Story provided by Indiegogo – 

Stay connected with your audience throughout your campaign.

1. Launch

Remember all that work you did planning for early momentum? Now is the time to ask everyone in your immediate network to contribute so your campaign enjoys strong early momentum. Once your campaign is about 30% funded, publicize your campaign fully by reaching out to everyone in your target audience, including people you don’t know personally.

2. Promote

Reach out to your immediate network and then beyond through promotional efforts.

Expand your reach with email.
Contributors who visit a campaign page from a link in an email tend to give 20% more on average than contributors sent by any other referral source. Maximize the potential of email:

• Make a community outreach schedule
• Use a template to keep it simple
• Maintain a friendly, personal tone
• Build an email tree: ask friends to email 5-10 of their friends on behalf of your campaign

Maximize Social Media:

• Use the share tools to get the word out
• Put effort into promoting your campaign in a personal way
• Respond promptly to messages, tweets, and comments
• Avoid spamming your followers with repetitive content
• Use Twitter to connect with journalists and bloggers who may be interested in writing about your campaign

Run a referral contest.
Running a referral contest is a great way to motivate supporters to share your campaign. Find out who’s sharing your campaign by using the dashboard tools, and publicize your referral contest using updates, email, and social media. Then, recognize and incentivize the supporters who send the most contribution dollars your way.

Campaign: Geek Pulse The Geek Pulse team was creative with their referral contest, allowing anyone to earn tiered rewards.

3. Engage Contributors

Talk with contributors and keep them in the loop. Try to find new ways to involve your community and renew their curiosity. Here’s how:

Update contributors:

• Update your contributors through the Updates Tab on your campaign page. Campaigns that send out at least 3 updates raise about 239% more money than those that post two or fewer.
• Send an update at least once every 5 days. Typically, the more updates a campaign sends, the more money it raises. Send an update when there is news or new information to share about your campaign – think of it as bringing your contributors along for the ride.
• Share your latest campaign achievements.
• Review comments on your campaign page to see if there are any questions or issues you need to address in an update.
• Let contributors know about any changes or delays regarding perk fulfillment.
• Contact contributors individually.
• Use video in your updates to keep things interesting for your audience.

 

Say thank you:
Write a general thank-you message in advance, and use it to send a personalized thank-you message to each contributors.

Listen to your contributors:
List a contact email address on your campaign page so contributors can share feedback, make requests, and ask questions. Value their input and try to find ways to incorporate their ideas.

Campaign: Breathometer The campaign team for Breathometer responded to audience requests by adding fresh perks (a family pack of Breathometer devices), more colors, and new product features (a 1-click taxi call service). The team’s responsiveness helped them raise more than 5 times their initial funding goal, and earn a lot of fans to boot.

4. Track activity

The Indiegogo dashboard is full of valuable information about your campaign. Use it to learn about your audience and what websites and communities you should look to for additional support.

Visit your dashboard to learn about:

• the number and location of your contributors;
• the number of visits and referrals to your campaign page;
• the name, description, dollar amount, and quantity of each perk claimed;
• your perk fulfillment progress;
• the amount of funds raised, the fees you will be charged, and the timeline and method of disbursement.

Use your dashboard to identify at least three communities you want to reach out to. Then connect with these communities through grassroots efforts or strategically target your marketing accordingly.

5. Work your perks

We’ve already covered perk basics, but there’s still more to do even after you’ve launched.

Introduce new perks at any point during your campaign to get the conversation started again.

Feature one of your best or latest perks to bump it to the top of the campaign page. People will be more likely to contribute at that perk level.

Poll contributors to find out more about their perk preferences halfway through your campaign. Ask what they liked best and least, and what they found too expensive or insubstantial. Use their feedback to brainstorm additional perks to add.

If possible, start fulfilling your perks before the end of your campaign. Contributors are likely to share perks with friends, which is great publicity while your campaign is still running.

6. Set a stretch goal

A stretch goal is an additional funding goal that will finance another specific piece of your project once the initial goal has been met.

A stretch goal should be concrete and reasonable, and should give contributors a little extra motivation to get involved. A really great stretch goal can even motivate contributors to give a second time.

Campaign: Scanadu Scout The team behind Scanadu Scout, which raised funds for the development of a medical tricorder device, set a stretch goal that would give contributors a choice of color for the device—white or black. After meeting that first stretch goal, they came up with another one that would add assistive technology for the visually impaired.