Introduction

Imaginary Lava is an animation studio that makes explainer videos for mission-driven organisations: nonprofits, foundations and public-interest groups across the United States. Its work has earned more than 27 million views across 70-plus videos for Planned Parenthood, 400,000 views in ten days for Flippable, and helped MomsRising make the case for $60 million in childcare funding. Every one of those clients had come through referrals and inbound. The studio had never sent a cold email, and CEO Jaemin Yi wanted a pipeline he could switch on himself. He asked us to build it with him, not for him.

The Challenge

A studio with a brilliant portfolio and no way to put it in front of a stranger.

Zero outbound → no lists, no sending infrastructure, no sequences, and nobody on the team who had run a campaign.
A buyer that is hard to find → nonprofits are not sorted by budget or by whether they need a video this quarter. The list had to be built, not bought.
A visual product sold in text → an explainer-video studio pitching itself in plain prose throws away its best argument.
A small team → whatever we built had to be run by Jaemin and a handful of people, so the system had to be learnable, not just deliverable.

What We Built

We set up the whole cold email motion from scratch and taught the team to run it, with the studio’s own work doing the selling.

1. Lead sourcing for the nonprofit sector. We built the target list of US nonprofits and mission-driven organisations in Clay, segmented by cause and type so each campaign spoke to one kind of organisation rather than to “nonprofits” in general.

2. Copy with AI personalisation. Every email opened with a line written against the prospect’s own mission and recent work, generated at scale and checked for accuracy, so hundreds of messages read as if someone had looked at each organisation before writing.

3. A video call-to-action. Instead of asking for a meeting, the emails pointed to Imaginary Lava’s work for organisations like the prospect’s, so the first thing a recipient did was watch what the studio could do. We ran multiple variations of message and offer to find the ones that earned replies.

4. Clay training for the team. Alongside the build, Jaemin learned how the lists, enrichments and campaigns fit together, so the studio could launch and adjust campaigns on its own once we stepped back.

“

Working with The Growth DNA was like a shortcut. In one month, I learned more about outbound, AI personalization, and campaign building than I would have in 6-12 months on my own. The guidance was practical, structured, and immediately actionable.

Jaemin Yi

CEO, Imaginary Lava

The Outcome

The first campaigns did not just work; they produced more interested nonprofits than a small studio could talk to.

• $74K closed in seven weeks → a $50,000 project and a $24,000 project, both from organisations reached by the first prospecting campaigns.

• 72 positive replies → in the same seven weeks, from organisations that had already watched the studio’s work before answering.

• Campaigns paused after three weeks → the volume of interested replies outran the team’s capacity to follow up, so sending was paused while the conversations were worked.

• A team that can do it again → lists, copy and campaigns the studio understands and runs itself.

Why It Worked

1. The portfolio did the pitching. A video the prospect could watch in the first email beat any description of what the studio does.

2. One organisation at a time, at scale. Segmenting by cause and personalising against each nonprofit’s own mission made cold email feel like a referral.

3. We built capability, not dependency. Training the team alongside the build meant the results kept coming after the engagement ended.

Ready To Own Your Pipeline?

If your work speaks for itself but nobody new is seeing it, this is where we start. We build the list, write the first line against each prospect, put your work in the email, and teach your team to run it.

Book an outbound strategy call and we’ll map what an owned outbound channel would look like for you.