In March 2025, Telegram crossed a milestone that most marketers barely noticed: 1 billion monthly active users. For context, that places Telegram alongside WhatsApp and WeChat as one of the few messaging platforms to achieve ten-figure user counts. It's the 4th most-downloaded app globally. It generates more engagement per session than most social networks. And yet, it remains dramatically underpenetrated as a marketing channel relative to its reach.
This gap between Telegram's scale and its marketing adoption is not an oversight — it's an opportunity. The marketers who recognize it earliest and build systematic outreach operations on the platform will enjoy a window of exceptionally high ROI that will narrow as the channel matures and becomes more competitive.
This article makes the data-backed case for Telegram as a serious acquisition channel in 2026 and beyond, explains who is already winning on the platform, and outlines what an effective Telegram outreach operation looks like in practice.
The Numbers: Telegram's Scale Is Now Undeniable
These numbers, compiled from DemandSage, Backlinko, and RichAds' annual Telegram statistics reports, tell a story that goes beyond simple user count. Telegram users are not passive scrollers — they actively seek out information, join topic-specific communities, and engage with content at rates that far exceed typical social media benchmarks.
The average Telegram user opens the app 21 times per day and spends 41 minutes in it. For comparison, the average Instagram user spends approximately 30 minutes per day, and email open rates — long considered the gold standard of permission-based marketing — typically hover between 15–25% in most industries. Telegram channel content, by contrast, achieves visibility rates of 20–40% in active communities, and DMs have open rates measured in the hours, not days.
The User: Who Is Actually on Telegram?
Understanding the Telegram user base is essential for assessing whether the platform is right for your offer. The demographics paint a compelling picture for B2B and premium consumer marketing alike.
Age and Professional Distribution
The largest user segment on Telegram is 25–34 year olds (~29% of total users), followed closely by users under 24 (~26%). This skew toward younger, digitally native audiences is consistent with high adoption of messaging-first communication patterns.
More striking for B2B marketers: according to RichAds' Telegram statistics data, approximately 21% of Telegram users work in the IT sector, with marketing and PR, education, and finance also significantly represented. This is not a platform of passive consumers — it's a platform where decision-makers, founders, developers, and knowledge workers have congregated because they prefer it over algorithmically controlled alternatives.
Geographic Distribution and Global Reach
India leads Telegram's geographic distribution with 104 million users (22% of global base). Russia has 34.4 million users with 51% population penetration — making Telegram effectively a primary communication platform rather than a secondary option. The US, Ukraine, Brazil, and several Southeast Asian markets are among the other high-volume territories.
This global distribution is particularly valuable for businesses that sell internationally. Telegram provides a single platform to reach customers across dozens of markets, without the regulatory fragmentation that complicates campaigns across Meta properties or the cultural barriers that limit Twitter/X's reach outside English-speaking markets.
Why Telegram Users Are Different — And Why It Matters for Marketers
Telegram grew partly by attracting users who were specifically dissatisfied with algorithmically controlled platforms. Its core value propositions — privacy, no algorithmic feed, no ads in most channels, end-to-end encryption options — attract a user profile that is distinctly valuable for direct marketing.
Intent-Driven Community Membership
Unlike Facebook groups or LinkedIn communities where membership is often driven by social connection, Telegram groups and channels are joined almost exclusively by topical interest. A user in a crypto trading group is there because they are actively interested in crypto trading. A user in a SaaS founders channel is there because they are building or interested in SaaS businesses.
This intent-driven membership makes Telegram communities extraordinarily valuable as targeting vectors. When you scrape members from a relevant Telegram group and reach out with a relevant offer, you are by definition reaching a pre-qualified audience. This is the equivalent of advertising on a highly targeted niche platform, except you can reach users directly rather than competing for their attention in a feed.
Lower Noise = Higher Signal
Most Telegram users receive significantly fewer DMs than their email or Instagram inboxes. The friction of Telegram DMs — you need a phone number or username to initiate contact — means that the channel is naturally protected against mass spam to a degree that email never has been. A well-crafted, relevant DM in this environment stands out dramatically compared to a cold email arriving in a inbox that processes hundreds of messages daily.
"The lower the noise floor of a communication channel, the higher the signal value of any given message. Telegram's relatively spam-resistant architecture creates a fundamentally more favorable environment for legitimate outreach than any email-based channel."
Community Engagement at Platform Scale
Telegram channels generate over 1 trillion views per month across the platform. Nearly half of Telegram users regularly follow 6–15 channels. This level of content engagement — where users are actively seeking and consuming information from sources they've explicitly chosen to follow — represents a profoundly different relationship between audience and content than the passive, algorithmically-served content environment of most social platforms.
The Business Case: Why Companies Are Allocating Budget to Telegram
Telegram's commercial growth validates the marketing opportunity from the supply side as well. In 2024, Telegram achieved profitability for the first time in its history, reporting$540 million net profit on $1.4 billion in revenue — reversing a $173 million loss from 2023. The company projects $2 billion in revenue and $720 million profit for 2025.
This rapid monetization trajectory reflects two things: the platform's growing importance to businesses (evidenced by advertising partnerships with brands like Samsung), and the willingness of users to pay for premium features (15 million Telegram Premium subscribers as of 2025, up from 5 million at the start of 2024).
The profile of a Telegram Premium subscriber — someone willing to pay for an ad-free, higher-functionality messaging experience — is precisely the profile of a high-value consumer. The existence of 15 million such users on the platform is a strong signal of audience quality for premium-positioned brands.
Telegram vs. Other Outreach Channels: The Honest Comparison
Any serious marketing channel assessment requires comparison. How does Telegram direct outreach actually compare to the alternatives?
Telegram DM vs. Cold Email
Cold email has long been the default for direct B2B outreach. Its strengths are well-known: scalability, automation, low cost per send. Its weaknesses have grown more acute: deliverability rates have declined as spam filters have become more sophisticated, average open rates for cold email sit between 15–25%, and response rates have fallen to 1–5% for most industries.
Telegram DMs, by contrast, have a structural delivery advantage: messages don't go to a spam folder, they appear in the recipient's messaging app alongside their personal conversations. Open rates for DMs on messaging platforms consistently outperform email. While Telegram-specific ROI data is harder to find (the channel is newer and less documented), the structural engagement dynamics favor DMs over email for first-contact outreach.
Telegram DM vs. LinkedIn Outreach
LinkedIn is the dominant B2B direct outreach channel, with well-established norms and tools. Its limitations are cost (LinkedIn InMail credits are expensive), noise (most LinkedIn users receive significant volumes of prospecting messages), and algorithm dependency (your profile visibility affects campaign performance).
Telegram outreach offers lower noise, lower cost (primarily time and infrastructure rather than per-message fees), and audiences that extend well beyond the professional network context — particularly for industries like crypto, tech, gaming, e-commerce, and other sectors where Telegram communities are highly active.
Telegram DM vs. Instagram/Twitter DMs
Social media DMs have become increasingly difficult for outreach due to follow requirements, message request filters, and aggressive spam detection. Meta in particular has made it nearly impossible to DM users who don't follow you without risking account restrictions. Telegram maintains a more open architecture while still protecting users through its own spam reporting mechanisms.
The Industries Where Telegram Marketing Is Already Dominant
Some industries have recognized the Telegram opportunity ahead of others. Understanding where it's already being used successfully can inform strategy in adjacent sectors.
Crypto and Web3
Telegram has been the de facto community platform for crypto projects since the early days of blockchain. ICOs, NFT projects, DeFi protocols, and Web3 startups have built their entire community infrastructure on Telegram. The platform's privacy features and its native bot ecosystem make it uniquely suited to this sector. Any business serving the crypto market that isn't running Telegram outreach is leaving significant acquisition volume on the table.
SaaS and B2B Software
The IT sector represents Telegram's largest professional cohort (~21% of users). Developer-focused products, productivity tools, API services, and B2B SaaS platforms have found highly engaged audiences in Telegram communities dedicated to their technology stack, industry, or use case. Cold DM outreach to relevant group members consistently yields response rates that exceed most other digital channels for technically sophisticated audiences.
E-Commerce and Consumer Products
Consumer brands are discovering Telegram as a post-purchase engagement and loyalty channel. Rather than relying on email for customer communication (which faces deliverability challenges and declining engagement), brands are moving customers to Telegram channels where open rates and engagement are dramatically higher. This creates a foundation for repeat purchase campaigns with much higher ROI than email-based retention programs.
Financial Services, Trading, and Investment
Trading signals, investment research, financial coaching, and advisory services have built enormous subscriber bases on Telegram. The platform's channel model — where a single account can broadcast to unlimited subscribers — makes it ideal for content-driven businesses in this space. DM outreach to relevant trading group members is among the highest-converting direct outreach tactics in this sector.
Building a Systematic Telegram Outreach Operation
Understanding the opportunity is one thing. Building an operation to capture it is another. Here's what a systematic, scalable Telegram marketing operation looks like:
1. Audience Identification (Scraping)
The foundation of any Telegram outreach campaign is an accurate audience. Telegram groups related to your target market contain pre-qualified prospects — people who have voluntarily joined communities relevant to your offer. Tools like TeleBoost's scraping functionality extract member lists from relevant groups, including username, display name, and available profile information.
This is fundamentally different from buying contact lists or scraping other platforms. These are people who have explicitly opted into a community related to your topic. The relevance pre-qualification happens before the first message is sent.
2. Account Infrastructure
As detailed elsewhere on this blog, sustainable Telegram outreach requires multiple accounts, properly configured with unique proxies and device fingerprints. The number of accounts you need is a direct function of your target monthly contact volume divided by the per-account daily limit (~40–50 contacts/day for established accounts).
3. Campaign Configuration and Scheduling
Effective DM campaigns require thoughtful timing, personalization, and sequence design. The best-performing campaigns typically:
- Open with a brief, relevant context-setter (why you're reaching out)
- Deliver a clear value proposition within the first message
- Include a low-friction call to action (a question, not a link)
- Follow up once if there's no response after 48–72 hours
- Discontinue after two unanswered messages (respecting the prospect's implicit preference)
4. Conversation Management
The goal of DM outreach is to start conversations, not close deals. When a prospect responds, the campaign becomes a dialogue — and the quality of that dialogue determines conversion. TeleBoost's Contacted section provides a centralized view of all ongoing conversations, with reply detection that flags prospects who have responded, so no warm lead goes unnoticed.
5. Iteration and Optimization
Like any direct marketing channel, Telegram DM outreach rewards systematic testing. Message copy, timing, target group selection, and follow-up timing all affect response rates. The teams that build and iterate on this data — rather than running one campaign and declaring success or failure — are the ones that build sustainable, high-performing acquisition engines.
The Window of Opportunity
Every high-ROI marketing channel follows a similar arc: early adopters enjoy exceptional returns, the channel matures and becomes more competitive, returns normalize, and eventually the channel reaches a market rate equilibrium.
Telegram is in an unusually early phase of this cycle for most industries. Despite having 1 billion users, it remains dramatically underpenetrated as a marketing channel compared to email, LinkedIn, or social media. The businesses building systematic operations on the platform today are the equivalent of early email marketers in the late 1990s, or early LinkedIn InMail users in 2012.
The window will not stay open indefinitely. As more businesses discover the channel, response rates will normalize downward, users will become more selective, and the competitive environment will resemble mature channels. The time to build your Telegram presence and audience is now, not after the window closes.
The TeleBoost advantage: We've built the infrastructure that makes systematic Telegram outreach operationally feasible at scale. Account management, DM campaigns, lead organization, conversation tracking, team collaboration — everything a serious Telegram marketing operation needs is in one platform. If you're ready to build your presence on the world's fastest-growing messaging platform, TeleBoost is where you start.
Conclusion
The case for Telegram as a serious marketing channel rests on three pillars: scale (1 billion monthly active users and growing at 2.5 million per day), engagement (users who open the app 21 times daily and spend 41 minutes in it), and audience quality (professionals, decision- makers, and digitally native consumers who chose the platform specifically for its signal-to- noise ratio).
The opportunity exists precisely because most marketing teams haven't fully recognized it yet. The brands building systematic, compliant, high-quality Telegram outreach operations today will own audience relationships that become increasingly valuable as the platform's user base continues to grow.
The question is not whether Telegram deserves a place in your acquisition mix. The question is whether you want to be an early mover or a follower.