Starting a crowdfunding campaign may look as easy as a quick online sign-up, designing your page, and you’re off! Unfortunately for most campaigns it isn’t quite that simple. Campaign planning and presentation takes a lot of work. So does getting your message out to the public and interacting with fans.
Here are some tools that are free or affordable and focus on the needs of small businesses – like many of the start-ups that look for initial funding on websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo – and can be used to help maximize time and money that can be better spent elsewhere:
1. Trello
“Trello is the free, flexible, and visual way to organize anything with anyone.”
This project planning tool is a great way to organize yourself or team and keeps everything you need in one place. You can add cards to your page for to-do lists, things that are in progress, and what you have completed. It gives updates when team members make changes or add things so that everyone can stay up-to-date and on the same page.
Effective organization and time management are hallmarks of successful businesses. Trello is a great tool because it helps save time by allowing companies to organize important information in one place. You can download files from places like your computer and Google Drive, insert checklists, deadlines, etc. Trello offers a wide range of features to support different business needs but you can choose not to display the ones you don’t use.
Another reason this is a great tool is that, as their website says, “Trello stays perfectly in sync across all your devices, wherever you are. There are fast and intuitive apps for the web, Android phones and tablets, iPhone and iPad, Kindle Fire, and Windows 8.” Even larger companies use their services, including Kickstarter, Google, and The New York Times.
2. Rapportive
“Rapportive shows you everything about your contacts right inside your inbox.”
The Rapportive app, available on Google Chrome, allows users to see information about people they are emailing even if they aren’t friends. This app gives you access to photos, geographical information, recent social media activity, and what they do (including their LinkedIn profile).
Rapportive is useful because it can help creators of crowdfunding projects send emails more effectively by giving them quick access to information that can be used to tailor their emails to specific contacts. This will save time on research while allowing creators to establish quicker and better relationships with fans and people in their industry. There is also an option to store thoughts on different contacts for later use.
3. Wave
“Just do what you’re good at, and lean on Wave’s smart online software for help with invoicing, accounting and payroll.”
Wave offers unlimited free invoicing as well as easy accounting and bookkeeping that is designed for easy use by the average person. This service offers a wide range of software for small business needs (focusing on companies with less than 9 employees). Wave is available for download on the App Store, and also has cheap options for payroll, credit card acceptance, and tools to keep track of your personal finances.
4. The Alexa Toolbar
“Founded in 1996, Alexa has a rich history of providing deep analytical insights to benchmark, compare and optimize businesses on the web.”
The Alexa Toolbar is available for download on Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox. This toolbar allows you to see traffic ranks for the website you are on, similar links, what a website used to look like, and has search bars that let you look up currently trending topics.
Plans for this Toolbar start at $9.99 per month depending on how many features you are interested in. They can also:
“Optimize your site and track improvement. Alexa scans your site and provides a custom report on up to 32 different performance criteria, telling you how you’re doing and exactly how you can improve SEO, usability, and more.”
Their goal is to help create tools for businesses that can help make measurable changes through analytical insight.
5. Unroll.Me
“Clean up your inbox. Save time on email with Unroll.Me”
Ever just have way to many junk emails, spam, and old useless email subscriptions in your inbox? Sorting through emails to find important ones can be a nightmare sometimes and definitely waste a lot of precious time for those who are trying to use email to help support their business operations. Unroll.Me is a simple tool – you just sign into your email account and it tells you what you are subscribed to.
You can easily unsubscribe yourself from things you don’t want to receive anymore, and you can choose to get Rollup notifications daily that combines other emails you subscribe to in an update (and you can choose what time it is sent!). This service is free but does require access to some personal information and there is a limit to the emails you can unsubscribe to before it asks you to share them on your social media.
Still, this is a great tool for identifying the emails you are getting and ridding yourself of useless things you are constantly deleting anyway. By separating emails into different consolidated updates you can catch up on important information in a way that is quicker and more efficient.
Conclusion
Many of the business aspects of running a crowdfunding project may seem tedious for creators whose backgrounds haven’t exposed them to these sorts of things. If you feel this way, are just not as organized as you would like to be, or would like to use some highly recommended tools to improve the way your business operates on a day to day basis these tools might be for you.
Feel free to leave any questions or comments below!
