Targeting & ICP
Quality vs Quantity in B2B Direct Mail
This isn't really a trade-off between quality and quantity, it's a question of where the volume comes from. A bigger list built by loosening fit criteria tends to underperform a smaller list built on real fit, because it dilutes the budget across recipients who were never likely to convert. The goal is to find enough genuinely qualified accounts to hit a scale worth running, not to inflate the list past that point.
Practical guide · Published August 22, 2026 · Written by Jeffrey Huis in 't Veld
Why this isn't really a trade-off
"Quality vs quantity" implies you have to pick one, but the real decision is more specific: when a list needs to get bigger, where should the extra volume come from. Loosening the fit criteria is the easy way to add names, and it's also the way most likely to hurt the campaign's overall performance, since every loosely-qualified name added dilutes the average quality of the whole list.
What loosening criteria actually costs
Every name added to a list that doesn't genuinely fit the profile is a piece of the budget spent on someone unlikely to convert. That's not neutral, it actively pulls down the campaign's overall return, since the cost of reaching that recipient is the same as reaching a strong-fit one, but the odds of a return are much lower. A list that looks twice as large on paper isn't twice as valuable if the added half barely fits.
The right way to add volume
When a list needs to be larger, the better lever is usually finding more companies that genuinely match the existing criteria, an adjacent geography, a broader but still logical industry category, rather than relaxing the criteria themselves. That approach keeps the average quality of the list roughly constant while still growing its size, which is a meaningfully different outcome than simply lowering the bar.
Frequently asked questions
Not always, it depends on whether the smaller list still clears the scale needed to run as a real campaign. Below that floor, the list needs to grow, ideally without loosening what "qualified" means.
If response rate drops noticeably as the list has grown, that's a signal the added accounts don't fit as well as the original ones did.
Sometimes, if a criterion turns out to be less predictive than assumed and dropping it doesn't meaningfully change who's included. That's different from loosening a criterion purely to hit a volume target.
It applies most directly to list-building, but the same logic shows up in scaling decisions too, expand into more genuinely qualified accounts rather than diluting the definition of qualified.
That's a real constraint worth acknowledging rather than working around by loosening fit. A smaller, well-targeted program, or a different channel, may be the more honest answer.
Related topics
Work with Yotru
How Yotru balances list quality with volume
When a Yotru client's list needs to get bigger, we look first at whether more genuinely qualified companies exist to add, an adjacent industry or region that fits the same criteria, before ever suggesting the fit bar get lower. That keeps the run large enough to justify the production setup without diluting the average quality of who actually receives the piece. .