How a Hybrid Expansion Strategy Drove Significant Acquisition Growth While Protecting Donor Value

Challenge

A large human services nonprofit needed to scale its direct mail acquisition program beyond its existing footprint to continue growing its donor base. The primary challenge was to achieve this growth efficiently, without sacrificing overall donor value or resorting to an overly narrow and fragmented city-by-city strategy.

Solution

TrueSense Marketing developed a 100,000-name expansion plan that implemented a “mixed approach” to balance broad growth with targeted efficiency. This hybrid strategy involved:

• National list testing: Allocating 50,000 names from top-performing outside continuation lists on a national scale to leverage proven sources for broad, data-driven growth.
• Targeted co-op selection: Focusing the remaining 50,000 names on cooperative databases in five specific cities identified as having strong mission alignment, with the goal of capturing new, high-affinity audiences.

Results

This integrated strategy proved highly effective at scaling the acquisition program efficiently. Although the test is still ongoing, initial results show a 44% improvement in response rate, a 32% increase in net per donor, and a 14% increase in ROI. The campaign successfully captured new donors in key markets and generated valuable insights that will guide future expansion, demonstrating that the mixed approach can effectively balance scalable growth and donor value.