How we raised $1,186,097 for XION CyberX [CASE STUDY]

XION CyberX raised more than $800k on day 1 and over a million overall. Read about how we did it—and the new strategy we discovered!

Mark Pecota | CEO at LaunchBoom

How we raised $1,186,097 for XION CyberX

XION CyberX is the most fun you’ve ever had on an eBike! With speeds up to 50 MPH and a 100-mile range, this eBike has everything you need and more. Fat tires, full suspension, mid-drive, and a two-person seat make it one of the best eBike choices on the market.

What’s more, CyberX is completely customizable. Not only can you pick the frame and seat color; you can also get a laser-printed panel design for your own unique touch.

XION CyberX campaign page

Phase 1: TestBoom

Like the majority of our clients, we started them on our TestBoom program to test demand for the product before we committed to a full launch together. In TestBoom, we use a proprietary system and predictive model to determine how successful a launch will be with minimal upfront investment of time and money.

Messaging & Positioning

TestBoom begins with our Messaging & Positioning process. During this phase, we developed the initial ways we wanted to position CyberX in the marketplace.

From this process, we came up with 2 to 4 angles to test in the market. There are many ways to communicate the value of a product. An angle can be thought of as one of those points of value that we want to lead with. Here’s what we came up with for CyberX.

  • Fully customizable to match your style
  • Enjoy the thrill of 0-30 in 4 seconds – Powerful! / Fun
  • Designed by experts

Next, we identified 2–4 audiences we wanted to test on Facebook

Think of an audience as a type of person — what are their interests, their age, their gender, etc.?

Here are two audiences we came up with for CyberX:

  • Expensive cars
  • Green tech

Test using our Reservation Funnel

Using the angles and the audiences, we’ll next want to program advertisements and send traffic down our Reservation Funnel which can be pictured below:

reservation funnel

The ultimate goal of the reservation is get the user to put down a $1 deposit to reserve the product before you launch. Why? Because those that put down $1 to reserve the product before you launch are 30x more likely to buy.

You can learn more about what we call our Reservation Funnel by clicking here.

By putting down a reservation, users were able to reserve CyberX at $2,950 (40% off retail price). After only $2,000 of ad spend, we knew we had a winner on our hands with CyberX. Here were the stats:

  • Ad spend: $2,000
  • Leads: 2309
  • Reservations: 71

Using our predictive model, we had strong reason to believe that CyberX was going to do extremely well. They passed the TestBoom program and moved into Phase 2: LaunchBoom.

Phase 2: LaunchBoom

Once a product reaches Phase 2 of the LaunchBoom system, we are committed to having a massive launch. There’s a lot of small details that go into the process of preparing the launch. For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to focus on the most important details.

Scaling pre-campaign advertising

During TestBoom, we only used a $2,000 ad budget. For LaunchBoom, we increased the budget to $103,665 for the pre-campaign. We diversified the ad budget by targeting additional audiences and testing new ad creative. Here are some notable netrics:

  • Ad Spend: $103,665.71
  • Leads: 30,505
  • Cost per Lead: $3.40
  • Reservations:
    • 954 reservations at $100
    • 73 reservations at $50
    • 256 reservations at $1
  • Cost per Reservation: $100 ( we broke even on ad spend)

As you can see, we actually did way better with a higher cost per reservation. It was a really interesting test of our reservation funnel system that showed that a higher reservation price can be incredibly effective with a high-ticket item!

VIP Facebook Group

We call those that put down the $100 reservation deposit a “VIP.” One of the benefits of being a VIP is they are added to a private VIP Facebook group. The Facebook group allowed them to interact with the XION team as well as the rest of the CyberX VIPs. This is a great way for us to create an engaged community of people before we launch.

XION CyberX VIP page

Having a “LaunchBoom”

With a pre-campaign email list built, we emailed the list when we launched to get funded extremely quickly. You can see in the graph below, the spike of sales on Indiegogo over the first 48 hours.

XION CyberX campaign totals

On the first day, we raised $807,666. Now that’s what we call a LaunchBoom!

Keeping the campaign momentum going

I like to compare a strong LaunchBoom at the beginning of a campaign to building a strong foundation for the rest of the campaign to build upon. The credibility gained by getting funded so quickly makes future visitors to the campaign more likely to convert. Here’s how we were able to capitalize on the strong start and keep momentum going.

Facebook & Instagram Advertising

The best way to continue to drive consistent and profitable revenue is through Facebook & Instagram advertising. For XION, we were able to scale spend even better than we did in the pre-campaign because we now had the credibility of getting funded quickly. Here are some notable metrics:

    • Amount spent: $51,685.50
    • Revenue: $255,069
  • Return on ad spend: 4.94x

Another reason why the advertising was so effective was because Indiegogo lets you add the Facebook Pixel (Kickstarter doesn’t allow this). By having the Facebook Pixel you can let Facebook do what Facebook does best: optimize the advertisements using their algorithms. Since we know if someone purchases from an ad, we can tell Facebook to optimize the ads and show them to more people like the person that purchased.

Indiegogo Add-On Perks

Indiegogo released a feature in 2019 that makes it much easier for campaigns to raise more money without investing more time or money. The feature is called “Add-On Perks” and acts as a way to sell your backers more products before they check out. Essentially, Indiegogo added a way to easily create an upsell strategy — which previously had been incredibly difficult to do through crowdfunding. We were able to raise additional funds for the campaign through add-ons, making it a powerful tool for this campaign!

Indiegogo Promotions

The Indiegogo team did a great job supporting the campaign with promotions. We were able to unlock many of the promotions because we had funded the project so much through email, Facebook, and PR. Here are some of the ways Indiegogo promoted the project:

  • Email newsletters
  • Homepage placement
  • High placement in the category listing

Because of these promotions and visibility on the platform, Indiegogo directly contributed $60,377 to the project.

Indiegogo InDemand

Indiegogo has a great feature called Indiegogo InDemand which allows creators to continue to sell products on the platform after the campaign ends. This is how XION is continuing to fund the project while CyberX is in production!

New and interesting

Our best-performing ad wasn’t an over-designed graphic or a slick professional video; it was a genuine reaction video from a test driver with a compelling copy hook. Take a look at the video on Facebook!

XION CyberX ad

We tested the $1 funnel and then tested $50 and then tested $100 until we were spending as much money as we were taking in reservations. The founder was taking videos of people test driving and their testimonials which help a ton for the ad creative. The founder also was super engaged in the group answering every question in there. The conversion rate on the $100 reservation was 25% which is really high for that price point of $3000

To wrap it up, here are some of the biggest takeaways:

  • XION used TestBoom to predict likelihood of success
  • Built a pre-launch email list using our Reservation Funnel to identify people who are 30x more likely to buy
  • Used pre-launch email list to have a “LaunchBoom” and get funded extremely quickly
  • Live campaign Facebook ads drove $255,069 in revenue from $51,685.50 in ad spend (a 4.94x return)
  • Using the Add-On perk enabled us to raise additional funds
  • Indiegogo promotions directly contributed $60,377 to the project
  • Used Indiegogo InDemand to continue to drive sales after the campaign ended

Are you looking to launch a product soon? Apply to work with us so we can learn more about you and your new product!

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