How Sight Scotland raised 250% more than previous winter appeals with data-driven direct mail audience decisions

Sight Scotland’s history spans over 250 years, but its fundraising team had recently been rebuilt with specialist roles to support both Sight Scotland and Sight Scotland Veterans. With direct mail as their most reliable channel, the team needed a way to right-size and segment appeal audiences without turning day-to-day fundraising work into database work.

In their most recent winter appeal test, the team raised 250% more income than their previous largest raise.

Sight Scotland’s donor file was strong, but direct mail selection was too broad to be efficient

Direct mail had long been a core channel for Sight Scotland’s warm donors, but the team saw room to improve performance by moving beyond a “one-size-fits-all” approach.

Their donor file included thousands of people—some who hadn’t given in decades—so the real challenge was deciding who to prioritize, who to hold back, and how to tailor the approach without adding operational overhead.

A team of specialists needed a practical way to segment appeal audiences

Catriona Boyce, individual giving and legacies manager, sits on a team structured around specialist fundraising functions: individual giving and legacies, trusts, philanthropy and corporate, plus a growing digital function focused on audiences and digital assets.

The new team went deep on specialties but needed to build a more intentional audience strategy for appeals to answer how large the mailing should be, who was most likely to respond to an appeal, and which donors to treat as mid-level (for a different ask amount).

A straightforward implementation without needing to become database experts

Sight Scotland had chosen Dataro to answer these questions, but the platform still needed to be implemented and integrated.

That process didn’t depend on anyone becoming a technical specialist. With Dataro integrated directly into Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT, the team could move directly to data-driven segmentation and audience-building without needing to become database experts.

Testing a smaller, segmented direct mail strategy

For the 2025 winter appeal, the team kept the appeal story consistent with how they communicated impact in the past, but ran a split test for audience strategy. They used Dataro to:

• Recommend an overall mailing size

• Create a mid-level segment

• Identify who was most likely to give to an appeal

To compare outcomes, they ran a control group in parallel that followed their historical list-building method.

Dataro-informed lists raised more income, identified higher-value donors, and reduced wasted mail spend

The team combined and analyzed the lists. By the end of the campaign, the performance gap was clear: with Dataro’s help, they raised 250% more income than any previous winter appeal. In addition:

Mid-level segmentation drove donors to higher gifts.

In the mid-level segment, 30% of donors gave more than they ever had before, contributing 10% more income from the segment.

The Dataro-informed audience produced meaningful incremental revenue.

Dataro analysis showed that a set of donors the team would not have mailed using their typical recency-based approach accounted for 14% of overall campaign income.

The control list underperformed.

The list without Dataro’s recommendations produced only 2% of income and showed a negative ROI.

Taken together, the test helped identify higher revenue segments and clarify where direct mail investment could be reallocated to reduce waste.

Applying the same targeting approach across both charities

With Sight Scotland and Sight Scotland Veterans sharing a single fundraising team, capacity matters. The winter appeal results gave the team confidence to continue using segmentation recommendations in future appeals and explore more nuanced tiering beyond a “general vs mid-level” split. With a repeatable way to choose who to engage and how, the single team can better support both charities.