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Written by Indiegogo

Your goal is to raise money for your product or idea. That’s why you’ve turned to crowdfunding after all. But going from idea to planning and onto actually raising money is a challenging path.

However, there are strategies you can use that give you a better chance at raising money and hitting your funding goals.

1). Build your email list

The majority of successful campaigns hit their campaign goal in the first three days. Building an email list is how to run a successful crowdfunding campaign, since emails convert 34% more than other forms of outreach. You can build a Pre-Launch Page on Indiegogo to collect email addresses. And because a Pre-Launch Page converts to your campaign page after you launch, you’ll only need to use one URL for all of your crowdfunding promotion.

2). Keep momentum and spread excitement

It’s easier to keep your audience engaged if you’ve built a community around your project: it’s one of the best ways to promote a crowdfunding campaign. Send out frequent updates and make backers feel like they are part of your project. When backers are passionate about your campaign, they’re more likely to refer their friends and create their own content and social media posts about your project.

3). Use crowdfunding tools

Perks are a great way to incentivize people to fund your idea, and there are a number of tools you can use to enhance your perk strategy. You can use secret perks to reward early backers and run promotions, upsell to your backers with add-on perks, give your backers choices with perk item options, provide answers by building a custom FAQ, and encourage conversations by enabling open comments.

4). Stretching out your goal

You can recapture the attention of backers with stretch goals. Try using an “unlock” strategy—using higher and higher fundraising milestones to make new perks or features available. Announce to your audience that if they collectively help you reach your new goal, they will all benefit from access to an exciting new perk.

The extra incentive may be just what they need to promote your project and motivate someone new to contribute. Take feedback into account when choosing what that new perk will be. For example, is there a particular feature or color option your backers have been requesting?

5). What to do if your campaign is not successful?

When campaigns fail, it’s often because the campaign owners didn’t build a big enough audience prior to launch. The importance of community in crowdfunding can’t be overstated. After all, the word “crowd” is right there in the word. Keep in mind that only 5-10% of your email list will convert to backers, so it’s important to think big. You should also make sure you’ve done enough research with your target audience. Does your product satisfy a strong market demand?

About Indiegogo
Our mission is to empower people to unite around ideas that matter to them and together make those ideas come to life. Indiegogo is headquartered in San Francisco.

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