The ‘ideal’ campaign size will depend upon your objectives. For example:
- If the objective is to increase net revenue, ROI, or response rates, you may choose a smaller, more targeted list size.
- If the objective is gross revenue and you have a budget for more letters, you may choose to include more ‘unlikely’ donors and focus instead on upgrading gift amounts.
- If the objective is donor engagement or education rather than soliciting donations, you may choose a larger list size.
Printing costs and requirements may also affect your campaign size (your printer may have minimum volumes or different costs for smaller or larger volumes.)
Your options for deciding campaign sizes include:
- Use Dataro’s Campaigns Size Suggestions (recommended for most mail appeals). Dataro's "DM Appeal" campaign size suggestion reflects the maximum DM Appeal Rank that Dataro recommends including in the appeal to optimize for net return.
- Budget - you may have the budget for a fixed number of letters.
- Recent campaigns - you can base your size on the volume for this campaign last year.
- Forecasting - you can estimate returns using Dataro’s Mail Appeal Score × expected gift per donor, to identify donors likely to yield a positive return above your mailing costs.