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Build Excitement for Your Crowdfunding Campaign with a Pre-Launch Page
What is a Pre-Launch Page?
You’re in the process of planning your crowdfunding campaign, but you’re not quite ready to launch. A Pre-Launch Page will help you give potential customers a hint of what’s coming so you can start building buzz early. It also gives you a central place to direct your social media posts, test out messaging and — perhaps most importantly — collect email addresses from people interested in learning more.
Why do I need it?
One of the most important things you can do for your campaign is build your email list. The more people you’re able to reach, the better your chances for success. On average, we’ve found that emails convert 34% more than other forms of outreach – so clearly, email should be a key part of your marketing strategy. The more email addresses you acquire before you launch, the more momentum you’ll get in those crucial first few days of your campaign. We’ve seen that if you start strong you’re more likely to exceed your campaign goals. More email addresses mean more contributions, more sharing and more general awareness of your campaign.
How many email addresses should I collect?
We typically see a conversion rate of 5% specifically on launch announcement emails. That means that, for all of the people that receive an email announcing that your campaign is live, only 5% of them will click through your email and contribute to your campaign. So it’s important to cast a wide net, knowing that many of your emails won’t result in contributions. We recommend having enough email addresses that you could reach 30~50% of your funding goal from the people you contact through that first email alone.
Important Tip: Download a .csv of all the emails submitted for your campaign so you can use them to start sending emails!
Pre-Launch Page best practices
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- Keep text short and simple. You want people to be able to read your page quickly and get to the point: that your campaign is awesome and they should give you their email address. Too much information and they’ll feel overloaded — and like there isn’t anything else they need to sign up to learn.
- Use great visuals. A picture will go a long way to showcase your product and get people interested. Educate yourself on great product photography to make people feel like they want to learn more. Keep it simple and don’t confuse people by showing them too many products at once. Make sure to use high resolution product images without too much text.
- Use a strong call to action that creates a sense of excitement and urgency. Use simple, one-line messaging that tells users to sign up to know when you launch and to get a special deal. Messages like “Be the first to know when we launch” or “Sign up for a special deal” have worked well in the past.
- Test your messaging. Your team is so immersed in what you’re doing that you may need a reality check on what will get your audience excited. Before diving head first into creating your campaign page or determining your marketing strategy, you can use your Pre-Launch Page to test out your messaging. There is no better way to get feedback than by asking people who are already interested in buying your product.
- Track your traffic. Want to know how effective your Google Adwords and Facebook campaigns are? Use Conversion and Remarketing Pixels (for Google Adwords) and the Facebook Pixel to get analytics on traffic to your Pre-Launch Page.
Examples of Pre-Launch Pages
Overall, it’s important to create a page that easily achieves the primary goal of capturing emails while creating excitement about the product itself. Notice the simplicity here. Using strong calls to action and by giving only just enough visual information, all of these Pre-Launch Pages successfully incentivize users to sign up with their emails.
Pilot Translating Earpiece
The Pilot is an earpiece that uses speech recognition and machine translation to allow wearers to speak different languages but still clearly understand each other. Simply put, when one person speaks, the other hears it in their language. Thanks to a strong marketing campaign in the months leading up to their campaign, the team behind Pilot got over 30,000 email addresses through their Pre-Launch Page and went on to raise $1M in 2 hours.
AIRIA
AIRIA was developed by P&G to be a different approach to home air fresheners. It releases gravity-defying scent elements in a way that follows the natural air flow of your home or workspace to create a consistent, long-lasting scent experience. They released the initial version of AIRIA on Indiegogo in 2017, and are currently drumming up awareness for the next release in 2018. They’ve collected over 11,000 email addresses and counting with the Pre-Launch Page for AIRIA.
Ataribox
Atari is a name that gamers know and love, which is why the promise of an all-new console is so exciting. With the Ataribox, players will be able to enjoy the classics alongside a slew of new games, and Atari has been working hard to spread the word about their spring 2018 campaign. And it’s working — they’ve already collected over 7,000 email addresses with Ataribox’s Pre-Launch Page.
Pre-Launch Pages and the importance of early momentum
Your campaign’s success hinges on its first 24 hours, which is why it’s essential to build excitement for your campaign in the months before it launches. By getting people to support your campaign early, your project gains social proof and credibility, and people are more likely to support something that other people have already backed.
A Pre-Launch Page ensures that you have that critical momentum to reach your goal, and lets you build an email list to make sure you can keep more people abreast of what’s going on with your campaign and increase your chances of success. More early backers will help you build your community, get shared on social media, increase your marketing reach and ultimately, bring in more funding. Don’t wait — make a Pre-Launch Page today!
Thinking about starting a campaign? Make a pre-launch page first — get started today!
