What can StartEngine do to market my raise?

Campaign Marketing Guidelines

Here’s how your company gets introduced to our audience.

The Philosophy

Every day StartEngine communicates with our hundreds of thousands of users, many of whom are active investors. By raising on StartEngine, your company’s campaign will be provided ongoing exposure to this pre-existing audience. Nice!

The Strategy

Our goal is to direct eyeballs to your StartEngine campaign. This is ​different​ than advertising your offering and ​different​ than advertising your product. Creative for all promotions is meant to inspire click-throughs to StartEngine campaigns, not to close the deal, per se.

Therefore, it’s critical that you plan and execute your own marketing strategies as well.

The Rules

• No campaign will receive any more opportunity for promotion than another.
  StartEngine does not curate; we want all companies on the site to have an equally positive experience.
• All creative content for promotions is at StartEngine's discretion.
  We know the nuances of our website and the behaviors of our community best.
• Marketing Promotions are subject to change at any time.
  As more and more companies make the leap to equity crowdfunding, promotions will scale simultaneously

The Audience
Campaign Marketing Promotions are intended for all StartEngine users and investors depending on their opt-in preferences. Some promotions are sent to the entire audience at once. Others are uniquely customized for audience members with equal distribution across campaigns. That is to say—one user might receive an email featuring your campaign, and her next door neighbor might receive a promotion for a  different campaign. Custom promotions are based on previous user behavior - this means you might not receive an email featuring your campaign. 

User Behavior
You know the drill. StartEngine tracks the behavior of its users onsite. We analyze where they click, when they click, and what they invest in. This data is paired with data from email marketing campaigns to create custom experiences for users.

Custom promotions can help your campaign reach the eyes of interested parties more quickly, and with more targeted accuracy. Our machine learning algorithm may suppose, for example, that one user is interested in a certain industry (electric) based on previous behavior, and serve that user more electric-like campaigns. This is good!  Robots are good!  

The Promotions

• Owner's Bonus Launch Email
  If you participate in the Owner's Bonus, your company’s campaign will be featured in an email blast to our most active investors, those with the StartEngine Owner's Bonus, when your campaign launches. This email will be advertising a 10% bonus in your offering to the investors that have the StartEngine Owner's Bonus. This email sends every day and includes any company that launched in the past 24 hours and participates in the Owner's Bonus program.
  
  
  
  
• Launch Announcement 
  When your campaign surpasses $45,000 in funds committed, the next Thursday you will be featured as a "Recently Launched" company to our entire community, along with any other companies that crossed $45,000 in the previous seven days as well as three companies generated by our machine learning algorithm that creates a personalized experience for our users (more on that below). Reaching $45,000 also makes you eligible for inclusion in our Investor Newsletter, which goes out every Sunday (more on that below too).
  
  
  
  
• Machine Learning Algorithm
  Once you reach $100,000 in funding, you will begin to be included in Thursday's email as one of three companies uniquely targeted to users around the world by our machine learning algorithm. This is an ongoing weekly touchpoint, and your offering will be included to a different subset of users each week in the "Based on Your Interests" section of the email.
  
  
  
  
• Milestone Monday
  When your campaign reaches significant funding milestones, we give you additional exposure to our community. Every Monday, we email our community with companies that reached significant milestones in the previous seven days. Those milestones include:
  
  
  • $100,000
  • $200,000
  • $300,000
  • $500,000
  • $800,000
  • $1,000,000
  • Above $1M: companies are eligible for a milestone touchpoint at every $500,000 raised, so $1.5M, $2M, $2.5M, and so on.
  • Above $5M: companies are eligible for a milestone touchpoint at ever $1M raised, so $6M, $7M, $8M and so on.
    
    When you reach one of these milestones, you are put into a "bucket" with every other company that has reached one of the milestones above in the previous seven days. Our machine learning algorithm then picks companies from this bucket and sends unique combinations of companies to each user in our system. Some users receive 1 company, some receive 6.

• Homepage placement
  Campaigns are qualified to be featured on the StartEngine homepage when they meet certain criteria.
  
  
  1. Most Momentum​ — Features the three live campaigns that have raised the most money within the past 48 hours.
  2. Most Popular ​— Features the three live campaigns that have raised the most money.
  3. New​ — Features the three newest campaigns over $45K.
  4. Closing Soon​ — Features the three campaigns closest to closing.
     
     
     
     
• StartEngine Investor Newsletter
  StartEngine sends a weekly investor newsletter to its user base. Regulation Crowdfunding offerings may be promoted in this email if you post an update on your campaign page in the previous seven days that fits the following criteria. All criteria are objective, and unbiased. Companies that post updates that meet the criteria are selected at random. Criteria includes:
  • Business Developments
    • Information about the financial development of your company (e.g. sales development and turnover) as well as customer updates (e.g. the number of customers or new customers) or product updates about your business (e.g. new features or development milestones)
  • New Funding
    • Financing provided by other market participants, such as business angels, venture capitalists, or the government
  • Press
    • Information about a press article that covers the business or founder.
      
      
• Regulation A+ marketing
  Outside of the marketing described above, Regulation A+ offerings are also eligible for two standalone emails announcing your campaign to our audience, as well as standalone emails at the $5M and $10M milestones.

This is what we do ​for you.​ Any successful raise requires ​your own marketing ​efforts in collaboration with our efforts. Need help marketing your offering beyond StartEngine’s community? Email ​[e-mail]​ to inquire about our Promote Services.