SRT International - ConnectED Warsaw 2026
1,033 registrations. 10 weeks. Zero prior audience data.
A full-funnel paid media campaign built from scratch for a brand new market. We exceeded the 1,000 registration target at €8.67 blended cost per registration, in Polish and English, with no existing audience to retarget.
1,033 Verified registrations
€8.67 Blended cost per registration
85% Form completion rate
4.7:1 Estimated return on investment
The brief
Starting from zero
SRT International runs education and career fairs across Europe. Warsaw was new territory. No existing audience. No local benchmarks. No paid media history in the Polish market. No registration infrastructure in place.
The brief was narrow on scope but demanding on outcome: generate 1,000 verified registrations inside a 10-week campaign window. Two audiences in parallel - Polish-speaking students and professionals, and an international English-speaking audience - in the same market, at the same time.
No existing audience - zero retargeting pool, zero lookalike data, zero organic presence in Warsaw at launch.
Bilingual complexity - Polish and English campaigns running in parallel with different audience profiles and creative requirements.
Infrastructure from scratch - Registration, automated workflows, confirmation emails, and attendee management all had to be built before the first ad went live.
What we built
The full system
Too many campaigns fail because the ads work but the infrastructure behind them does not. We built every layer in parallel - paid media, landing page, registration flow, and SEO foundations - so no registration was lost between the click and the confirmation email.
Paid Media
Meta campaigns across Facebook and Instagram. Polish and English language tracks run separately. Cold, warm, and lookalike audiences tested and optimised weekly. Mixed creative formats - UGC video and static visuals - with A/B testing throughout the 10-week window.
Landing Page & Registration
Dedicated Warsaw landing page in Polish and English languages. Bilingual registration forms. Automated pipeline from form submission through to confirmation email, with UTM tracking preserved end-to-end for clean attribution. Built and tested before the first ad went live.
SEO & Organic Foundations
Technical SEO implemented from day one - structured data, meta descriptions, semantic page hierarchy. The landing page ranked position 5-7 for Polish education fair queries during the campaign and was indexed by AI systems. ChatGPT became a confirmed referral source for registrations.
The numbers
Ten weeks, two languages, one market with no historical data to work from. The data below shows how registration volume scaled week by week as audiences were built, tested, and optimised.
Week by week across the 10-week campaign
Peak week - 156 registrations - followed the introduction of refreshed UGC video creative and expanded audience segments. Volume tapered in the final week as the campaign wound down ahead of event day.
Where the 1,033 registrations came from
Based on UTM parameters captured on the registration form. The "Direct / No UTM" segment includes users who declined cookies on the landing page - Meta's pixel did not fire, but the registration was still captured. ChatGPT appears in the "Other" segment as a confirmed referral source.
Two audiences, one market
Polish registrations skewed toward working professionals exploring career development and local postgraduate options. English registrations skewed toward university students researching international study. Both profiles matched the event's programming and exhibitor mix.
What ran and what worked
| Creative | Format | Regs | CPR |
|---|---|---|---|
| PL_UGC1 | UGC Video · Polish | 329 | €8.66 |
| PL_Vis1 | Static · Polish | 174 | €9.28 |
| EN_Vis1 | Static · English | 100 | €8.96 |
| EN_UGC1 Best CPR | UGC Video · English | 66 | €7.02 |
| EN_VidStatic | Video · English | 44 | €8.62 |
| EN_Vis1_Urgency | Static · English | 41 | €11.42 |
| PL_VidStatic | Video · Polish | 25 | €13.08 |
UGC video consistently outperformed static imagery. EN_UGC1 delivered the lowest cost per registration at €7.02 - roughly 19% below the blended average. Meta-attributed registrations only; actual per-creative totals are higher due to attribution gaps.
Campaign performance
Ten weeks, two languages, one market with no historical data to work from. The data below shows how registration volume scaled week by week as audiences were built, tested, and optimised.
Registration timeline:
Registration pacing across the 10-week campaign. The peak week - 156 registrations - followed the introduction of refreshed UGC video creative and expanded audience segments.
Creative performance:
Seven creatives tested across formats and languages. UGC video consistently outperformed static imagery, with UGC video asset delivering the lowest cost per registration at €7.02 - roughly 19% below the blended average.
Source attribution:
Source attribution based on UTM parameters across the 1,033 verified registrations. The majority arrived through paid Meta campaigns. The remaining share came through direct, organic, and AI-referred channels - a diversified base that compounds with future editions.
Audience split:
Two audiences, two very different profiles. Polish registrations skewed toward working professionals exploring career development. English registrations skewed toward university students researching international study options. Both matched the event's programming.
From click to registration
What ran
UGC video consistently outperformed static imagery across both languages. This is not a general observation - it is specific to this campaign, this audience, and this 10-week window. The best performer, EN_UGC1, delivered a cost per registration of €7.02, roughly 19% below the blended average.
Reach that continues after the budget stops
Most event campaigns spend their entire budget on paid media and end the day the ads switch off. That is a mistake we do not repeat.
From the first day the landing page was live, we built technical SEO into the page structure - structured data, meta descriptions, semantic heading hierarchy, and content written for both search engines and AI systems.
The result:
- The Warsaw landing page ranked position 5-7 for Polish education fair queries during the campaign window ("targi studiów warszawa 2026", "targi edukacyjne warszawa 2026")
- 249 organic clicks from 2,268 search impressions during the 10-week period
- ChatGPT confirmed as a direct referral source for registrations, visible in UTM data
For a first-edition event on a brand new URL, this is not a headline number. It is a foundation. Organic and AI visibility compound with each edition. Paid media does not.
249 Organic clicks from search
#5-7 Google ranking for Polish education fair queries
ChatGPT confirmed as a referral source for registrations - visible in UTM data.
Three things this campaign taught us
No campaign is perfect. What matters is what you take forward. These are the three adjustments built into the next edition.
Lesson 1 - Form length affects lead quality
Shortening the registration form mid-campaign increased raw volume but reduced lead quality. For future events, we maintain full form length regardless of volume pressure. A smaller number of well-qualified leads outperforms a larger number of weakly committed ones.
Lesson 2 - Creative fatigue needs more variation
With a 10-week run, some creatives reached frequencies of 4-5 impressions per user by the final weeks. More UGC variations - different talent, different angles, different framings - would reduce fatigue and hold cost per registration steady through the closing stretch.
Lesson 3 - Registration is not attendance
Registering for an event is a lower bar than showing up to one. The gap between the two is where most event campaigns lose their numbers. On this edition, post-registration nurture sat with SRT's internal team. For future editions, we take that responsibility in-house: a structured multi-channel sequence - SMS, WhatsApp, and email working in sequence between registration and event day - delivered as part of the campaign rather than handed off.
Running an event and need a registration campaign?
We have built and tested this system from scratch, in a new market, with two languages, in 10 weeks. The infrastructure, creative approach, and audience segmentation are documented and repeatable.
