Last week donors pledged $15,000 to bring Tea Journey to life.
As you read this note our total paid subscriptions will top 325 and our Kickstarter campaign will have reached nearly 30% of the final goal. There are now 30 days left in the campaign. Many Kickstarter ventures are fully funded in a 30-day window but we need to act quickly to draw attention to our “replenish rewards.”
We need to make the most of each day…
Founding sponsors have committed an additional 1,000 packets of tea and several new tea experience rewards totaling $20,000. This boosts the value of Tea Journey rewards to $95,000 USD (our current goal).
The word is getting out. We have 185 Kickstarter subscribers (and another 130 who subscribed direct from the website). They hail from Iceland and Indonesia to Eastern Europe, India, UK and New Zealand. Those who see the prototype tell us they love it.
The combination of support from bloggers, media and social media has brought us this far but reaching goal depends on peer-to-peer appeals to your friends in tea. Eighty-two percent of our Kickstarter donors are friends in tea. They are responding to short personal notes at a rate of 1% – that’s 5 per 500 notes sent.
A simple note is all it takes: 70% of millennials prefer a “peer” endorsement and rely on non-celebrity bloggers over the glitz and glam of stars. Only 3% of the 14,000 consumers surveyed by Collective Bias say they even consider buying a product endorsed by a celebrity.
The articles, images and video in Tea Journey are authentic, unvarnished, detailed and devoted to tea. Your note should be the same.
Do these five things and we will be celebrating our success on June 1.
1) Open a PayPay account and add $30 (for up to 500 names). GreenInbox only accepts PayPal payments.
2) Signup for GreenInbox.com (and select and upload either your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, Linkedin connections or email contact list). Click the check box beside the names of everyone you think will be interested in Tea Journey (up to 500).
3) Personalize the note below.
4) Click send.
If you are short of cash I will be happy to reimburse you…. better yet, send a note to [email protected] with your Paypal email and I will send you $30 in advance.
I emailed 317 appeals this week and there were 60%+ opens resulting in several donors.
I know a lot of people but not nearly enough to reach the Kickstarter goal.
If you help us by doing this, I am convinced that together the tea community will reach the $96,000 goal but it needs to be done now…. send as many as you can as quickly as practical. It takes donors several days to evaluate the magazine. In many instances it takes appeals from three or four of you to tip the scale.
Tomorrow is too late.
Dan
SAMPLE LETTER
Dear (or Hello, or Hi) <first_name>
Tea Journey magazine presents authentic and elusive tea knowledge translated from publications in China and other tea lands. The mobile app and website is a collaboration between western tea journalists and tea experts to introduce readers to the world’s finest gardens and teas. Choose from these awesome tea rewards: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/teajourney/tea-journey-magazine
I did!
Your Name
GreenInbox ADVICE
1) Focus the message on the recipient, not you.
2) Make the message positive
3) Keep the message short.
4) Include a clear call to action.
5) Do not use short links (like bit.ly)
Most email providers (like gmail) will mark your message as spam if it includes bit.ly, goo.gl, tinyurl etc. Moreover, better to use the full link since people like to know what’s the target web page. Using the full link will increase the number of people that actually click on it. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/teajourney/tea-journey-magazine
