Meet the Experts: Effectively Using Cross Promotions with Julia Sherertz

Roy Morejon:
Welcome to Art of the Kickstart, your source for crowdfunding campaign success. I’m your host, Roy Morejon, President of Enventys Partners, the top full-service, turnkey product development and crowdfunding marketing agency in the world. We have helped startups raise over $100 million for our clients since 2010.

Roy Morejon:
Each week I’ll interview a crowdfunding success story, an inspirational entrepreneur, or a business expert in order to help you take your startup to the next level with crowdfunding. Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by BackerKit and the Gadget Flow. BackerKit makes software that crowdfunding project creators use to survey backers, organize data, and manage orders for fulfillment by automating your operations and helping you print and ship faster. The Gadget Flow is a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save, and buy awesome products. It is the ultimate buyer’s guide for luxury gadgets and creative gifts.

Roy Morejon:
Now let’s get on with the show.

Roy Morejon:
Welcome to another edition of Art of the Kickstart. Today in this episode is part of our series of interviews where I’m speaking with some of the amazing, awesome team here at Enventys Partners that I have the opportunity to work with every day. Today, I’m going to be speaking with Julia Sherertz, Cross Promotion Specialist here at Enventys Partners. Julia, thanks so much for joining us today.

Julia Sherertz:
Thank you for having me.

Roy Morejon:
So, we’re so glad to have you here today to talk about crowdfunding cross promotions. I know this can be one of the single most effective ways to generate great conversions for people’s inventions for people that have already launched crowdfunding campaigns. Tell our audience a little bit about yourself and what you do here at Enventys Partners.

Julia Sherertz:
Sure. I’ve been at Enventys Partners for a little over a year now, and I’m the only person here that does cross promotions, so I guess I have the unique opportunity to really work with every campaign that comes into Enventys. Basically, I’m the person that outreaches and builds that relationships amongst the Kickstarter Indiegogo campaigns like the community.

Roy Morejon:
So, to begin with, give your audience, I guess, a brief explanation of what exactly cross promotions or cross collaborations are.

Julia Sherertz:
Cross promotion is a form of marketing promotion where basically a project creator is choosing to promote another project that’s usually a similar audience, industry, project size, or price to his or her backer audience. I’ve come to see, just in my year that I’ve been here, that the Kickstarter Indiegogo communities themselves are very supportive and they want to help out their other campaigns as much as they can. So cross promotions have become almost commonplace for, I would say, most campaigns now, so people come to expect that they’re going to be in the updates.

Roy Morejon:
Yeah, I see that Indiegogo includes almost projects similar to this now in every single email, whether or not the creator wants it or not.

Julia Sherertz:
Yeah, I’ve seen that.

Roy Morejon:
So I guess, tell our audience a little bit more about why cross promotions are helpful or important.

Julia Sherertz:
I think they’re helpful. It’s most always a free way for people to get access to potential new backers and broaden their audiences by choosing to cross promote with other campaign. You’re getting in front of a lot more people than you originally are, and you have the potential to get those people to convert, to become backers and back your project.

Roy Morejon:
So what’s always good about cross promotions are, typically, you’re speaking to an audience that already has an account on the platform, whether it be Kickstarter or Indiegogo, and their likelihood to convert is typically much higher, usually.

Julia Sherertz:
Yes.

Roy Morejon:
What is important to consider, I guess, when a company, an entrepreneur, a startup is deciding whether or not to cross promote with another campaign?

Julia Sherertz:
So I’d say the first and most important thing is selecting the right campaigns for you to reach out to. So, for instance, if you’re crowdfunding, your product is a smart home speaker, you’re not going to reach out to another smart home speaker ’cause that’s going to be one of your competitors. Therefore, you want to make sure you look for, for instance, another smart home product or another tech product in your industry. Like you said, the best cross promotional partners are ones that are going to have a similar audience as you, and you’re going to want to find campaigns that your backers are going to also be interested in your project.

Julia Sherertz:
But also, on the other hand, you want to be on the lookout for campaigns that have red flags that they’re not a legit project. You want to stay away from those, and people that might not be cross promoting, they might not be interested so you want to make sure that you stay away from those campaigns.

Roy Morejon:
Got it. What is your typical strategy for pitching a cross promotion once you’ve identified a good project to work with?

Julia Sherertz:
Once I’ve selected a campaign that I want to reach out to, I compose a simple, catchy message proposing the partnership, of why I think that we have similar audiences, why I think it would be beneficial for both campaigns, and I think that they’re a good match. You want to make sure you keep it short and sweet ’cause people are busy and they might just ignore your message.

Roy Morejon:
Indeed.

Julia Sherertz:
You got to be persistent too.

Roy Morejon:
Awesome. So when a creator agrees to cross promote with another project, what does that usually entail? What do they look for? Talk about that a little bit.

Julia Sherertz:
What I typically do is once they’ve agreed, you want to make sure you keep that open dialog between the two projects just to make sure you’re both on the same page of when you’re going to be updating and make sure that they actually do follow through with it. Having exact dates planned out figures that part out, and then you’ll help write the update and then include cross promotions always at the end, usually. I typically say two to three because if it’s anymore, it seems spammy to your backers, and that’s not what you want to come across as.

Julia Sherertz:
You always want to make sure you include a catchy project title, a short blurb about your campaign, and then an image or a GIF to catch people’s attention, and always include your link to your page ’cause otherwise people won’t be able to find you.

Roy Morejon:
Exactly. What kind of results could a campaign creator expect to see from cross promotions?

Julia Sherertz:
I don’t have any exact numbers of conversion or pledges, but I do know that it consistently bring in money for campaigns, and like I said, it’s a free way of marketing. I also think that I seen the amount varies based on product price and what the product is, how many cross promotions are being included in the updates. A lot of times, if you have more than three, like I said, people are just going to maybe ignore them. I say these are all various factors that contribute to how successful they are, so you want to find out what works for you and your campaign and your backers and just stick with that, what you find that works.

Roy Morejon:
Nice. How can crowdfunding creators help their agency get the best return from cross promotions?

Julia Sherertz:
I’d say just providing as much information of who they want to target, who their target audience is, who they want it to be, so therefore, it helps … you pick the campaigns that you think would be the most beneficial in the long-term and always providing them … When I ran an update, sometimes I like to have … if they have a promotion or a special going on, helps backers peak their interest a little bit. Like I said, as much information as you can write about your campaign and who you want to target.

Roy Morejon:
What else should crowdfunding creators know about cross promotions?

Julia Sherertz:
I think cross promotions are a great way to cut your marketing costs if you’re not spending money on ads or any social media ads. It’s a free way to reach more customers more efficiently and build your credibility if you’re choosing the right campaigns and partners to promote with. I think every campaign should give cross promotions a try. If you’re on the fence about it, go for it. If it doesn’t end up helping your campaign, you didn’t lose any money for it. I think it really, in the long-term, benefits your campaign.

Roy Morejon:
Absolutely. Well, Julia, you’ve made it into the launch round. I’m going to rapid-fire a handful of questions at you. You good to go?

Julia Sherertz:
I’m ready.

Roy Morejon:
All right. If you could meet with any entrepreneur throughout history, who would it be?

Julia Sherertz:
I’m going to pick someone that’s relevant to today, I would choose Jeff Bezos because we all live in the world of Amazon. I order an insane amount of things that I probably shouldn’t order on Amazon. I just think it’d be cool to talk to someone … He literally started just by selling books, and now he is part owner of the largest platform online right now, so I just think he’d be really cool to sit down with him.

Roy Morejon:
What would be your first question for Sir Bezos?

Julia Sherertz:
I would just say if he could work for any company … other company or person in the world right now, who would it be ’cause I think that would show who … ’cause he’s so successful, it would show who he looks up to and respects in this business world. So I want to find that out.

Roy Morejon:
Nice. Well, keeping in that same vein, who did you look up to growing up?

Julia Sherertz:
Going to be cliché and say my mom just because she had a very successful, demanding career, but she still managed to make it to all my soccer games and all my recitals and all that stuff, but still was working all the time, so I guess I wanted to be that when I was little and still do.

Roy Morejon:
Nice. What’s been your favorite project that you’ve worked on so far?

Julia Sherertz:
Since I’ve been here, I would say, Duo because I think it’s a very smart product that’s relevant in today’s world ’cause everyone’s always multitasking, so it’s very … it solves the problem that … or gives a solution to a problem a lot of us have, which is evident, so it’s continued success still on Indiegogo.

Roy Morejon:
Indeed. What’s your favorite part of your job in terms of your day-to-day?

Julia Sherertz:
I would say, well I get to work with every campaign, like I said, so I like that part. But I just get to see … I’m looking at campaigns all day so I get to see what’s out there. I like variety and the products online.

Roy Morejon:
Nice. Last question. What does the future of crowdfunding look like?

Julia Sherertz:
I would say I have seen more and more well-known names from crowdfunding like Lego or Segway and Miracle Grow. I think they’re trying going towards crowdfunding. That’s why I think their future is bright, and it’s a way for these bigger brands and even smaller companies to test a product to see if it’s going to do well before they invest a lot of money into it.

Roy Morejon:
Absolutely. Well, Julia, you’ve done well. Thank you so much for being on the show today, and thank you to our crowdfunding podcast sponsors, the Gadget Flow and BackerKit. Julia, thanks so much for being on the show today.

Julia Sherertz:
Thanks for having me.

Roy Morejon:
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Art of the Kickstart, the show about building a business, world, and life with crowdfunding. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, awesome. Make sure to visit artofthekickstart.com and tell us all about it. There you’ll find additional information about past episodes, our Kickstarter guide to crushing it, and of course, if you loved this episode a lot, leave us a review at artofthekickstart.com/itunes. It helps more inventors, entrepreneurs, and startups find this show and helps us get better guests to help you build a better business. If you need more hands-on crowdfunding strategy advice, please feel free to request a quote on Enventyspartners.com.

Roy Morejon:
Thanks again for tuning in, and we’ll see you again next week.