A few months ago, Sarah and Otis Frizzell invited me to their home to help them formulate a plan for their Kickstarter campaign.
After working out who their Ideal Backer was, and coming up with a great Comms Plan, we moved onto coming up with a list of crowdfunding rewards.
And this is where I want to focus today. I’m going to break down their rewards and show you how to implement my top 7 tips for designing your rewards structure.
1. Start low
The lowest reward on The Lucky Taco campaign is $5. And it’s a digital reward – meaning it doesn’t cost much to produce – and can be easily (and cheaply) distributed.
The theme of this campaign was “a taco truck in your kitchen” – they were raising funds to create at-home taco kits. As it happened, an existing partnership with Mini meant they already had these awesome taco truck sheets. They allow kids to cut out and make their own paper taco truck.
It fit really well, and lent itself to some awesome promotional media. It was suggested that they send out a PDF of this sheet to allow people to print and build their own taco truck at home.
This crowdfunding reward was aimed at casual supporters and international backers. It wasn’t a big reward, but it was a funky, relevant and appropriate way to say thanks.
2. Use Earlybirds
Earlybirds are an awesome way to build steam quickly. People don’t want to miss out on the incredible bargain and so they make impulse decisions to get on board with your campaign. In the case of The Lucky Taco, the main reward was always going to be the thing they were fundraising to produce – taco kits. During our workshop, Sarah told me about the loyal customers they had, who had been coming to the taco truck in Auckland every weekend for years. She told me how they’d given these people nicknames and how the business had created a genuine connection with their most loyal customers. And this gave me an idea: rather than the regular structure where you simply offer one or two earlybird levels, this campaign could use a highly-limited number of “super-earlybirds”. These are very limited, very discounted rewards. The team could quietly let their biggest supporters know that if they got in VERY quickly, they could get their rewards VERY cheaply. After the Super Earlybirds, we added three regular earlybirds for the levels we knew were going to be most popular. The $25 and $50 levels are always going to be popular in any campaign, and they were also the levels at which you could get their product. Providing a discount for each of these in a limited quantity meant that The Lucky Taco could quickly generate support and accumulate funds.
3. Price at the right price-points
Research has shown that the most popular crowdfunding reward level is $25. The second most popular reward level is $50. Knowing this, we could price the kits above the RRP of the product. This was partially to make back the losses on the earlybird rewards, but also to ensure that every backer was contributing the maximum amount to the campaign. Many crowdfunding experts will tell you to price below RRP – and if your RRP is above $25 and $50, it is perhaps the right way to go. But when you know you can get $25, pricing at $20 means that you need to find up to 20% more backers to make your goal. At $25, a backer got one kit. At $50, a backer got both. As expected, the $25 level was the most popular, with a total of 192 backers across the two flavours. The $50 level was the next most popular, with 145 backers.
4. Create experiences
This campaign created two experiences: a Taco Fiesta, and a Taco Truck Experience. These two experiences were priced above a “product-only” reward, because people value experiences more than things. The Taco Fiesta was aimed at flats and groups of people who wanted to create an experience together. Food is meant to be shared, and is often at the center of some of our most powerful memories. By bundling together a bunch of taco kits, we could allow people to create their own experiences with their friends, family, and co-workers. The Taco Truck Experience was a no-brainer. Food trucks are mobile. If you are holding an event, having a taco truck pull up to feed the masses for $5,000 isn’t a bad deal, and creates something memorable. In the end, selling 5 of these experiences alone contributed 25% of the total raised – not a bad deal at all.
5. End high
There were a few high-end crowdfunding rewards in this campaign, but the highest-value one is perhaps my favourite. During our reward discussions, I mentioned to Otis and Sarah that the most they could charge for a reward was $8,000. This is a restriction put in place by Kickstarter to deter money laundering. But it also got us thinking: what could be offered at $8,000? In Otis’ words, the couple probably knew some “cool cats just crazy enough to give us $8,000” – so what would those people want? As we were sitting in their funky kitchen, they looked up to the ‘Mexican art/shrine construction’ on the wall (pictured here) and realised they could easily create a personalised ‘shrine’ to their top backers. A place in their home where that person could be remembered daily. For a crazy cat willing to give $8,000, it seemed appropriate.
A photo posted by The Lucky Taco (@theluckytaconz) on
This was one of my favourite-ever campaigns. Otis and Sarah took the bull by the horns and managed to make crazy things happen – everything from a billboard in Central Auckland, to a day giving out free tacos to anyone who rocked up.
Their campaign was successful because they worked their asses off, but having rewards that people wanted, was a real help to them as well.
If you want me to help you with your crowdfunding strategy and rewards, then check out my crowdfunding workshops. These are one-on-one collaborative meetings where we brainstorm and plan your own campaign for success.
