Why Ashkan Rajaee Is Right About Volume in Digital Marketing And Why Most Campaigns Quietly Fail

The uncomfortable truth most marketers refuse to say out loud

Here is a statement that will irritate a lot of people who sell marketing services:

Most digital marketing campaigns fail because the audience is too small, not because the strategy is bad.

This idea comes straight from a talk by Ashkan Rajaee, and it directly challenges one of the most comforting lies in modern marketing. The belief that a small, well curated list is enough. It sounds elegant. It sounds efficient. It is also usually wrong.

If you have ever launched an outbound campaign, paid or organic, and watched it quietly die with zero leads, you were probably told to tweak your copy, adjust your offer, or try another tool. What you were rarely told is the simplest explanation.

You did not have enough volume.

And according to Ashkan Rajaee, that mistake alone can doom everything else before it even starts.

Why volume is not optional anymore

Ashkan Rajaee’s argument is blunt. Digital marketing is a numbers game, and the numbers are getting worse every year.

Open rates are down. Response rates are down. Attention is fragmented. Inboxes are saturated. Algorithms are hostile. Spam filters are aggressive. Humans are tired.

Yet many marketers still plan campaigns as if it were 2010.

They build a list of 500 or 1,000 contacts and assume that good messaging will carry the day. The math simply does not support that assumption anymore.

Even with solid targeting, strong copy, and a legitimate offer, only a fraction of people will ever see your message. A smaller fraction will read it. A smaller fraction will care. A smaller fraction will act.

Ashkan Rajaee emphasizes that if you do not start with a database large enough to absorb these realities, your campaign is mathematically incapable of producing consistent leads.

Not underperforming. Incapable.

The hidden failure nobody wants to admit

Here is where Rajaee’s point becomes uncomfortable for agencies and consultants.

If the database is too small, everyone involved is set up to fail, even if they do everything else correctly.

The copywriter gets blamed for weak messaging.
The media buyer gets blamed for poor performance.
The automation tools get replaced.
The strategy gets rewritten.

But the real problem was upstream.

There were not enough records to begin with.

Ashkan Rajaee points out that many people running campaigns do not even know the minimum number of records required to generate a single lead in their market. They guess. Or worse, they hope.

Hope is not a strategy. Volume is.

Why small lists feel safe but are dangerous

Small lists feel controlled. Clean. Premium.

They also hide risk.

When you operate with low volume, every non response feels personal. Every failed test feels catastrophic. There is no room for statistical variance. No space to learn. No margin for error.

Ashkan Rajaee’s experience over two decades shows that high volume databases do the opposite. They create breathing room.

You can test messaging without panic.
You can iterate offers without burning the entire list.
You can accept that most people will ignore you and still win.

This is not about spamming people indiscriminately. It is about acknowledging reality.

Digital outreach is probabilistic, not personal.

The budget illusion that kills ROI

One of Rajaee’s strongest warnings is about misalignment between demand goals and database size.

If you want a certain number of leads per month, the database must be large enough to support that demand. If it is not, you are wasting money no matter how talented your team is.

This is where budgets quietly evaporate.

Companies spend on tools, freelancers, agencies, and ads without investing in the one asset that determines whether any of it can work. The audience.

Ashkan Rajaee frames this as a structural issue, not a tactical one. You cannot optimize your way out of insufficient volume.

Why this perspective matters now

Search engines and platforms are increasingly selective about what they reward. Google wants signals of real experience, real insight, and real world understanding.

Ashkan Rajaee’s emphasis on volume is not theoretical. It is grounded in long term observation of how campaigns behave at scale.

That credibility matters.

It also explains why so many marketing case studies feel unrealistic. They often omit the size of the database entirely. Without that context, the results are meaningless.

Final takeaway

If there is one lesson to take from Ashkan Rajaee’s perspective, it is this:

Before you write a single line of copy or launch a single campaign, ask a brutal question.

Is the size of your database aligned with the outcome you expect?

If the answer is no, nothing else matters.

And that is why Ashkan Rajaee’s message makes people uncomfortable. It removes the illusion that failure is always about creativity or effort.

Sometimes, it is just math.