Building a nurture engine for a high-ticket education provider

Briefing

Digital Fashion Academy is an online education provider offering professional courses for the fashion industry. Their courses carry a price point of several hundred euros, which means the decision to enrol takes time. The problem: DFA had no structured way to stay in the conversation between a visitor's first interest and their eventual purchase. No segmentation, no onboarding, no nurture. Just a generic newsletter going to everyone.

DFA's situation is a common one among education providers and knowledge institutions: strong content, engaged audiences, but no infrastructure to turn interest into action.

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Approach

The most important thing to understand about industries with long buying cycles is that the higher the commitment, the more touchpoints are needed before a purchase decision is made.

We started by creating a low-commitment entry point (a brochure download) that allowed us to open a conversation with visitors and segment them according to their area of interest. From there, we built the infrastructure needed to work with those contacts properly: a system that attributes each lead to a specific course offering, so that follow-up communication is always relevant to what they actually expressed interest in, rather than a generic welcome sequence.

With the infrastructure in place, we moved to the onboarding flows. For each course line, we created a sequence of six to seven emails designed to address the different questions a prospective student might have at different stages of consideration.

That was the first phase of the project. The second phase focused on ongoing operations: monthly newsletters built and managed inside Mailerlite, continuous improvement of the existing sequences, and the introduction of higher-intent calls to action such as time-limited offers.

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Result

Targeted, personalised sequences replaced the generic broadcast approach. The impact was immediate: email automations reached an average open rate of 33–35% and a CTR of 2.5–4.5%, well above industry benchmarks and a significant step up from the pre-segmentation baseline.

The before-after effect is clear: instead of sending the same message to everyone, we matched content to interest, and interest to the right moment in the buying journey.

Overall email marketing contributed to a measurable increase in course conversions during the campaign period and after.

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Some takeaways

- High-commitment offers need more touchpoints

- The longer the consideration cycle, the more important it is to stay relevant without pushing too hard. Segmentation is what makes that possible.

- It all starts with one strategic decision: where and how you invite people into the conversation.

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Client feedback

“Great culture fit! From start to finish, Federico and his team demonstrated a high level of professionalism and punctuality. They ensured that the project brief was delivered by holding virtual meetings and adapting the work to our needs.”

- Kerin Goodall, Digital Learning Manager, Digital Fashion Academy

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