Mathmo had a clear market fit, but couldn’t make the numbers work at scale because key fundamentals weren’t in place.
Three funnels (free student webinars, free parent webinars and paid challenges) confused prospects and cannibalised each other, and some free offers ended with nothing to buy.
No acquisition cost target linked to what a subscriber was worth, so there was no basis for spending more.
Nothing between sign-up and the live session, and no follow-up afterwards, so paid leads leaked before the pitch.
The webinar itself wasn’t built to close: no urgency, no webinar-only offer, and little handling of parents’ objections.
We worked in the order that limited our scaling potential: unit economics first, then offer and funnel, then creative and media.
1. Unit economics: make each customer worth more
Raised the subscription from £69 to £111 a month, timed to peak demand in the school calendar. Each increase raised what Mathmo could afford to pay for a customer.
Set a £3 cost-per-lead target from price and webinar conversion. Launch day came in at £1.80.
Eventually returned £1.66 in first-month revenue for every £1 invested, and an estimated £6.70 over each subscriber's lifetime.
2. Offer and funnel: one route to purchase
Cut to a single funnel: cold traffic → weekly parent webinar → subscription.
Repositioned the landing page around one outcome: jumping a whole GCSE grade boundary in 7 days.
Audited all 31 webinars Rob delivered live, feeding back weekly on structure, bonus stack, urgency and close.
Built email flows for pre-webinar reminders and follow-up, lifting conversion from 2.5% to 6.3%.
3. Creative and media: scale into demand
Built the ad account around the one funnel, with weekly hook testing on founder-led video and retargeting synced from the CRM.
Concentrated budget on peak-intent windows. January mock-exam season brought in £53.6K of first-month revenue from £19.6K invested.
Static Ad Creatives
Video Ad Creatives
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Rob Carter
Founder, Mathmo
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