It is critical for you to know how well your campaign is going, even before it starts. This article will help you understand what a pre-reg campaign is and how we calculate your targets to reach on your pre-reg analytics page.
What is a pre-reg campaign?
This is the first stage of any campaign, where you test the water of the investment appetite for the investment proposition.
A Pre-Reg campaign (also known as a ‘Launching soon’ campaign) is your elevator pitch, giving a succinct summary of what you do, why you do it, and why you are doing it well (KPIs). It gives potential investors the chance to register their interest with very little effort. They don’t need to create an account or go through the due diligence process at this stage, but they will get early access to the campaign and can follow along on your campaign journey, before it goes live.
All they need to do is enter in their name, email address, and the amount they are thinking about investing - whether that is a supporting ticket of £20-£250, or a significant investment of £5,000+.
You can then use this data to build as strong a campaign as possible.
Who are potential investors?
These are investors who have yet to invest in your company - everyone from friends and family, to customers, business mailing lists and networks. The most important potential investors for your purposes are those members of your own community that have never heard of Republic Europe. This page gives them an introduction to the concept of investing in you and sharing in your success. It also lays the foundations of what investing via Republic Europe will mean for them. Of course existing members of Republic Europe may also preregister interest after finding your campaign on the launching soon page.
Why have a pre-reg campaign?
A pre-reg campaign is usually the most critical step in making your fund raising campaign successful, and an early indicator for what to expect when the investment campaign launches. It allows you to assess demand and plan an appropriate marketing and comms strategy to your audiences to ensure their engagement.
There are three critical reasons for running the page:
DATA! It gives us a data based approach to assess investment appetite. We will provide you with a conversion estimate of what we expect to convert. The ‘Private’ phase of a live campaign is all about getting the campaign looking as strong as possible, with both investment amount and investor numbers. You will have access to the contact details of everyone who has pre-registered, as well as the amount they’re interested in investing. This is your warm database that you can constantly retarget throughout the campaign and have a higher likelihood of converting.
COOLING OFF PERIOD: New users on the platform go through a 24 hour ‘cooling off’ period where they are not able to invest. When they pre-register, this cooling off period begins, so they will be able to invest immediately when the Private campaign launches.
COMMUNICATION: All pre-registered users will receive emails updating them of your campaign progress. This keeps them engaged and creates multiple touch points reminding them of the opportunity to invest in you. When you launch privately, publicly, hit milestones and post updates, they will receive an email, and we know from the data that these tend to be one of the highest traffic sources for campaigns.
Engaging with investors about investing in your business well ahead of your campaign lays the foundations of the concept so that by the time you launch they are highly engaged and ready to invest.
Pre-registration analytics page
We want to help you understand the likelihood of your pre-registered investors converting into actual investors and how much that could bring to your campaign. This is why we created a pre-reg analytics page for your campaign.
Having the estimated converted investment from your pre-registered amount against your campaign target can paint a clearer picture of how your campaign is doing before it goes live.
It also helps us set a data-based minimum target. Our goal is always to try and hit the target as quickly as possible, so that you can push the overfunding narrative.
How we calculate your estimated converted amount
Potential investors are given options on how much they would like to pledge to your campaign. These are categorised into set price ranges for the investor to choose from.
For your average pledge value, we take the lowest amount from their pledge in that price range (e.g £250-£500 means £250 is the chosen figure) and use that as the expected amount you're likely to receive. Statistically, around 10-20% of pledges convert to investments, meaning that £250 will result in £25-£50. In the dashboard to make our estimation more accurate, we are using a % number based on the last rolling 365 days.
Next, we add all of the pledge predictions up, which provides us with the estimated pledge conversion.
What’s not included
Currently, we do not take into account any offline direct investments. These are from investors who have backed your business before the campaign has started.
What Republic Europe is doing to help you
Our team will automatically send an email to any potential investors who are not yet ready to invest or haven’t passed the identity verification. These emails will help prompt them to complete any necessary steps and contain information around the campaign journey.
The pre-registration page will also be featured when it launches on our Homepage, in the ‘Launching Soon’ section. It will also show on the ‘Live Deals’ page.
What can you do to help
It is critical for you to market the pre-registration page across every avenue available to you. By the end of the pre-registration period, everyone should know that you are crowdfunding, and have had multiple opportunities to register their interest.
Make sure you always stay connected to your audience. Regular updates that are clear, informative and enthusiastic will keep investors engaged in your campaign and excited to invest! Bear in mind you’ll need to approve any messages with your Republic Europe Investment Associate beforehand.