Travel and experiences

Paintaway Tours: every 2026 retreat workshop booked with Meta leads, email and a follow-up system

More than 400 retreat leads from Meta Ads, cost per click cut from EUR 12 to EUR 2.80, and an email and WhatsApp follow-up system that turned enquiries into booked places for the May and September retreats.

100%
2026 workshops booked
400+
Retreat leads from Meta
-77%
Cost per click
paintawaytours.com
Paintaway Tours website

Results

The numbers

  • 100%

    2026 workshops booked

    Every retreat workshop on the calendar sold out before handover in May 2026.

  • 400+

    Retreat leads from Meta

    192 in November, 135 in February and 76 in March, all nurtured by email and WhatsApp.

  • -77%

    Cost per click

    Meta Ads cost per click from EUR 12 to EUR 2.80 by March 2026.

  • $2.80

    Cost per lead

    November 2025 Meta campaign with retargeting of visitors, engagers and past leads.

  • +178

    Followers from one giveaway

    January 2026, with 978 profile visits in the month and both accounts verified.

  • +153%

    Page visibility

    September 2025 Instagram reach, 55 percent of it to non-followers.

Starting point

Where we started

The business

Paintaway Tours runs small-group painting retreats led by featured artists, with 2026 retreats in May and September. Its buyers are mostly women over 50, many of them in the United States.

Brainito ran marketing from September 2025 to April 2026 and handed the system over to the team in May with every 2026 workshop booked.

The challenge

The retreats needed to sell out months ahead, but the brand had a small Instagram audience that skewed 25 to 30 years old while the buyer is 50-plus. There was no paid structure, the email list could not be loaded into the CRM, and the site had a domain redirect fault and an SSL warning that made it show as not secure.

Leads also needed a human follow-up: a retreat is a considered purchase, so every enquiry had to be nurtured by email, WhatsApp and calls until it became a booking.

Month by month

What we did, in order

Fix the plumbing first, then run Meta Ads for leads, email and WhatsApp for follow-up, and giveaways and reels to grow the right audience.

  1. September 2025

    Content and campaign assets

    • 14 posts; content reached 55 percent non-followers, 10.6K views and 400-plus interactions, page visibility up 153 percent.
    • 15 HTML email campaigns designed and coded across informative, benefit and urgency angles.
    • 3 video ad options produced for Meta Ads, 2 approved for A/B testing.

  2. October 2025

    Ads live and the site fixed

    • 19 posts (12 reels, 7 carousels); first Meta campaign live with the new ad video.
    • Domain redirect fixed through Cloudflare DNS; 417 contacts loaded into the Odoo mailing list after the upload fault was resolved.

  3. November 2025

    Leads at scale

    • Meta Ads optimized with retargeting: 192 leads at $2.80 per lead.
    • All leads added to the mailing list with 5 automated email funnels; follow-up by WhatsApp and calls.
    • Search Console, DNS and SSL fixed; titles, descriptions and headings reviewed.

  4. December 2025

    Retargeting and the giveaway

    • New Meta campaign with retargeting of site visitors, social engagers and past leads.
    • Giveaway launched to grow followers; 21 content pieces; 5 lead-conversion emails and 2 outreach emails.
    • robots.txt 403 error fixed, URLs re-crawled, structured data verified.

  5. January 2026

    Audience growth

    • Giveaway delivered 178 new followers and 978 profile visits in the month; Instagram and Facebook verified.
    • 24 content pieces including collaborations with the May retreat tutors; 4 email campaigns.

  6. February 2026

    WhatsApp follow-up

    • 135 leads from Meta Ads for the May retreats; 6 emails sent; March newsletters approved.
    • WhatsApp lead-conversion workflow structured with automated templates inside Meta.
    • 16 creatives and 16 stories; 60 new followers.

  7. March 2026

    Google Ads and the retreats landing page

    • Meta cost per click cut from EUR 12 to EUR 2.80 through targeting and creative changes; 76 more leads.
    • Google Ads launched on high-intent retreat searches; dedicated landing page at retreats.paintawaytours.com with a lead form connected through Make.com.
    • Homepage video replaced with a static image to fix load speed; 6 newsletters for the May and September retreats.

  8. April 2026

    September retreats and handover

    • Meta Ads and Google Search Ads for the September Portugal retreats; April giveaway run end to end.
    • 4 newsletters scheduled; CRM leads flowing into Odoo automatically through Make.com.
    • Documentation prepared for handover to the team in May.

Today

What runs now

Bookings
Every workshop on the 2026 calendar was booked by the time the engagement was handed over in May 2026.
Leads
More than 400 retreat leads came from Meta Ads in the months reported (192 in November, 135 in February, 76 in March), with cost per lead at $2.80 in November and cost per click down 77 percent by March.
Follow-up
Every lead enters the CRM automatically, receives the email funnel, and is followed up on WhatsApp and by phone until it books. Newsletters for each retreat go out on schedule.
Audience
Instagram grew to 862 followers with verified accounts on Instagram and Facebook, 178 of those followers from one giveaway, and a content mix of reels, carousels and tutor collaborations aimed at the 50-plus buyer.

Figures come from Brainito's monthly reports to Paintaway Tours, Meta Ads Manager and Instagram insights, September 2025 to April 2026. Booking status as confirmed by the client. Ad spend and revenue are not shown.

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