When Vinson Leow created the world’s fastest pocket-sized battery pack he had one goal in mind. A successful crowdfunding campaign. He had seen other successful portable power bank campaign owners raise multiple six figures, garner loads of media attention, and satisfy the power cravings of fast moving mobile power users.
At the time of this writing the campaign has raised $115,905 and has exceeded it’s goal by 386%. All that is all well and good but HOW it got there is rather peculiar.
The below graphic shows how Charge ASAP stacks up against the competition.
PrelaunchIt’s no secret that a successful pre-launch is critical to any campaign’s success. Charge ASAP was no exception. During the months that led up to the launch, Vinson launched a series of social media sweepstakes. These were considered a great success due to the fact that they accumulated a mountain of emails which could turn into potential backers when the campaign launched..
Total investment: $2,000Total emails collected: 16,000Cost per email: 12.5 cents eachResults: 16 sales**Comparison: A good Facebook ads campaign will result in emails costing around $1 each.
Samples
Fully functioning review units were also sent out to bloggers and media contacts a few days before the campaign went live. We pitched them under embargo. An embargo is a request to hold the news until launch day so that when the campaign goes live, the articles go live on the same day.
Everything seems to be going right up to this point. However, here is where things start to get interesting. Despite being the fastest pocket-sized battery pack on the market, the media was slow to post articles. They’ve been pitched with other campaigns in the past and the articles, instead of happening all at once, came in more like a long, slow trickle.
To say that Vinson was disappointed is an understatement. That all began to change on February 4th, 2016.
Indiegogo featured the now 66% funded ASAP Dash in it’s technology newsletter. In just one day the newsletter was responsible for generating $9,559 worth of backers and got ASAP Dash to 100% of its goal!
Now we’re cooking!
The following 3 days still felt the aftermath of late email openers bringing the total to $44,289 by February 7th.
February 9th is a day Vinson will remember quite well.
“I went to bed with 38 orders and woke up to over 200.” Vinson Leow
What had happened while Vinson was dreaming his startup dreams was that Indiegogo saw how well the Dash performed in it’s first newsletter and wanted to send it out again. In 24 hours, the Dash brought in $28,947! Most of which came in at 2am!
Indiegogo did in one day with one email what took 10 days and months of effort to accomplish up to this point.
But Wait! There’s more!
Indiegogo featured the campaign exactly one week later and consumers replied with a “Yes! I do want the world’s fastest pocket-sized charger.” Their combined enthusiasm brought in another $25,795…in just one day. Are you all Indiegogo newsletter fans yet? 😉
Below is a day-by-day breakdown to date.
Reverse Staircase
After the first newsletter feature, the sales velocity was still higher than the week before. See the reverse staircase in the image above. This allowed the campaign to become 100% funded in the two following days.
How the Weeks Stack Up
Week 1 $10,675 Raised $1525 Per Day Avg.Week 2 $38,279 Raised $3943 Per Day Avg.Week 3 $89,272 Raised $5759 Per Day Avg.2 days into Week 4 $117,320 Raised $TDB
What about the media?
There was good tier 2&3 media coverage (approx. 100 smaller outlets) but the larger and more influential outlets have yet to post their articles. However, despite the coverage, very few backers came in from blogging efforts as a result. What we’ve discovered is that being as this is a product that has a lot of competition, people really need to see the video for them to be “sold.”
Backer Club, a group made up of those who have backed 50+ campaigns was a pleasant surprise bringing in a handful of sales. It’s a ZERO risk program where you only pay if you receive $379 worth of pledges.Bloggers: 31 salesBackerClub: 5 sales
The Irony
For an average campaign, 70%-90% of campaign pledges usually come from the actions of the founder before and during the campaign. Eli knows, he’s launched dozens of them with his company and his 10,000 crowdfunding students have had the same experience. Campaigns that start slow usually finish slow (if at all). The ASAP Dash is unique in that every week has been better than the last despite the very slow start. Also, the Indiegogo community has been responsible for almost 50% of all pledges making this a unicorn project that doesn’t happen.
Below is a graph showing who originated the pledges
Below is a breakdown of where the pledges came in per country
The moral of the story thus far.
- What I would have done differently is rather than doing contests, I would have used the ad spend to drive traffic to landing pages, instead of social contests. While the number of emails was fantastic, the conversions on the backside didn’t play out as much as I’d hoped.
- I also would have made sure the bloggers and media received samples weeks, instead of days, before launching. This would give them adequate time to prepare an article and break the story. Once the news is broke, it’s not, well, news.
- ONLY send a sample if the outlet or reporter commits to posting an article on launch day. Timing is everything for these launches. You want a sonic boom at the beginning, not a slow trickle.
- If we hadn’t done the prelaunch work ahead of time we would not have been this successful. Even though we didn’t get the results we fully expected we were able to reach 30% of the target in near the first week, trip the Indiegogo Go-Go Factor, and make it into the newsletter not one but 3 times!
To check out the live campaign that currently stands at:
$120,469 Raised401.56% Funded1,262 Backers93,698 Visits
Go here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/asap-dash-world-s-fastest-pocket-sized-charger/x/1332069#/
PS: Case study prepared by Eli Regalado, Founder of Launch Lab – A crowdfunding, marketing, and PR agency that uses viral web tactics to generate sales for it’s clients. We’ve had over 10,000 students globally take our leading crowdfunding course and have launched dozens of successful campaigns.
Contact: eli@www.madhatteragency.com Eli Cell: 720.517.3557 Skype: eli.icosa