Recruit More Crowdfunding Backers: How to Create a Successful Indiegogo Referral Program

Reaching a crowdfunding goal is no simple feat- from asking friends and family for help to distributing press releases, media outreach and crafting platform updates, there is an incredible amount of effort that goes into a crowdfunding campaign. But while project creators are busy working on these details and more, there is another resource they can tap into for help: their biggest fans, or backers.

Unlike some other popular platforms, Indiegogo provides its campaign creators with great analytics for their projects. Using Indiegogo’s dashboard, project creators can access invaluable information like funding progress, contributions by country, what websites or domains are bringing in the most money, which backers are referring more backers and how much money they’re each bringing in.

So, using this dashboard, there are a couple of different ways you can structure a referral program using the Indiegogo platform:

GIVE BACKERS MONEY BACK

Using this referral model, each time a backer recruits a new person who contributes to the campaign (at the featured perk level, or for the main perk), they will receive money back from their original contribution.

Here’s an example:

Your main perk is $50. You can offer referrers a $10 refund for each backer they recruit at the $50 perk level- they bring you 3 more backers, they get $30 back from their original $50 contribution and your campaign brings in another $150.

You can cap discounts wherever you’d like; $30, $50 (where they essentially get the product for free) or to infinity! After all, you’re still making more money each time a referrer gets someone to back your project at $50.

You can tier this structure too. For example, offer $10 back for the first 5 backers recruited and $5 back for each additional backer recruited after that.

GIVE YOUR PRODUCT AWAY FOR FREE

This referral model offers a full discount (or getting the product for free) once a certain number of backers have been recruited.

Here’s an example:

You’ll give a backer a full refund on their contribution once they’ve recruited 5 additional backers. If your product costs $100, they’ll be bringing in $500 more to your campaign in order to get theirs for free. Everyone wins!

WHAT BACKERS NEED TO KNOW

Now that you understand how the back end works, it’s time to discuss how backers will actually get credit for their referrals.

Each Indiegogo user has a unique ID- this acts as their referral code. Each time they share a link to your campaign page with their unique referral code and someone clicks their link, you’ll be able to see using your project dashboard. Each time one of those new clicks converts to a backer, you’ll see that too. Your dashboard will show you how many referrals each backer brings in and how much funding, in total, these additional backers have brought in.

Here’s what your project dashboard will look like once you see some referrals:

WHERE BACKERS FIND THEIR UNIQUE REFERRAL LINK

Once logged in to Indiegogo, backers can do any of the following to share their link:

• Copy the URL at the top of the campaign page- if they’re logged in, their unique referral code will be included in the URL of the campaign page!

Here’s an example of a campaign page’s URL with my unique referral code at the end. I can copy and share this URL anywhere to start bringing in referrals. *Everyone’s referral code will be different, so don’t use mine!

• Click any of the social media share buttons on the left side of a campaign’s video. The link your backers Tweet out or post to any other social site will also have their unique referral code in it!

Here’s where they can find the social share buttons that already have their unique referral code loaded:

Backers can share their unique referral link anywhere they’d like; in an email to their friends and families, on their social networks, on their websites- the internet is their oyster. The more they share, the more they get and the more you make!

We recommend sending out frequent Indiegogo updates that tell backers how they can participate in your referral program- if you have an email list, you can hit that too. And you can also include this information at the top of your campaign page for all to see.

HOW BACKERS CAN TRACK THEIR REFERRALS

This is simple. All backers have to do is:

• Log into Indiegogo
• Click on their name in the top right-hand corner of the homepage
• In the dropdown menu, click “My Profile”
• At the top of the page, click “Referrals”

There, they can see how many people have clicked their unique link, how many of those people backed the project and how much, in total, they all brought to the campaign.

“Running a referral contest allows you to track and incentivize people who share your campaign. You can actually know how your audience behaves and influence that behavior. This is critical for campaigns that want to leverage contributor excitement about their product to drive additional contributions and sharing.”

– Ben Bateman of Indiegogo.