Online nursing school · 2024
An 11,000-person list started buying: orders up 44%, revenue up 36%
Nursing programs sold online, with an 11,000-person list
How we work with courses and training →- Orders in 2024
- +44%
- Revenue in 2024
- +36%
- Revenue per $1 of ads
- $21
The CRM board, every card tagged by source. Another 31 cards sat in No longer interested.
The situation
The school sells nursing programs online and had an 11,000-person list. The list was being sold to with one email to everyone: 7,014 sends brought in 4 orders.
The ads were already paying back. Meta was returning $5 to $7.30 for every $1 spent, and Google about $5. The money was leaking around the ads: missing tracking, ads that sent people to the homepage, and a list that got a monthly newsletter and the occasional blast.
An audit in April 2024 covered Meta, Google, the website and email, and set the order of the work for the rest of the year.
What the audit found
- 5x to 7.3x
- Meta return on ad spend. Good, with ad delivery errors, very high frequency on some ad sets and no UTM tags.
- 5x
- Google return on ad spend, with no separate brand campaign and ads sending people to the homepage.
- 66
- Page speed score, under a hero banner crowded with classes.
- 11,000
- Leads on the list, with no sorting by program or interest.
- 1 email
- What a new lead got after a form: a thank-you. No abandoned-cart flow, and a monthly newsletter.
- 235
- Characters in the homepage description, about 80 more than Google shows in results.
What was built
- Audit
- Paid ads
- Offer design
- Landing pages
- CRM pipeline
- 01
Google split into brand and prospecting
A separate brand campaign, and prospecting campaigns for the nursing assistant program, so searches for the school and searches for the course each got their own budget and their own numbers.
- 02
Meta judged on purchases
A testing phase and a scaling phase, both optimized for website purchases.
- 03
A scholarship window with its own goal
A June to August enrollment push with a 300-student target, so the list had a reason to act now.
- 04
A free offer, then apply
A grant-funded free nursing assistant course for new students, for a limited time, with the application form on the same page.
- 05
A pipeline tagged by source
Every inquiry landed on a CRM board tagged with where it came from: the Google Ads conversion, the footer contact form, the scholarship application.
- 06
Video for reach
A video campaign running alongside the purchase campaigns.
How it ran
April 2024
The audit of Meta, Google, the website and email. The ads were profitable. The tracking, the pages and the follow-up were where the money leaked.
After the audit
Google split into brand and prospecting. Meta rebuilt as a testing phase and a scaling phase, both judged on purchases.
June 2024
The scaling campaign brings in 60 purchases at $43.91 each. Across 25 campaigns, Meta reaches 104,170 people from June 1 to 26.
June to August 2024
The scholarship window: a 300-student goal, a grant-funded free offer, and every inquiry tagged by source on its way to the sales rep.
January 2025
The year in review, built from the school's own store data.
From the accounts
Numbers read off the ad, email, CRM and testing screens at the time.
| Sent | Opened | Clicked | Site visits | Orders | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| One email to the whole list | 7,014 | 25.7% | 4.3% | 414 | 4 |
| A coupon email to a small segment | 143 | 55.2% | 16.8% | 32 | 0 |
The email platform's 30-day report, mid-March to mid-April 2024, before the work started.
| Campaign | Result | Cost per result | People reached |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scaling phase | 60 purchases | $43.91 | 50,465 |
| Testing phase | 4 purchases | $49.34 | 5,475 |
| Cold prospecting | 6 purchases | $39.35 | 4,950 |
| Scholarship window, leads | 2 leads | $16.56 | 1,829 |
| Scholarship window, applications | 2 applications | $47.67 | 5,421 |
| Video | 5,087 ThruPlays | $0.02 | 2,878 |
Six of the 25 campaigns that ran that month. Together the 25 reached 104,170 people.
The result
Orders rose 44% and revenue 36% in 2024 against 2023, at $21 in revenue for every $1 spent on ads. Average order value slipped 5.35%, so the growth came from more buyers. The figures come from the school's own store data.
What carries over to your business
- 01
If your ads already pay back, look at everything around them first: the tracking, the page each ad points to, and what a lead hears after the form.
- 02
A big list buys when it gets a window, a goal and an offer.
- 03
Tag every inquiry with its source before it reaches sales, so you can see which channel produces sales and which only produces leads.
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