What’s a bot?
When I say bots, I’m talking about Facebook Messenger Bots.
A bot is a piece of software that you program to do a certain thing. In the case of crowdfunding we use them to qualify and nurture leads and we use them to send messages.
Much like an email but with two major differences. Open rates and clicks. Bots have outstanding open and click through rates and are outpacing emails by a landslide.
NOTE: I’m not saying stop emailing. I’m just saying use it in conjunction with a bot.
Email vs. Bots
Open Rates for Email: 20%
Open Rates for Bots: 80% (and 90% of those are within first 30 seconds of delivery)
This is an increase of 60%! Think of how that would transform your marketing.
Click Rates for Email: 3%
Click Rates for Bots: 30%+
Again, this is a massive difference. There’s no question about it.
Why should you care?
A couple months ago I was talking to Sal (owner of this site) about bots and the potential they can have on a crowdfunding campaign.
Sal encouraged me to try it out on a campaign and report back based on results.
We used them on the launch of Pacum, the world’s most powerful travel vacuum that allows you to pack twice as many clothes in the same suitcase.
At the time of this writing, Pacum has raised $111,019 with 25 days left to go.
Let me first start by saying there’s no substitute for a good product. However, good marketing takes a good product and puts it on steroids! Pacum’s initial goal was $30k.
In order to hit that and to get organic traffic from Kickstarter past experience has told us we need to raise $30k within the first few days. It took us 3.
Learn more about Mad Hatter by submitting an inquiry.
In fact, we pulled in 1300 backers in the first 9 days!!
Here’s how we did it.
First we used fun images and videos in our Facebook ads and targeted travelers who also like Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
Once they click we take them to a landing page telling them to signup for a discount. It’s imperative that this page is short and sweet!
We’ve tested long and short landing pages and the shorter ones ALWAYS outperform the long ones.
As a rule of thumb keep it to 3 sentences or less. Make them give you an email to “Learn More.”
Once they sign up they are then presented with a landing page giving them another offer. In this case it’s the opportunity to win a Pacum for free.
Once they get into the bot we ask them again if they want to join the giveaway.
97% clicked the YES button. These clicks in the bot are micro commitments and are critical to validating your audience. Once you get the email, you now need to engage them and make sure they are engaged.
By making them click YES you are putting them on the the YES track to buying your product when you launch. These buttons also allow us to see what is working and what is not. Had we received a 20% click through rate on this button we would adjust the messaging until we got it above 50%.
Once they click YES we then tell them what they need to do in order to enter the contest. In Pacum’s case it was to visit a Facebook post, tag some friends, and say why they’re excited about it and how they’d use it.
Pretty cool right? It gets even better.
Here is the FB post they were commenting on. 130 likes, 300 comments, and 25 shares. This now becomes your cold traffic ad.
In Facebook there’s a growth hack where you can use an existing FB post for your ad. That’s what we’re doing here but we are PR-LOADING it with social proof before we do! 🙂
Now, when you launch this ad it’s got all kinds of likes, comments, and shares and your audience is more likely to click!
The Launch
The proof is always in the results. When we launched we were hoping for an 80% open rate. We were pleasantly shocked when we saw a 90.91% open rate!
In Conclusion
I want everyone reading this to understand the magnitude and the opportunity. These open rates are in par with email when it first came out.
However, as more and more marketers starting sending email, and more and more spammers started coming on the scene, open rates plummeted and everyone suffered.
Right now, crowdfunders have an opportunity to be among the very few who are using this tool to launch their next product. If your build a list of 1000 bot subscribers you can expect 800 or more of them to open your messages.
Because of this, an entrepreneur with a bot list of 1000 can outperform an email marketer with 10,000 emails only.
Happy crowdfunding!
