My main goal with this website is to help you SMASH your Indiegogo campaign, speed past your goal, and really knock it out of the park!
Crowdfunding isn’t easy, but thankfully, there are tools out there to automate some of the promotion process, get you more backers, and help you boost your funding meter.
There isn’t any silver bullet when it comes to getting visitors to take action. Even paid advertising doesn’t always convert.
But, I guarantee that if you implement one or more of these tools, it will greatly improve the chance that you’ll join our ranks of successful Indiegogo alumni, many of which, I’ve had on my podcast!
This one (who is also a full-time mother), launched a successful Indiegogo AND Kickstarter campaign.
1. MailChimp
I can’t overstate the importance of email marketing. Email is the HIGHEST converting source of pledges for most crowdfunding campaigns (source).
MailChimp is a free email service provider that you can use to:
- Capture or import email addresses.
- Track opens, clicks, responses, actions, and purchases on your website.
- Set up automated message chains.
- Do A/B testing.
At the time of writing, I use MailChimp for my email list of over 10,000 subscribers (I have multiple lists). I love it because I can see the number of subscribers with the most opens and pay special attention to them.
I can see the regions that people are opening my emails from. I can also see the email addresses of the people who DIDN’T open my emails.
Being able to access the emails of people who didn’t open messages about your crowdfunding campaign gives you a great opportunity to directly reach out to those individuals and give them more personal attention.
You could even see who opened your email and clicked, but didn’t back your campaign. Then, you can follow up with those individuals and find out what their objection was. Did they forget to pledge or did they dislike something about the Indiegogo page?
Finally, MailChimp makes it dead simple to segment your tribe using groups, segments, and separate lists.
Groups: “A collection of subscribers based on their interests and preferences.”
Segment: “A collection of subscribers based on common qualities, like engagement activity and group choices. Segment also refers to the action of filtering subscribers based on criteria you choose.”
Lists: The list that they subscribe to, which is usually also a good indication of the location they subscribe from. I have separate lists depending on whether people subscribe via Instagram, to my email course, or my main website.
This tool is a no-brainer and a must use. At the time of writing, it’s free up until 2,000 subscribers.
2. Buffer or Hootsuite (etc.)
There are a lot of different social media scheduling services. Personally, I use Buffer. Basically, Buffer allows me to pre-schedule social media messages that are going to go out on my various channels.
This includes:
- Facebook (page, group, or profile)
- LinkedIn (profile or page)
- Google+ (profile or page)
I really hope Instagram opens their API at some point to allow scheduling also.
Basically, you don’t have to post social media messages in real time. You can have a message go out tomorrow morning at 2 am or three days from now, so that you don’t forget about it.
It gives me the ability to continually push out helpful or useful content for thousands of followers on my various accounts. But, I keep all replies 100% organic. I don’t believe in automating that aspect.
What I also love about Buffer is that they give you great analytics. I get information about:
- Number of retweets or shares.
- Number of likes or favorites.
- Reach for the posts.
- Mentions for twitter posts.
I can also filter for most popular and least popular posts for the above criteria. Business accounts will give you more analytics. I do pay for mine, but it’s the lowest level plan. Here’s what it looks like for one of my personal account posts.
This post was in reference to a YouTube video that I put out, which I’ll link to here.
How does Indiegogo work? https://t.co/ZtQWU6P9UB
— Salvador Briggman (@sbriggman) June 16, 2016
You can use a social media scheduling service like Buffer to get a sense of the interest in your campaign on various social media channels. Are people clicking, but not buying? Are people failing to click at all? You can also A/B test messaging.
At the time of this post, it’s free if you only need one social media profile per platform, but it really limits the number of posts that you can schedule. I’d recommend the $10/month plan.
3. Canva
So you suck at design? Yeah, me too. That’s why my logo is so basic, haha!
That’s why Canva is so great. It gives you the drag-and-drop tools that you’ll need to make great graphic artwork for advertisements, social media covers or marketing messages.
I honestly believe that great design will give you a huge leg up in the online world. If we come a across a shitty looking website, we’re more likely to feel uncomfortable and skeptical. If it’s beautiful, we’ll naturally think that this company is professional and that they care about their work.
You can choose from a lot of pre-created designs or make your own.
You might have to pay for some of the images, if you choose to incorporate them, but many of them are free and you can always upload your own.
4. Paid Marketing & Google Analytics
I don’t really consider paid marketing a “tool,” but I decided to include it because you do have to get to know a bit about the various tools that go into paid marketing, whether it’s the Facebook for Business platform, Adwords, BuySellAds, or Press Release Websites.
I’m not going to spend that much time on this topic, because I’ve already written a lot about paid ads and I’ve broken down press release websites also in previous articles.
However, I do have quite a bit to say about Google Analytics. In case you’re not aware you can use google analytics to track visitors to your Indiegogo campaign along with conversions or pledges. We also put together a guide on how to integrate analytics into your campaign. It’s more geared to Kickstarter, but also works for Indiegogo.
You can use ecommerce tracking to get transaction information for each visitor and use UTM tracking codes to nail down the sources of your revenue. It’s really powerful if you want to get a clear picture of what’s working with your Indiegogo campaign.
The great thing about google analytics is that it doesn’t cost anything! It’s 100% free to use and is sure to enhance your Indiegogo campaign.
5. Boomerang for Gmail
Haha, if you want to appear like you’re working at 3 am, you could use Boomerang to schedule your emails to be sent out early in the morning so that you seem like you’re a “hard worker” to your boss.
Jokes aside, Boomerang is actually a really powerful tool for direct outreach. Here are some others.
You can use Boomerang to:
- Schedule emails to be sent later
- Be reminded about emails to follow up on
- Send a reminder if you haven’t heard back from someone
To give you an example, I’ll show you my email inbox below. I’m going to first set the message to “boomerang” or return to my inbox at a specific date.
Once you set when you’d like this email to be “boomeranged” you can then set the requirements, which I”ll show below.
This functionality is going to give you a HUGE leg up when sending out emails to influencers, key supporters, and media publications. Rather than trying to keep everything inline with a complex excel spreadsheet, you’ll be making use of software to make life easier.
I genuinely believe that most of my readers and listeners are very smart and hardworking. But, if you two people, one who has great software tools and one who doesn’t, the one with software will usually win in terms of work output.
It enhances your ability to get things done. I’m all about helping you be more effective and efficient with your time.
6. Bonus: Shopify
I recommend Shopify to all first-time ecommerce entrepreneur’s because it’s dead simple to set up an online store and start selling! I’m also an affiliate. There are many themes and extensions that you can choose from to enhance the functionality of your website.
However, there are a lot of other good options out there, many of which will help you set up a great looking website in a matter of minutes.
I tried to keep this list filled with as many free or low-cost tools as possible. I know that you don’t have a huge budget and want to spend it wisely. Hope this post helps!
Don’t forget though, if you aren’t yet serious about setting up a website (though I HIGHLY recommend it), you can also just use Indiegogo’s In-Demand program to continue to accept payments even after your campaign has finished.
