We have seen a lot of amazing innovators within the crowdfunding industry from crowdfunding platforms to due diligence tools to marketing software; we have seen it all. Until now, there has been one major piece missing to the puzzle for entrepreneurs beginning their journey to raise capital through the online mechanism of crowdfunding. The question always has been, “how do I begin my preparation for my campaign?” After reviewing the Krowdster App, I now have an answer for them.

Krowdster is an analytics app used to research, optimize, and discover crowdfunding campaign metrics on projects from the top crowdfunding websites on the web including Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Tubestart, Rockethub, and Pozible. These analytics are invaluable for project creators who are interested in learning the secrets behind the success of crowdfunding campaigns within their category. Today’s blog discusses the Supporter Analytics module within the Krowdster platform. The application has the following modules for project creators to utilize when doing preliminary research for their own campaigns:

• Crowd Builder
• Social Capital Gauge
• Campaign Optimizer
• Platform Analytics
• Category Analytics
• Campaign Analytics
• Rewards Analytics
• Creator Analytics
• Supporter Analytics

Crowd Builder Review (Premium Feature)

How it works: Grow your network of supporters on social media with the world’s largest and fastest growing database of crowdfunding supporters. Filter users by social network, category, location and keywords to engage with people who have previously supported similar campaigns than yours. Use the Social Capital Gauge module to find out how many Twitter followers and Facebook friends you are short of reaching your goal and start growing your networks well ahead of launch. On average Krowdster members use this tool for 8 weeks before launching their campaign.

A critical element of all crowdfunding campaigns is identifying potential backers well before you ever launch a campaign and building relationships with them. To understand the types of relationships that can help you succeed in your campaign, one must understand the general concept of strategic partnerships. Most people are only after individuals who can contribute to their funding goals but perhaps a more important approach to take is to identify thought leaders and influencers who not only will contribute to your campaign, but will also become brand ambassadors for your project or cause. The crowd builder platform allows project creators to do just that.

As noted in the screenshot above, it pulls potential backers and strategic partners from across the following sources:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Google +
• Reddit
• Tumblr
• Blogs, News, Websites

The Krowdster App allows you to directly engage with these individuals directly from Krowdster, allowing you to remain in once place and build relationships with backers, potential backers, and strategic partners. It essentially takes a lot of the guess work out of where to find your target audience as you can filter the App by project category to suit individual needs.

Social Capital Gauge Review (Premium Feature)

How it works: We have crunched data from over 500,000 crowdfunding campaigns and millions of social media conversations. Based on this massive amount of data, we are able to calculate with precision, how much a campaign in a certain category and funding range can technically expect to raise. Simply put by comparing the social networks of similar campaigns with yours.

The social media gauge helps determine is a project creator is ready to launch their project from the social media perspective. They can select what category their project is and input the number of followers and likes their twitter and Facebook audience is at present, then run the application to see exactly how they stack up against other projects within their category as well as with similar funding goal ranges.

To test the software on a hypothetic film & video project with a funding goal between $20,000 – $30,000, we assumed the individual had 5,000 twitter and 5,000 Facebook followers. As noted above, the Krowdster app projects that $20,000 can be raised approximately as a result of the social media reach. These projects are based on similar campaigns with similar social reaches and one should note of course that the Krowdster App does not measure engagement of the following. Successful campaigns have an engaged follower based, so numbers alone will not guarantee funding if you have not build relationships with those individual backers. The social media gauge however is valuable to a project creator simply as a check to ensure they are at least on par with similar campaigns who have raised capital in the past.

Campaign Optimizer Gauge Review (Premium Feature)

How it works: Analyze and get instant suggestions how to improve your crowdfunding campaign page setup.

The campaign optimizer is best used when you as the project creator have your own project set up on a crowdfunding platform PRIOR to launch. As noted above, the optimizer requests either the preview link to a campaign or the live link to a campaign in order to configure the recommendations. For this example, we have selected a random Kickstarter project for Noon Blinds to see what recommendations the Krowdster app would give to the project creator.

As noted in the screenshot, there are 9 categories that the optimizer analyzes by comparing the project to similar projects that succeeded in their funding in the past:

• Title Long Enough: This is important as you want to optimize your campaign with a title that will capture any searches within a crowdfunding platform that a potential backer may be searching for.
• Video Found: This ensures that you have a campaign video in your profile. Campaigns without a video have poor success rates. You must have a video as part of your crowdfunding campaign.
• Consider Lowering Goal: This compares the funding goal of your project to other crowdfunding projects within your category to determine if your goals are on average in line with what most creators ask for. It is important to note that starting at a lower goal initially and implementing stretch goals is an effective strategy to build momentum for crowdfunding campaigns.
• Description Too Short: This compares the word count in your campaign descriptions to previously successful campaigns in your category to ensure you are on average in line with previous projects. We often see that creators do not provide enough description in many cases to clearly articulate their vision to their backers & potential backers.
• Add Some Images: This compares the image count in your campaign descriptions to previously successful campaigns in your category to ensure you are on average in line with previous projects. Powerful images that are relevant to a campaign tend to have a powerful enticing effect and are a great vision communication tool.
• Connect Facebook: This identifies if you forgot to connect your social media account to your crowdfunding campaign profile page. This is critical as backers may wish to connect with you to ask you questions or simply to offer their help in promoting the campaign to ensure they get the reward they are interested in. Your early adopter backers often become brand ambassadors, so ensuring you communicate and connect with them proves to be valuable to crowdfunding success.
• Add Your Website: This identifies if you forgot to add your website to your crowdfunding campaign profile page. This is important so that backers & potential backers can check your background for credibility purposes. Although many campaigns simply redirect their website traffic to their crowdfunding campaign, it is important to include this so that when the campaign ends, they can reach you and transact with you on your website. Crowdfunding campaign profiles remain public after the campaign ends, whether they succeed or fail.
• Add More Perks: This compares the perks / rewards count in your campaign to previously successful campaigns in your category to ensure you are on average in line with previous projects. To many options is usually overkill, so ensuring that you are specific and focused on the rewards that potential backers are most interested in (which you would know from getting feedback prior to campaign launch) will yield the best results.
• Good Campaign Duration: This compares the campaign duration of your campaign to previously successful campaigns in your category to ensure you are on average in line with previous projects. The sweet spot tends to be a 30 day duration as there is more urgency for backers to contribute during a shorter window of opportunity.

For Noon Blinds specifically, the optimizer recommends a long title, connecting a Facebook account, and adjusting the campaign duration. Additionally, the Krowdster app also provides the benchmark statistics of similar projects in the past, as noted below:

Crowdfunding Analytics Overview (Free Features)

The Krowdster app has 6 modules that are completely free for anyone to use as follows:

• Platform Analytics
• Category Analytics
• Campaign Analytics
• Reward Analytics
• Creator Analytics
• Supporter Analytics

The beauty of the above modules is that they allow you to review multiple campaigns similar to a project creators for free to ensure they are modeling after successful campaigns in the past. It is the number one step for every creator to do is to find similar campaigns to theirs and not recreate the wheel when they are putting their campaign video and profile together.

Platform Analytics Overview (Free Feature)

The purpose of the platform analytics module is to compare statistics of successful campaigns across multiple platforms to determine which crowdfunding website would be the appropriate choice for you and your project. The module is segmented into three tabs; (1) platform stats, (2) funding stats, and (3) traffic stats.

The best way to see the feature of this platform is to create your FREE account here. Ultimately, some lessons learned from this section are:

• Choosing the right platform for your project and category is critical to your success
• The largest platforms are not necessarily the best for your project or category. Filter your project by category to see what platform performs best
• The benefit of funding platforms materializes only after you have successfully prepared and delivered 30% of your funding goal within the first week of your campaign. This increases the likelihood of being a feature project on a funding platforms home page
• Do your research on the credibility of crowdfunding platforms. In a new industry, there are many pitfalls to selecting a platform that is not structurally sound. When dealing with funding, you want to make sure that appropriate safeguards are in place for you and your backers

Category Analytics Overview (Free Feature)

The purpose of the category analytics module is to compare category performance statistics across multiple platforms.

The best way to see the feature of this platform is to create your FREE account here. Ultimately, some lessons learned from this section are:

• Choosing the right platform for your project and category is critical to your success
• The largest platforms are not necessarily the best for your project or category. Filter your project by category to see what platform performs best
• The benefit of funding platforms materializes only after you have successfully prepared and delivered 30% of your funding goal within the first week of your campaign. This increases the likelihood of being a feature project on a funding platforms home page
• Do your research on the credibility of crowdfunding platforms. In a new industry, there are many pitfalls to selecting a platform that is not structurally sound. When dealing with funding, you want to make sure that appropriate safeguards are in place for you and your backers
• Sometimes your project may fit into more than 1 category. In these cases, ensure you do your research of campaigns that were successfully funded in your category on multiple platforms to determine how they decided to choose the category that ultimately made them successful

Campaign Analytics Overview (Free Feature)

The purpose of the campaign analytics module is to compare statistics of campaigns across multiple platforms.

The best way to see the feature of this platform is to create your FREE account here. Ultimately, some lessons learned from this section are:

• Both success and failure leaves clues. Model campaigns after the successful campaigns and avoid the failures of unsuccessful campaigns as a starting point.
• Determine what platform to should use by assessing how crowded each campaign category is, what the relative success rates are in each category per platform, and further analyze the campaign analytics based on the funding goal range the project lands between.
• Ensure the campaign has a Video of good quality to increase the chance of success.
• Ensure the average word count in your campaign profile of previously successful campaigns is met.
• The old mantra, “a picture is worth a thousand words” holds true in crowdfunding campaign profiles. Meet the average image count based on the platform selected.
• The average duration of successful campaigns seems to be closer to 30 days.
• Ensure you update supporters early and as often as the average campaign update count suggests on the platform selected. Turn supporters into brand ambassadors.
• The average number of supporters to reach a successful campaign’s funding goal is used to determine how large of a network is needed to reach the funding goal. It will also allow you to determine your average reward price that you will need to sell (Funding Goal divided by Average Supporters per platform).

Reward Analytics Overview (Free Feature)

The purpose of the reward analytics module is to Compare rewards statistics of successful campaigns across multiple platforms.

The best way to see the feature of this platform is to create your FREE account here. Ultimately, some lessons learned from this section are:

• Different platforms attract unique audiences that contribute differently to projects
• The monetary value of your reward levels (whether high ticket or low ticket items) can be a factor in choosing the right platform for your project
• Consulting the average reward levels and the best-selling reward levels will help you set the prices of your rewards
• NEVER guess the cost of fulfilling your rewards simply by listing them in a non-mathematical fashion in line with the analytics. You must ensure you understand the financial costs of the promises you are making in order to ensure you are successful financially as well as protected legally.
• Knowing the highest and lowest reward levels can expand your mind to think of innovative, unique, and experiential incentives that you can provide backers and inspire your crowd to contribute.

Creator Analytics Overview (Free Feature)

The purpose of the creator analytics module is to compare creator statistics across multiple platforms.

The best way to see the feature of this platform is to create your FREE account here. Ultimately, some lessons learned from this section are:

• Researching crowdfunding platforms by seeing their current activities can help you select the right platform for your specific campaign
• Although most project creators choose Indiegogo and Kickstarter, that metric alone is not enough to make your determination. On the one hand, more traffic goes to these sites. On that other, that also means more competition for the available dollars
• Some crowdfunding platforms allow for teams to be added as collaboration tools. Whether you select a platform with these built in tools or not, crowdfunding is not a 1 man or woman sport. You must bring a team of people in to help you successfully crowdfund
• The ability to search by platform to determine where geographically each individual campaign creator is from allows you as the project creator to filter based on your unique circumstances and decide the right platform based on your geography.

Supporter Analytics Overview (Free Feature)

The purpose of the supporter analytics module is to compare supporter statistics across multiple platforms.

The best way to see the feature of this platform is to create your FREE account here. Ultimately, some lessons learned from this section are:

• The two largest platforms by website traffic have the most unique backers
• The average contribution per backer however is led by Pozible
• There is a category of backers known as super backers who regularly and on a recurring basis contribute to crowdfunding campaigns
• Your job as the project creator is to not necessary rely on a platform to find these super backers, but ultimately build relationships as part of your campaign preparation with these individuals who will ultimately fund you regardless of which platform you choose.

Conclusion

In summary, this new innovation to the crowdfunding industry is taking a lot of the guess work out of crowdfunding and giving awareness to first time project creators that a lot of pre-work must be done in order to successfully launch a crowdfunding campaign. 3 to 6 months of pre-planning is becoming the norm when it comes to successful crowdfunding launches and a tool like the Krowdster Application is a wonderful place for project creators to begin their journey to learn, connect, optimize, and ultimately launch a successful crowdfunding project.