Lessons

Lesson Info

Live Campaign: Email Updates & Adjust Goals

So we have an email list we can continue to use our email list mostly converts in the first couple days like probably eighty percent of your conversions you'll get from email this will happen the first two days, but we continue to hit them about once a week throughout the campaign just to say, hey, we're still here, this is what's going on, you want to have a ballot business reason to email them, not just like, hey, we're still here but here's a new perk we're offering what here's a new development hey, we hit this milestone, we hit our funding goal, we hit this now share it with your friends, we've got this new referral campaign trying to come up with something exciting that gives you a reason to reach out to them so they don't feel like you're just spamming them because you don't want to spend that is just spanning them it's not if you've got something exciting in new to share, so, hey, we've got a new offer or a special one day offer only or we've got this new perks that brings us t...

o updates, which is kind of like e mails because any time you put an update using the update tool it's going to go out to everyone of your current backers so it's a little different because the email only goes out everyone on your list where is the updates? Only go up to your backers. But what I want to talk about is the possibility of offering new perks because the answer chris's question. Well, that was posed by one of the people online. How do you prevent that? Mids campaign slump. So I want to show you a video we did for the quickie, which was super effective and helping us stay that off. So if we could go over to the web here quick when we did the quickie, we had this idea to do a skull key which you can see here, which is the quickie with a little skull on the head, which was inspired by the skeleton key. And then we created this little video to promote it, which we put up on youtube. And then we put here the quickie multi tool. Now, scully, here. I love this video. All right? You didn't go back to the presentation now, so that video on its own got close to one hundred thousand viral views. Having nothing to do with our campaign. We would put up on the campaign we put up on youtube and we put on our social channels and it just spread like wildfire people loved the cute little video is short your sweet it introduced a new perk that people got really excited about and then subsequently we sold a lot of skull keys at the end of the campaign I think we sold two to one so like a third of the keys that were skull keys and the skull key was also we had a higher profit margin on that it was a little more expensive item and we sold a lot of them and it really created a surge in the middle of the campaign which helped lift this up in the middle. So we knew we were going to do the skull key before we ever started the campaign. Like once we got there, we had this idea, we created the prototypes and I knew it was coming, but we had the strategy like, hey, let's, introduce this part of the way through the campaign so we can go back to our current backers and they hear something cool and new. And then we could also go back to, you know, people who had bought from the cia and say here's something you know, to the list and promote to those people, then it also took honest on viral notes, so it was a hugely impactful move. We also then later came out with colored keys, which doesn't other lift he's also created a massive amount of logistical challenges on the backhand or like who got a school key and like you get the blackie we had a breast cancer key you know pinky and so all these different perks than created a lot of logistical challenges and I'll say you know I don't want to see the nightmares but that's what comes to mind like of like figure out who got what but in the end of paid off I think like on the whole it paid off because we got so much more traction in the middle of the campaign than we would have otherwise with a question marie did you make them by a second key or were you like ableto upgrade or how did way gave people the option to upgrade so they paid the price difference to upgrade and that further complicated things so it was also where we learned the lesson of keeping the park simple so going forward we found simpler ways to implement it so you want to think about as you're introducing new perks or as your preparing before your campaign and you are planning on introducing new perks of thinking through how we're going to make sure that people are able to you know, get the right key or the right perk and with a little bit of thought that could be a lot easier on you like in retrospect we probably probably wouldn't have offered the upgrade it's just been like here's this new key, maybe we would have lost a little bit of revenue or maybe we would have gained a little revenue because now they're buying a whole new key not just upgrading, but it's a lot easier to track who bought this thing rather than ok, this person brought the key and they brought this so let's marry those together, another getting just a skull key. I think what happened is a lot of people ended up getting extra keys, so it's isn't the end of the world, but it adds up and where it really adds up, isn't shipping when you're shipping out thousands and thousands and thousands of keys, I think it was forty thousand keys altogether. That's you know, there's a lot of shipping involved in all those packages, so and, you know, finding you know, I've got a track this down, make sure we got all the right ones in the right pack, so there's easier ways to do that. So there's a trade off of simplicity and the opportunity to, you know, create excitement, but I think there's definitely a lot to be said for introducing new parks during the campaign, and in fact, you know, indiegogo published a statistic that, you know, introducing new parks is one of the key features of the most successful campaigns is that they introduced new perks as the campaign goes on, new perks don't have to mean entirely new products. It could also just mean new valuable deals or new combinations of products, et cetera that are like now we're offering, you know, buy one, get one free and we weren't offering that before there's, you know, so you can offer new values. Now, as you're thinking about offering new parks, you don't want to offend your earlier backers like wait a second, I was earlier backer and now it's cheaper. I would have gotten this deal instead, and then you can be like, well, you can get the new deal and then you figure out how to like so it's it's better to offer the best deals earlier and as time goes on to make sure that, you know, the new deals are always a little less good than the earlier deals there, I think the exception might be like one day only special occasion sales because people are used to the concept of sales like things there, you got a one day memorial day sale and it's good for one day, and if you happen to show up, you might get some backlash from a few people who noticed who say, wait a second I paid earlier and then just handle those one on one and in a minute, we're going to talk about, you know, backer communication, which is a significant feature, so you always gotta be prepared to handle the backlash of the moves you make if they might inspire some backlash and be surprised at what could. So the updates again are also so you can use the updates to introduce new perks and video you can use video in or you can just use toppy plus images, and I like to use video because, again, because of the value of video, you can talk and people get a sense is a person, whereas if it's just text, they don't really know who's behind it. So doing video like always, that guy he seems friendly, I guess I'm not that mad or I guess I like him, you know, it's it's more enrolling to be there in person. Also, if you've got existing backers, you can offer specials. Hey, you were one of our earlier backers. Now we're offering a special earlier backers, and if you've just come in and donate, you know so much dollars and pick this secret perk you could create like a secret perk, then you're gonna get this specialty. Also, you can give benefits to existing backers by offering them special perks, which also cut, you know, have them giving you more money and so it's you know it's a win for them because they're getting access to something special and it's one for you because you generate more revenue to help you you know, impact your dream you want your updates as much as possible to be positive and like put a positive spin on things but you also want to be very clear in a front in clear communication with your backers so if things were going wrong or having issues much better to handle now and be upfront about it only part of this thing is that it's your you know you're trying to create something new and you're bringing people on the inside well, you don't want to hide him from bad news because they're going to figure out eventually because even be forced it well there's a delay well, better to tell him as soon as something appears that might cause a delay or some kind of breakdown or you discover some feature has to shift, which is also very common so you know as you're going from prototype to production, a lot of times products evolved well as the revolving you want to tell people hey, look, we discovered that the carbon fire and needs bigger wings in order to generate enough lift to lift it up given the weight of the production material as opposed to prototype, so we made it bigger, you know? So you're not they're not going to be surprised when it shows up in it's a different shape that would created much bigger you know reaction than being up front you still get people to react and then can always offer t of memory fund while the campaign is live they can get a refund anyway I'm just going to their profile and take a refund but after the campaign they can't get a refund unless you offered to him so we're still talking about the live campaign you want to issue, I would say during the live campaign at least one update a week not more than two so one or two updates a week here we are unless you have specific milestones that you hit such as hey we'd hit her goal or hey, we're fifty percent of her goal. Whatever it is you know it ten times our goal you're celebrating the start for the people who've been backing you and bring them up to speed on how exciting things are and also always then encouraging them to share it and to spend more you know back more things similarly introducing new parks and encouraging that so that's the use of updates then the other thing you can do is you confined tune the actual campaign says you add new parks adam into the campaign page the campaign page isn't fixed you can continue to evolve and you can actually change the video if you determine that there's something about the video that you want to tweak based on feedback you're getting or some sort of results you're getting, you may change the main video or, like you could, you know, in the case of the skull, kiwi just embedded another video down below, but we could have replaced the main video and added skulking into the main video somehow so you can upgrade a video, but we did add the skull key to the campaign paid, so they didn't only see it on the update page, it became part of the main page. This also keeps the campaign fresh people are, you know, may be coming to visit it, they may be window shopping, and then I mean, going back this, and then they flag it, you know, to follow, and then they come back a few days later, and they seem in new park, and it might be what triggers them to take action. Meanwhile, there, you know, they're just seeing that it's alive and the campaign is going and generous confidence in your existing backers as well as it keeps the whole thing fresh, and you're only doing this for a month, so you also may want to plan some of these things out in advance, you know, week one, we're going introduce this it's in this and we're going to this update in this update, you know we're going to update him on our status and we're going to update him on how exciting were introduced this new park at the end of week one, the end of week two, we're gonna take these actions with her update so you can plan this stuff in advance. You don't have to wait until you're in a live campaign that being said, you can also do a lot of adjustments based on feedback you're getting why didn't you do that? Why didn't you do that? Why is it this car instead of that color? And then you can send out an update or just updated in the campaign page, or if people have a lot of questions of like they keep repeating the same questions and what's the flight time on the carbon flyer will it go? We didn't think there was going to be a big question the flight time, approximately seven minutes, you know it's like now that questions answered, so we added to the page, so be prepared to react to the feedback from existing backers or potential backers and make adjustments this also and also bring up to speed with anything that's really significant or encouraging people to take certain types of actions, you know, we're so close to our goal to so many more thousand we'll be there, you know, help us create history, whatever you want to do, you can like encourage people to take action it's not a static document it's a living document there's all kinds of fun you can have with it that will encourage people to continue backing so that's really? Yes, your question is an exchange of them sharing the campaign on facebook with difference that's a strategy that see right, and that would be like that fall into the like a referral campaign type of thing like, which is like a sharing campaign share this and you know we'll be able to track it and see it, and then we'll give you some sort of bonus for it could be a deal it could be a chance to win is all kinds of different things you could do, so this is once the campaign is alive, these air, all the strategies you can do to keep things going to maintain momentum. And then especially as you're getting towards the end of the campaign, when you start trying toe, you might email a couple more times, be a little more aggressive with your posts because now it doesn't matter if you're a little more spamming because you're coming to the end of the campaign anyway, you don't want to overdo it because then you're going to live with people beyond that, but you know we're coming up to the end give us the big push we're gonna make it across to get that little lift at the end why do you get a little of that the end because people who've been watching it and waiting now you know finally take action they're going to miss it and then they jump in you may offer end of the campaign perks specials which are again like the last couple days offering a lower quality cost perk which again could potentially create backlash with backers but generally not that much and then you can handle it and just, you know, give them the benefit of the better deal refund a little of their money whatever but you, you know, create that little push plus the campaign the platforms rather indigo going kickstarter both have sections like ending soon so you get put into the ending soon area where people are looking and that gives you a little more visibility because you're ending soon and within the ending soon if you're already you know, doing pretty well, that means you'll be high up in that area and you have more likely to get organic hits, but I can't generate enough how if your campaign didn't launch well, then you're just moving chairs around on the deck of the titanic it's like the ship's going down if it didn't take off in the first place like once the campaign is launched there's not a whole lot you can do to change the trajectory if it's not been done properly if you haven't prepared if you haven't done a great pre marketing campaign, if you haven't, you know gotten a fuel in the rocket, so most of these things are ways to improve your performance. If the campaigns already being successful at a certain level, then you can, like, tweak it and refine it and drive it to bigger results through these efforts, especially if you have that efficient ad spend which allow you to drive it into the millions of dollars if you have an efficient enough ad spend and also someone who commanded that with the capital to drive it. But most of these air practices that aren't going to matter if you've already got a dot on your hands and you're waiting too late, which is like actually the day the campaigns launched its too late if you haven't done everything else before, so I have a real life example I'll bring it up someone in my mastermind group that I'm talking with he's actually has a campaign he needs to raise thirty thousand dollars he's raised around fifteen thousand dollars right now he's at thirty seven days is it like too late? Is it highly unlikely from what I have to go like? Really he wanted to be it fifty percent probably at you know, five days for him to have a likelihood now it's not impossible so I'm not going to say it's impossible but he's already a thirty seven days which means he created a really long campaign he's either like forty five days or sixty days so if you just do the math, how much is he getting per day it's not looking good even with a little lift at the end because you're getting like most your lift most your raise in the first five days so you want to be, you know, in striking range right then? So it's it's not looking great for your friend unfortunately not to say it's impossible, but it's going to take some dramatic move and or you can force it by like putting your own money into it like as you know, if you're close to the end, your lakers jeez it's all or nothing if I put you know, if we hit five thousand dollars more than I'll get, you know, thirty thousand dollars, okay? I'm gonna pull up money out of my savings and put him in and force it across the line it's pretend you know, I've never done that I don't actually recommended it's borderline ethical, you know, but I know people who have done it because they like, geez, I wanted get this money, and I'm willing to put my own money into the project to get across the line. But really, I'd say, invested the beginning great momentum to, like, drive it across, you know, by creating really momenta missing to drive, you cross the line, but it's it's tough if you're that far in and having already gotten there, so that's it really for the life campaign, there's. Not a whole lot more you can do, you know it's mostly about what you do before that campaign.