From zero to 26,000 Telegram subscribers
We took on the ZONE 51 channel without knowing the gaming audience from the inside. Nine months later: 26,000 subscribers, engagement twice the category norm, and over 1.5M roubles in sales through a bot.
ZONE 51 makes gaming furniture and accessories. When we started there was no channel at all — no subscribers, no archive, no sense of what to say to these people.
Where we began
We admitted upfront that we knew the gaming scene only superficially, and spent time studying it instead of writing the usual brand copy. The finding that mattered: this audience values informality and directness, and spots corporate tone instantly.
Who wrote it
We brought in a gamer with no copywriting background. It looked like a risky call and turned out to be the decisive one: the texts stopped imitating the community and started speaking from inside it. We handled editing, he handled credibility.
Content
Thirty-two recurring formats, two posts a day. That volume only holds up on a system — without one the team burns out within a month.
- User-generated content: subscribers sent in their setups and we broke them down.
- Collaborations chosen by fit with the topic rather than by reach.
- Fast reaction to news — in this scene a story lives for a day.
- Contests every two months, drawing one to one and a half thousand participants.
Results
- 26,000 subscribers in nine months from a standing start.
- Engagement rate of 6.1% against a category norm of 3–3.5%.
- Over 1.5M roubles of sales through the in-channel bot across eight months.
