Expanding the Critical Investment Window: How July – September Acquisitions Fueled 2022 Senate Races

Alex Stein, Senior Vice President, MissionWired

The months ahead through summer and into the fall are critical for driving the revenue to power your campaign victory in November.

Conventional theory says early investments in list growth are the only ones that will have enough time to see full the necessary return before Election Day, but The Digital Co-Op flips the script on this conventional narrative: Investments throughout Q3 and beyond can be your strongest of the cycle.

Here’s why this works: The Digital Co-Op’s pool of potential donor data encompasses over 150 million records, with a cutting-edge modeling infrastructure and recently upgraded models that allow you to target your best audience with laser-sharp precision. Fixed-cost list growth that’s this high quality simply drives really fast payback windows, allowing your campaign to invest throughout the entire cycle while still driving strong returns.

But don’t just take our word for it – in 2022, we saw Co-Op members in tight races for Senate seats leverage this strategy to achieve full payback and drive incredible growth right up until Election Day:

Let’s take a closer look at the data:

A 2022 Senate campaign made regular list growth investments with The Digital Co-Op throughout Q3 – investing $400,000 in Q3, every single cohort they acquired in this window broke even and reached an average return of 200% by Election Day.

One investment made in September achieved full breakeven in just 16 days.

Let’s turn to another 2022 Senate race.

In one of the most competitive races in 2022, this campaign invested roughly $300,000 over four draws throughout Q3.

Three months before the election, this campaign saw their investment break even in 11 days and achieve a 400% return within two months. One month before the election, the same campaign achieved a 234% return in three days.

Let’s look at one more Senate race from 2022.

This campaign also continued their investments throughout the entire cycle, helping them to achieve a full cycle return of over 310%. By Election Day, every single cohort reached at least a 150% return.

This campaign saw their September list growth investment break even in 18 days and go on to achieve a nearly 400% return by Election Day.

Making investments through the cycle – particularly in July, August, and September – is one of the most critical list-growth moves you can make for your fundraising efforts, allowing you to continue to grow your program and expand your audience for some of the most important appeals of the cycle.

If you need another reason that right now is the best time to make a big acquisition play with The Digital Co-Op, we’ve got that for you, too: With a new, state-of-the-art architecture underpinning The Co-Op, its predictive modeling capabilities just got more precise, more efficient, and more reliable than ever before. We’re already seeing results from this new model that are outperforming even its own recent capabilities – for one in-cycle Senate campaign, this model upgrade resulted in a 54% higher return when tested against the original model.

So let’s get your next investment planned now – to bolster your audience with the powerful list growth you need to build the kind of prominent campaign that will make your challenger think twice. You can reach out to me directly: alex.stein@missionwired.com, or get in touch with your co-op contact to get the conversation started.