In a post on the Indiegogo blog, the rewards based crowdfunding platform reviewed a feature to aid campaigners in attaining their funding goals.
Users on Indiegogo can “Share This Campaign” by leveraging a unique url which is then tracked for the number of referrals brought back to the crowdfunding campaign via the dashboard.
Indiegogo noted the high correlation between refers and campaign success;
Our Insights team dug deeper into our data, and perhaps unsurprisingly, there is a strong positive relationship between the number of referrals a campaign has and the amount of funds raised (as well as percentage of goal raised). The bottom line: Sharing is caring for a crowdfunding campaign, and the more, the merrier. Still, referrals are not just numbers — there are real people on the other end of them. Therefore, you want to be pursuing quality leads through referrals by connecting with like-minded and similarly passionate audiences, rather than simply spamming the highest number of eyeballs possible.
On some of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns, project leaders have learned the importance of leveraging their social networks and requesting existing donors to support the project by referring to their networked friends. Some campaigns have initiated their own contests by associating the number of referrals to higher reward levels. Now Indiegogo is making this easier for crowdfunders.
Given the importance of referrals and the ability to track them, we encourage campaigners who are looking to add further momentum to their campaigns to try out a Referral Contest. This gamifies your marketing by giving a direct incentive to your contributors to share the campaign — i.e. “The person who is able to refer the most contributors to my campaign will receive X!” There are a number of ways of running a Referral Contest, and we’ve seen campaigners use a variety of creative point systems.
Below is an example of a crowdfunding campaign where a referral contest was initiated. The contrast is stark.
You may read the blog post on Indiegogo in it’s entirety here. Indiegogo continues to look for new and creative methods to assist crowdfunding campaigns. They firmly believe that “If we build it, they will come” – does not work. Delivering the best tools and helpful insight continues to be the best way to aid in successfully crowdfunding your dream or business.