A strong pre-launch crowdfunding plan for your campaign could determine your success.
The goal of a pre-launch marketing strategy for crowdfunding campaigns is to get that thermometer as far away from 0 as fast as possible when your campaign launches!
In our Campaign Success Toolkit, we outline how timing affects campaign success: Campaigns that receive their first payment within a day of starting are 6% more likely to meet or exceed their goal. Now imagine how much higher your chances become with even more contributions on the first day.
There is no hard rule around how much funding you should receive on Launch Day, but 20-30% of your goal is a good benchmark. This positions you well because it provides unfamiliar supporters with ‘social proof’ – the idea that humans are more likely to do something when they see others doing it first.
Also famously referred to as FOMO.
But how do we accomplish this?
The dual path of pre-launch campaign promotion
The pre-launch plan is designed to build up your campaign email list before the campaign launches. There are two different types of people you’re targeting here: those you know and those you don’t know. This may sound like it includes pretty much everyone in existence… but don’t worry; you’ll filter out the best ones to target!
Some planning and pre-emptive work are needed to prime both of these crowds for your upcoming campaign and use them to help launch you to success.
Eventually, they all will belong to the same group. First, though, we need to take two different paths when introducing these two crowds to your campaign. We will go through each of these paths in detail, but here is an infographic you can save and keep as a reference:
Pre-Launch Campaign Path 1: Current Crowd
Step 1
Everyone has a current crowd – even if it only consists of friends and family right now. These top 100 are the people you know will want to support this campaign. Their job is to be there as soon as you hit ‘Launch’ to get that thermometer OFF OF 0!
Not everyone can fill this list with 100 people (I sure couldn’t). The more, the better because not everyone will be interested, but 100 is likely the maximum you want.
Why? You are going to be individually messaging all of these people!
Step 2
Okay, there are people who are fine to merge into one email (family members, for example). Others should be individually messaged so they understand they are important to you and you choose them to help.
Personalization (“how’s the new puppy doing?”) indicates you aren’t ‘spraying and praying’ for as many contributions as possible. Even blind carbon copying is easy to detect. Doing either of these things negates the whole purpose of this plan.
You likely won’t have your campaign with all its details ready by now, and that’s okay. You are just notifying this group that a campaign is coming, what it will be for, when it will be launched, and (this part is so important it gets its own line and bold font):
What you are hoping they will do for you and WHY!
Explain to them exactly why their early support is important. Their support in the early hours of the first day helps drive you to success.
Step 3
Yep, you’re doing it again! Your campaign should be complete by now – at least mostly. If you would like to send the link now for them to subscribe to the campaign, go ahead – subscribing to the campaign means they’ll receive a notice from Crowdfundr telling them when the campaign is launched. But if you’d like to keep it secret, that’s ok too! We’re just sending a friendly reminder with no action plan right now.
Include whatever you like here – perhaps give teasers about the rewards you’re offering!
Pre-Launch Campaign Path 2: New Crowd
Step 1
Now that we have our plan for utilizing the crowd we do have, the next step is building on that crowd. To do that, we have to collect some emails!
The general path we want to take is:
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- Attract people with ads and posts
- Direct them to the landing page
- Get them to subscribe to the campaign or a newsletter so we collect their emails.
- Send emails/newsletters leading up to the campaign launch
- Launch the campaign and have them contribute right away!
Again, if you’d like to make things very easy, you can absolutely use your campaign as a “landing page” to collect emails. An outside platform (such as Mailchimp) works much better – but if you don’t have the budget for it or if the free versions don’t give you the functionality you want, Crowdfundr is there if you need it. The campaign doesn’t have to be launched for people to view – they can see everything, they just cannot contribute yet.
The idea here is the same as with our known crowd: we want people to be prepped and ready to contribute to our campaign once it’s live.
However, it won’t do simply to start randomly posting ads everywhere; this could result in a lot of work with little payback. We first need to determine who our audience is and where they hang out, then target them there!
We do this with crowd profiles. Crowd profiles identify characteristics of those people who are most likely to love your creation. The following table is found in our Campaign Promotion Toolkit:
| WHO is my crowd? | Every project has a target audience. Is it a specific demographic? Type of fan?Someone who likes a specific genre or has a certain kind of humour? |
| WHAT can I discuss with them? | This is the value you bring. Is it insight into your project(s) theme? Teasers? Samples? Do they understand what makes you and your creation(s) unique? |
| WHERE can I find them? | You can find your people in multiple places online: social media and their targeted groups, blogs, forums, and, ideally, your own website and social followers. |
| HOW can I engage them? | Email, newsletters, forum chats, social media posts, blog comments, etc. |
You can also do an internet search on crowd profiles for tips and ideas.
Step 2
Plan to have your ads, campaign, and/or landing pages complete (or close to it) around two months pre-launch. This way, you can:
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- Have a link ready for any random person interested in your project (the teller at my bank asked for mine once!);
- Play around with what works and what doesn’t (for example, does adding picture 1 or picture 2 attract more emails?);
- Have plenty of time to fix anything you may have missed, try new crowds if some just aren’t working, plan newsletters, etc.
Remember, we have articles on how to write your story and many more toolkits that may help!
Step 3
Time for newsletters! While this can be a simple text email, you’re creators! Get creative! Professionalism can do wonders, plus the more visually engaging your newsletters are, the more likely your new followers are to read them. Many email platforms have free versions with lots of template options.
Newsletters should always have a call to action – before your campaign launches, this can be to simply view a social media post (and ‘like’ and save it to boost visibility), or to follow you on your social media so they can become more familiar with you. Familiarity = confidence in your campaign. Or anything else of value.
And the pre-launch campaign paths converge…
At this point, you’re getting closer and closer to your campaign launch, and communication becomes more frequent and similar for everyone.
Step 4
This is sort of an extra step that does not have much to do with the crowd you’ve been priming – but that doesn’t make it less important! Even though you’ve been running ads and posting content to drum up interest, you still want to post this campaign in as many places as possible to spread the word.
Are you running this campaign with collaborators? Or do you have a team of wonderful people helping you promote your campaign? This is a great time to consider that. You can add team members to the campaign so they can share over multiple channels. They may have access to a crowd that you don’t!
Step 5
Review your campaign, have other people review it too (trust me, sometimes you can easily miss the simplest things), and email everyone the campaign link again. Remind them you are launching the next day, and you are hoping they will contribute right away to help drive that goal thermometer up up UP!
Step 6
Today’s the daaaaay! Launch day is hectic… but exciting.
First, message your top-tier supporters (those subscribers to your campaign or newsletter) and remind them exactly why their immediate support is crucial!
Do not forget to ask them for the share as well as the support!
Warning: It is common here for campaign owners to contribute to their own campaigns. We understand the desire, but your payment processors won’t allow any contribution from an account or credit card that is associated with your PayPal and/or Stripe account and might put a hold on your account. We at Crowdfundr have no power to help you with this, so don’t risk it!
What now?
Thank your supporters! You can do this either right in the campaign by commenting in your activity feed or through your mailing platform. Thanking supporters is a simple and effective way to build relationships and your brand. By providing a wonderful customer experience for these supporters now, you drive loyalty for future campaigns.
Now continue on with your during-campaign promotional plans, don’t fret if there is a slight dip in pledges after a few days (that’s normal!), get on those UPDATES, and remember to contact our success team with any questions!
Yours in success,
Shan
