The Pledgecamp Platform: Part 3
Today, we explore the campaign analytics and management tools available to creators so they can raise more funds and deliver reliably.
After launching a new project, a creator on Pledgecamp is armed with the tools and analytics they need to make their project the best possible success. On Pledgecamp, a creator has access to all of the tools available on other platforms, as well as a huge host of new features only available here. Most, if not nearly all, of the features described on this page are upgraded or exclusive to Pledgecamp compared to competitors like Kickstarter or Indiegogo.
The campaign Dashboard comprises five main functions: Insights, Timeline, Shipping, Backers, and Updates. We’ll go through each of these functions in turn.
In addition, the creator can invite other users as team members to access the Dashboard and help manage the campaign. The creator can also make updates to the project page, add new rewards, and make other edits.
Insights show the funding progress and traffic metrics of the campaign. This includes things like funds raised, days left, average revenue per pledge, etc. A simple chart makes it easy for the creator to see if they are projected to hit their funding goal with their current trajectory. If not, they will receive suggestions on how they can improve their campaign and turn things around.
The sources show what percentage of traffic is coming from users on Pledgecamp vs. external referrers or custom links. This is important information that shows the impact of their external marketing spend, media traffic, and more.
Referrers give a more specific idea of the source of their campaign traffic, such as specific media websites or search engines. This table tracks the source of traffic and its impact on revenue, allowing the creator to see which sources are the most profitable and perhaps concentrate on their highest-converting sources of traffic.
Custom tags give the most granular insights to the creator. By creating a custom tag and using that URL in a specific place, for example in a specific Facebook ad or blog post, the creator can see how many people click on that exact link and purchase items from the project. Creators can make an unlimited amount of custom tags to suit their needs.
In the Rewards section, creators can see which of their offered rewards are the most popular and how they compare to each other. With this information, the creator could choose to focus on advertising their best-selling items in order to get the highest chance of conversions, or perhaps focus on adjusting their project page if customers are confused about some of the offerings.
After a project funding period is over, the Insights section will adapt to show the most relevant information. Since daily funding is closed and progress does not need to be tracked, the platform will track Backer Confidence instead.
Backer confidence is a measure of how many users have changed their vote to “not confident” about the project’s delivery chances. This information is not visible to other backers (as it could unfairly affect other people’s votes) but it is of critical importance to a creator. What can be tracked can be improved, and by providing this measure to creators, it will help creators prioritize keeping their backers happy over time compared to on other platforms.
As time goes on, some backers may lose confidence in the progress and change their individual votes to “no confidence”. As that happens, backer confidence will decrease from 100% to a new amount. The creator will also be able to see the change from milestone to milestone over time.
Rather than a set voting time, the “no confidence” vote is an open and rolling voting period. If the confidence ever reaches below 50%, that means the majority of the project has voted to cancel the project and refund the Backer Protection. Please see our White Paper if you’d like to read more on how this works.
By clicking on the Timeline tab, a creator can easily keep track of their current and future milestone promises. Importantly, they can see how much of the Backer Protection funds are tied to their current stage and the time left before it is unlocked.
As a reminder, this timeline was created and promised at the beginning of the funding period and cannot be edited or changed once money goes into the project. Each milestone in the timeline is a clear promise to the backers that whatever the creator writes in the description will be achieved by that promised time.
In the Shipping section, creators can mark their items when they are ready to ship and easily export the data for each reward so they can either ship the rewards themselves or share the data with a fulfillment company.
The creator can see at a glance how many of each item is owed to their backers at any time, so they can constantly inform their manufacturing and supply partners to keep up to date. They can also see how many of each variations are ordered, if offered, as well as how many they’ve already shipped to customers.
This keeps fulfillment and tracking features on the platform closely linked to their project page and fundraising features, emphasizing that what happens after collecting the money is just as important as collecting it in the first place. This is in contrast to a platform like Kickstarter, which offers close to no fulfillment tools or other features after the money is collected.
The Backers tab is an extremely robust backer data management system included for free on Pledgecamp. This system is unavailable on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, and historically has to be purchased as a third-party solution by nearly every creator selling physical goods. The costs are usually enormous: up to 3% of the entire funds raised by the campaign + hundreds of dollars in “setup fees”.
What this Backer management system on Pledgecamp does is allow the creator to organize and export their data in any way they need. It also allows them to make individual changes to backer’s accounts, such as updating their shipping addresses, providing refunds or cancellations, or even giving them free items as a way of providing good customer service.
The ability to organize vast troves of backer data is critically important for creators when it comes to fulfillment and manufacturing. Perhaps their reward will be fulfilled in three separate batches; with this software, they can easily filter backers by purchase date in order to separate them out and see which item totals they need to produce in each batch. Or, perhaps they are separating batches by country and want to filter backers by the U.S., Europe, and Asia in order to enable bulk shipping. Or in another case, they might want to filter by item type, separating each batch by product color and simplifying production.
You can even apply multiple filters at a time for more complicated use cases. Perhaps you produce a product with red, white, and blue color options, but for supply chain reasons the blue version will be delayed. You can create a data segment to see how many users have blue versions in their orders and export the rest to your fulfillment company to ship first.
You can then analyze the segment to see how many of these users with blue items also have red and white items, in order to reserve that inventory for when the blue items are ready. You can even apply a $5 refund or gift a free accessory into the orders of all the customers affected as an apology for the delay. You might want to take this action if you notice that the mood of your backers is particularly negative to the delay and you are at risk of having to refund the Backer Protection fund.
With this system, you have powerful data segmenting and bulk action possibilities built in, and for free. After taking these actions, the next course of action would be to update your backers about it.
Updates are an easy way to keep backers in the loop, confident about your project, and excited. Creators can use updates to celebrate milestones and all the little things in between. Updates can also be used strategically to improve the backer confidence score if the creator notices it is getting low.
The creator should also use updates for important logistical updates and to deliver bad news as well. Remember, communication is the most important element between backers and creators, and the Backer Protection amount is an incentive for creators to keep backers constantly updated and feeling confident about the project.
New updates are published in a chronological timeline that is easy for backers to follow at any time, and they are also sent to backers in the form of a notification email. Updates contain a title, body text, and opportunity to upload photos, videos, or documents that would be of interest to the backers.
Say for example, the first milestone promised was a prototype of a new kind of household machine. As an update, the creator is incentivized to describe the prototype and upload pictures and videos of it in operation as proof. The features should be clearly demonstrated as evidence, and the creator should compare what was promised in the Timeline to what was delivered in the update. Therefore, the backers would have no reason to doubt the creator and change their vote to refund the Backer Protection amount. With the project moving along and communication in place, everyone should be feeling good about supporting the project and receiving their rewards!
That’s it for this post! In the last two updates, you saw how backers and creators can navigate and use the platform, and now you’ve seen campaign analytics and management tools available to creators. We will have a final part coming out next week.
As a reminder, the demo site can be reached at demo.pledgecamp.com. Although the platform architecture and smart contract is complete, many features on the platform will be inaccessible or disabled to users until there are live projects on the platform. Creating a user account is encouraged of course, while trying the checkout process with a credit card will understandably not be enabled :)
Have a project you want to list? Contact us at hello@pledgecamp.com. For news and updates on when you can begin backing live projects, follow us on one of several options below.
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For more details about the Pledgecamp platform, refer to our white paper accessible at https://pledgecamp.com/whitepaper.
This post may contain forward-looking statements about the future functionality of the platform. The platform is currently in development, and we reserve the right to make changes to the design, names, or functionality of features in the interests of making the platform successful. For full risk factors, see white paper.
