1,000 qualified subscribers in one month, on a minimal budget.

The Goal

Take a Hike needed to grow its email list with people likely to become donors, and the budget was small. I owned the campaign end to end, from strategy and targeting to the offer, the automation, and the creative.

The Strategy

I started with the audience. Our donors cared about youth mental health, so I built an offer around something they already valued for themselves, self-care. A free workbook gave people a reason to sign up and introduced them to the cause through something personally useful.

I kept the offer low-friction. One form, one instant download, no barrier between interest and value.

The Targeting

I ran ads to a lookalike audience modeled on existing donors, narrowed to our service region and to people interested in mental health. Every dollar went toward people who looked like the supporters we already had.

The Automation

I built two journeys in Mailchimp. New leads got the workbook instantly, then a three-part nurture sequence that introduced Take a Hike, connected them to our community on social, and invited them to donate. Existing subscribers got a single message with the download and an invitation to donate, so they weren’t sent content they’d already seen.

The Creative

I wrote and designed the workbook, then built the landing page, wrote the copy, and created the social and ad assets. Every piece shared the same warm, calming look, so the experience felt consistent from first ad to final email.

The Results

1,000 new subscribers in 30 days, on a minimal budget.

The strategy was to grow the list with people already inclined to give. I built an audience that mirrored existing donors, then designed a nurture sequence that gave value first and built trust before the donation ask, so giving felt like a natural next step. The campaign delivered qualified subscribers, and some of them became first-time donors.

The 1,000 new subscribers fueled the donor pipeline with a warmer audience for every campaign that followed. The first-time donors turned a free resource into revenue.

I designed the system to be repeatable from day one. The targeting, landing page, and automated journey stay in place, so the team can swap in a new lead magnet and relaunch whenever new budget comes in.