A Crowdfunding Reward Strategy for 2024 That Works

Learn what it takes to build irresistible rewards for your crowdfunding campaign!

To create successful rewards for a crowdfunding campaign, it’s important to use techniques like price anchoring, scarcity, and fear of missing out (FOMO). You can create urgency by offering limited discounts for a short period of time, such as a 24-hour launch day sale. It’s also important to keep your rewards simple and not overwhelming by limiting the number of options and combining similar rewards into one. Finally, be sure to clearly communicate the benefits and value of your rewards to potential backers.

Rewards can mean the difference between an ultra-successful campaign and a failed one. In this blog post, we are going to cover a proven reward strategy and tips that can help you build attractive, engaging, and converting reward tiers. Spoiler alert! The simpler, the better. Let’s take a look at the first step.

The art of price anchoring.

In the easiest explanation possible, price anchoring is a psychological effect in which you make a customer believe they are getting a better deal when in actual fact, there is not much of a price difference. 

For example, restaurants will often offer a very pricey main course (finding any excuse to make the dish expensive) and offer other menu items at a reduced price. Customers will think they are getting a great deal on the other items because the main item is more expensive. 

Here’s an example of how you can use price anchoring in your rewards:

The MSRP of your product is $295.

Your Early Bird Special is $177 (40% discount). (The actual price you want people to pre-order at).

Your campaign special is $206.50 (30% discount). (Your anchor price).

Backers will be more inclined to grab the Early Bird Special than the campaign special. This is how you make a reward more enticing.

(Pro tip: Let your anchor price be one of the first things backers see.)

Limit your rewards

Use the power of scarcity in your rewards strategy. The famous apparel brand Supreme is perhaps the best example of leveraging the power of scarcity. 

The way they do this is by releasing a product in limited quantities. They will offer 50 limited edition jackets for a limited amount of time. This creates a sense of urgency. Hundreds of customers line the streets in front of their stores to try and get the limited item.

When it comes to your campaign, you can similarly have a low amount of heavily discounted rewards available for a short amount of time, such as a 24-hour launch day sale (aka super early birds).

However, a great idea would be to offer, for example, 50 available perks at the start and keep adding 50 more as the previous 50 starts running out. This way, you keep your backers excited and move all 50 rewards. At BoostYourCampaign, we have our own tool doing this for you.

Create urgency by utilizing FOMO

“Sale ends July 2″…have you ever seen a sign like that in a store? Chances are you will want to hurry to that store and see what is on sale.

As we mentioned in the previous point, an opening sale is a great way to turn page visitors into backers. If you limit your Super Early Bird discounts as well as set a time limit, you are more likely to get more people backing your project. 

This reaction is known as FOMO, or fear of missing out, and it is one of the most popular marketing strategies to ever exist. You need to make your page visitors feel like they need your product and that they are getting it at a massive discount. This will also prevent people from thinking that they will rather buy your product at the normal price after your crowdfunding launch. 

Keep it simple. The fewer rewards, the better.

Your intentions might be good when offering many different reward options. However, there is a fine line between variety and overwhelming your potential backer. This is called the “Paradox of choice”, and it is just as important as any of the other steps in this campaign. 

If you look at any very successful crowdfunding campaign’s rewards, you will notice a few well-designed rewards that offer value and excitement. 

One way you can do this is by combining other rewards into one with a slightly higher price. The reward with a slightly higher price will offer more value to backers and do much better.

Here is an example from the Primal: The Awakening Kickstarter campaign: The results speak for themselves.

By adding a few extra’s to the reward that would not have cost much to create and adding “CORE” vs. “ALL-IN” in the title, the higher level perk received close to 2500 backers, vs 1855 on the lower entry perk.

Setting up effective rewards for your crowdfunding rewards may seem easy because it is. If you keep the above points in mind, you will be able to create rewards that convert!

If you are thinking of launching a crowdfunding campaign but have no idea where to begin, book a call with our experienced team of experts HERE.