Simpli Press goes from idea to crowdfunded with a referral contest

We were looking to hit a crowdfunding goal of $25,000.

"Based on advice, we knew that we needed at least 5,000 emails to have a successful crowdfunding campaign. But this seemed daunting.

How am I going to get at least 5,000 email addresses?"

With Kickstarter & online sales, it’s about getting the word out.

"We looked at other successful referral campaigns and realized it would be really helpful in building our audience.

People were encouraged and rewarded for referring friends. Using this technique, our signup list was made of about 35% referrals."

KickoffLabs is good for starting customer interactions.

"When someone signs up through KickoffLabs, a lot of times you get their social profiles. We would use this information to engage our leads individually on Twitter and other social networks.

A relationship starts through communication, and now you’re not just talking to a wall."

We easily pushed our email list to MailChimp.

"Using KickoffLabs MailChimp integration, we were able to further engage our email subscribers through newsletters.

The closer we got to crowdfunding launch, the more emails we would send out. This helped assure people remained excited about our launch."

It was exciting to hit our funding goal within the first hour!

"We got 5,000 conversions during the length of our KickoffLabs campaign. That took us from a few hundred initial leads to being funded in the first hour!"

"Since the pre-launch and successful crowdfunding campaign, we’ve been busy setting up a real business!"