Often, I hear the question “Should I launch on Kickstarter or Indiegogo?” My usual answer is “both.” Each platform has unique features that make them great, but this article won’t be about the pros and cons of each. Instead, we’ll dive into one of my favorite features of Indiegogo: Secret Perks.
What is a Secret Perk?
A Secret Perk is a perk on Indiegogo that is only visible to someone who clicks onto the campaign page through a unique link. That means secret perks do not appear on your public Indiegogo page.
For example, here’s what The Empire’s Indiegogo page looks like to the public:
Here’s what it looks like when you view through a Secret Perk link:
You can see that a Secret Perk was added to the top of the Perks section (highlighted in red above) and also gets a “SECRET PERK” banner at the top. Now you know what a Secret Perk is. Let’s talk about how to use them effectively.
If you’re curious, you can learn how to create a secret perk here on Indiegogo’s website.
LaunchBoom’s Secret Perk strategies
If you are like me when I first learned about Secret Perks, your mind is racing with ideas of how to use them. As you’ve probably guessed, there are some ways which are better than others. Below, I’ll dive into 4 of our top Secret Perk strategies here at LaunchBoom that we use for our Indiegogo Campaigns.
Secret Perk strategy #1 – Customized Audience Sales
Indiegogo gives creators the ability to select down to the individual whom they would like to offer Secret Perks to.
When you implement the $1 down reservation tactic, you can segment those who opted into it onto a “VIP” backer list. Those who did not opt-in would be placed onto a “non-VIP” list. Using these lists, you have two examples of pre-made customized audiences.
One of the best ways we’ve found to use Secret Perks to our advantage here is to reward the VIPs with the earliest access to the best offer we can come up with. We build out the discount or extra perks that we want and send them to the list of VIPs via a unique link so that they are the only ones with access.
Later on in the campaign, it’s important to keep driving traffic to the campaign page for a strong finish. To that end, it’s very effective to offer Secret Perks to the non-VIPs who are already far along in your marketing funnel.
Backers sometimes just need that extra financial incentive to get them to back your product. That leads us to flash sales.
Secret Perk strategy #2 – Flash Sales
In a flash sale, you promote a heavy discount on your product for a short period of time. It’s a great way to drive sales and convert people that are on the fence about backing your project, like those on your “non-VIP” list.
Without Secret Perks and their exclusive links, a flash sale would have to be public. The downside to a public flash sale is angering backers who have already backed your project at a higher price.
We typically market flash sales through email since we can control who sees the message much more easily. Secret Perks allow you to avoid this situation and be selective with whom you offer the flash sale discount. We send the flash sale offer only to people on our list who haven’t backed our campaign yet.
Secret Perk strategy #2 – Remarketing
Another great feature of Indiegogo (unlike on Kickstarter) is that they allow you to place your Facebook Pixel on your campaign page. With your Facebook Pixel in place, you will constantly be building up an audience on Facebook to remarket to.
In simple terms, remarketing is advertising to users who have already interacted with your brand in some way. In this strategy, we are specifically looking to remarket to users who have been to the Indiegogo Campaign page but did not purchase.
Using BaKblade 2.0 as an example, we decided to offer users who did not back our campaign a Secret Perk for 38% off the retail price.
The ad looked like this:
And then the Secret Perk looked like this:
Remarketing efforts typically yield a much higher return on investment. This is because the users you are targeting are more qualified since they have already seen your campaign page and require less education. Once you give them a Secret Perk for a bigger discount than what they were offered before, there is a high likelihood many will take that offer.
Secret Perk strategy #4 – Add-ons
A great feature of Indiegogo is that they allow you to upsell Add-ons or accessories when backing the main product. When a backer selects any of the main perks being offered, they get the choice to add additional products if any are made available.
It’s important to note that Indiegogo tweaked the Add-ons to no longer be a standalone mechanic. Now, they are fully integrated into perk packages. This means that whether a perk is public or sent through a secret link, you can customize Add-ons to work together with either parameter.
Here’s an example of publicly accessible Add-ons on the InDemand page for our recent campaign with Koru:
Backers are given the option for Add-ons immediately after choosing the perk they want to purchase. We worked with Koru to select beneficial extras that would compliment the main product like shears and a spray bottle.
This works great during campaigns, but even better on InDemand because you can choose the best Add-ons based on data gathered during the main campaign.
Wrapping Up
Overall, Secret Perks make the people who see them feel special. That feeling tends to lead to a higher conversion rate vs. a perk that you simply add to the public campaign page.
Those were just 4 ways that I like to use Secret Perks on our Indiegogo campaigns. What strategies can you think of?
Secret perks can be tricky! Apply to work with us today so we can help you decide how to use them.
