Syllabus.ng had the traffic. Hundreds of thousands of teachers, parents and exam candidates were reading our schemes of work, but they were anonymous, and we had no way to talk to anyone twice.
This is how an email-gated PDF, a self-hosted CRM on Amazon SES and 57 automations turned those visitors into a verified, segmented audience, and gave a free resource site a reliable way to sell.
How do you turn hundreds of thousands of anonymous search visitors into an audience you can sell to, without locking away the free resources that made you rank?
I founded Syllabus.ng and led lifecycle marketing: CRM architecture, segmentation, automation and campaigns across email, business WhatsApp and community channels.
I built a self-hosted CRM on FluentCRM and Amazon SES, an email-gated PDF capture that verified every address, and 57 automations that tag, onboard and sell to each segment by class, subject and exam.
Search was working. Syllabus.ng was ranking for schemes of work and exam syllabuses across every class and subject, and hundreds of thousands of people were reading our pages. But they were anonymous. They arrived, read, and left, and we had no way to speak to them again.
We also had a business question to answer. The schemes of work were free, and they had to stay free because that is what made them rank and spread. The money had to come from what a teacher needs next: lesson notes, exam questions and exam preparation. To sell that, we needed to know who our visitors were and what they taught.
Behind the results: more than 200,000 PDF downloads and close to 100,000 email addresses captured in under two years, every one of them a real inbox. Because we delete inactive and bounced contacts every quarter, their send history goes with them, so our CRM dashboard undercounts. Our true volume over two years is more than two million emails.
Our first instinct was to use one of the popular hosted email marketing platforms. When we modelled what they would cost at the size we were heading for, the answer was clear: their pricing climbs with every contact and every send, and it would have punished us for growing.
So we self-hosted. FluentCRM runs inside our own WordPress install, and Amazon SES handles delivery. There is no contact cap and no send cap, and SES charges around ten US cents per thousand emails. That choice is what made everything else in this case study affordable. In a typical month we send hundreds of thousands of emails across onboarding flows and seasonal campaigns, a volume that would have been out of reach on a per-contact plan.
The best lead magnet is the thing someone already typed into Google. A teacher searching “SS1 biology scheme of work” lands on our SS1 Biology page and can read every week of it for free. If they want the PDF to print or use offline, they click “Download Now” and fill a short Fluent Forms form connected straight to FluentCRM: first name, last name, email address, and one question that matters more than it looks: are you a candidate or student, a teacher or educator, a parent, or something else?
We never offered a direct download link. The PDF was sent to the email address they gave us, through Amazon SES. A fake or mistyped address simply never received the file. That one design choice meant our list verified itself. It is the reason we can send at scale with zero bounces, and it kept our sending reputation clean from day one.
A free scheme of work does not stay with the person who downloaded it. Teachers forward it into staff-room WhatsApp groups and teacher communities, and parents pass it on too. We designed for that. Every PDF carried several advert placements: one promoted lesson notes for other subjects and opened a chat with our business WhatsApp, one invited the reader to join our teacher community, and others linked to schemes of work for other classes and subjects, where the reader could download and enter the CRM themselves. Each forwarded file became a new acquisition channel.
Because every form sat on a specific class, subject or exam page, we knew exactly what each person needed the moment they signed up. Someone who downloaded the SS1 Biology scheme of work was tagged as SS1 and as interested in Biology, and the user type question told us whether they were a teacher, a parent or a candidate. Those tags decide which flows they enter and which offers they see.
We built categorisation automations for every level and every exam: Nursery, Primary 1 to 6, JSS1 to JSS3, SS1 to SS3, BECE, WAEC, NECO, JAMB, JUPEB, NABTEB, and professional exams such as TRCN, ICAN, CITN and CIPM. Senior secondary categorisation alone has processed more than 16,000 contacts, and junior secondary more than 14,000.
Each segment drops into its own onboarding flow. A teacher who has just downloaded the SS1 Biology scheme of work is about to spend hours writing a term of SS1 Biology lesson notes, so that is exactly what we offer: you have the plan, now skip the writing, here are the complete lesson notes for SS1 Biology, by term.
We built dedicated lesson note sales onboarding flows for every class from Primary 1 to SS3, each triggered by the tags applied at download. Exam candidates get a different path. Someone who downloads the TRCN syllabus is offered help with registration, past questions and likely questions, sold through the Syllabus.ng shop and LessonNotes.ng.
Nigerian education runs on a fixed rhythm: resumptions in January, April and September, and exam seasons for BECE, WAEC, NECO and JAMB. Demand for our products follows that rhythm, so our campaigns do too. Ahead of each resumption and exam period we run 14-day sequences that move contacts from free materials to paid lesson notes, question banks and advisory services, timed for the weeks when teachers and candidates are actively preparing.
Email is the backbone, but it is not the only channel. We used the CRM to grow WhatsApp and Telegram communities that now hold thousands of teachers and exam candidates, including exam-specific channels for WAEC, NECO, JAMB and JUPEB candidates. Every new member is onboarded through an automation, so the community and the CRM stay in step.
Every quarter we prune the list, deleting addresses that have bounced and contacts who have stopped opening. A smaller list that reads your emails is worth more than a big one that does not. Combined with verification at sign-up, that discipline shows: in the most recent 30 days, 129,231 emails were sent, every one was delivered, and not one bounced.
SEO brought people to Syllabus.ng. The CRM is what turned them into a relationship. Together they took a free resource site and gave it a reliable path to revenue, a direct line to tens of thousands of educators, and a brand that, by our own survey, one in four Nigerian teachers has come across. It is the clearest example in my work of SEO and lifecycle marketing operating as one system rather than two separate channels.
If your product already gets traffic but cannot talk to the same person twice, I would love to help design the capture, segmentation and automation that turn visitors into customers, and customers into your best channel.
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