Case Study
Newsletter Sign-Ups Jump Over 6,000% with Instant Form Ads
Scope
Overview
Vital Curriculum is our monthly newsletter for higher ed marketers, packed with the latest digital marketing strategies driving results in the industry. We run paid digital advertising on Facebook and Instagram to grow our subscriber base. Originally, subscribers had to click an ad, land on our site, and fill out a form to sign up.
Three steps might not sound like a lot, but every extra click is a chance for someone to lose interest and bounce off of the page. We wanted fewer steps between “interested” and “subscribed.”
Goals:
We set out to make growing the Vital Curriculum subscriber base easier and more cost-effective.
Our focus was to:
- Reduce the number of steps between clicking an ad and subscribing
- Increase newsletter subscription volume year-over-year
- Lower the cost per subscription
- Keep testing creative to see what resonates with higher ed marketers
Challenges
Growing the newsletter meant solving for a few different friction points at once. The most prominent were:
- A sign-up flow with too many steps. The original path required people to click the ad, land on our site, then hunt down and fill out a separate form. Each step gave someone another chance to lose interest or get distracted.
- Rising costs without matching results. Subscriber growth alone wasn’t the goal. If the cost per subscription climbed alongside volume, the campaign wouldn’t be sustainable long-term. We needed to bring in more subscribers and make each one cheaper to acquire.
Vital’s Approach
We rebuilt the sign-up experience from the ground up, then made sure the back end could keep pace with it.
Instant Forms instead
of a multi-step funnel:
We moved subscriptions onto Meta’s Instant Forms, so someone interested in Vital Curriculum can sign up without ever leaving Facebook or Instagram. Click the ad, fill in a name and email, and you’re done. No redirect, no separate landing page, no extra chance to bail.
Video creative
that earns each click:
Instant Forms only work if people stop scrolling long enough to see them. We paired the new sign-up flow with video ads produced by our in-house videography team, and we kept testing new creative regularly.
Automation to
close the loop:
We built a workflow in HubSpot that fires the moment someone submits the form, subscribing them automatically. That means there’s no delay between when someone is interested and when they’re subscribed.
Results
The new sign-up experience changed the trajectory of the newsletter almost immediately
+6,000%
Increase in newsletter subscriptions, year over year
Comparing subscription volume so far this year to the same stretch last year, sign-ups are up significantly.
The shift to Instant Forms is responsible for nearly all of that growth.
-97%
Reduction in cost per subscription, year over year
Growth alone wouldn’t have meant much if it cost more to achieve. The extreme drop in cost per subscription over the same period is proof that removing friction from the sign-up flow made the program bigger and cheaper to run.
What’s Next?
This isn’t the finish line.
We’ll keep testing new video creative to see what resonates most with higher ed marketers, and we’ll keep looking for other places in the funnel where removing a step or two could drive the same kind of results.
This approach isn’t limited to Vital Curriculum, either. Instant Forms and automation cut friction out of one conversion path, and there’s a good chance the same thinking could pay off across other campaigns down the line.
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