min standup. The team synced on "what's working, what's not" daily, tuned templates per niche.

Retrospective

• Language segmentation from day one. Week 1 we sent an English template to everyone in the channels. 40% of the base were RU speakers — their conversion was lower. From week 2 we added a lang_code filter → conversion evened out.
• Upsell after the first deal. After a $150–500 one-off, we could have offered a $1,000+/month retainer right away. The team didn't — afraid of "pushing too hard". Lost: ~$15K in potential retainers over the period.
• Content channel earlier. A pipeline through invites to our own channel (instead of DMs) only started in week 4. If we'd started in week 1 — the compounding effect would have been bigger.