CASE STUDY
Vagabund Brauerei
Using a multi-channel marketing strategy to over-raise local brewery's crowd investing goal by 177%.
PART 1
Overview
I was brought on a few weeks before the scheduled launch of Berlin-based brewery Vagabund Brauerei’s Seedrs crowd investing campaign and asked to manage the marketing strategy. However, the task at hand ended up being much more of a project management role and because the team was not large, I executed my own marketing and graphic design strategy as well.
The main problem
was that the established crowd investing platform we were using—Seedrs—was based in the UK and between the UK’s financial regulations and Germany’s privacy laws, we were faced with many limitations. Therefore, I had to be very careful and creative with our communications strategy.
The main goal
was to create a large list of campaign supporters before the campaign launched and garner the largest amount of pre-commitments from them as possible. Our level of pre-commitment gauged the monetary goal we’d set for the campaign and unless we reached that goal, we wouldn’t receive any of our money.
PART 2
Marketing Channels
I set up a multi-channel marketing strategy for pre- and post-launch of the crowd investing campaign. The pre-launch would be most important since financial regulations made it such that we could only directly link to our Seedrs campaign page to an approved set of emails and it was essential that we got as many of our supporters into that email list as possible.
I used a GANTT chart and Asana project management to move myself and our team through all our tasks in a timely fashion.
Channel | Pre-launch | Post-launch |
|---|---|---|
Email campaign | Mailchimp drip campaign | Continued post-launch |
Private emails | Personal emails sent by founders | |
Organic social | Countdown & excitement posts | Campaign promotion posts |
Paid social | Campaign promotion ads | |
Events | Ask Me Anything events & brewery tours | |
Website | Landing page, eyebrow, pop-up banner | Continued post-launch |
Print | Flyers & posters | Continued post-launch |
Public relations | Local Berlin news outlets | Continued post-launch |
Ask Me Anything Events
The piece of our strategy that got the most attention was the hybrid Ask Me Anything events we held in our pre-launch phase. I prepared a short, engaging slide deck for the Vagabund founders to go over at the beginning and then they spent most of the time taking questions from the in-person and online audience.
This gave campaign-interested folks an opportunity to understand the mission and vision of the brewery, get financial details about the business, and feel comfortable with the founders themselves. Plus, we got to show off the gorgeous brewery.
PART 3
External Communications
An essential part of my role was in playing liaison between the Vagabund and Seedrs project teams. We needed to be in lockstep with our Seedrs counterparts throughout the pre- and post-launch steps, and it was my job to ensure that we did.
PART 4
Campaign Outcome
The original goal was 100,000 EUR, but we quickly plowed right through that. We ended up raising 277,000 EUR, and at 177% of our goal, the campaign was a smashing success.
TESTIMONIAL
Nisha was instrumental to the success of our Vagabunds Unite crowd investing campaign. She stepped in a few weeks before launch and not only came up with the marketing strategy and creative direction, but also managed the timeline and much of the communication with our external partners. Her organizational skills kept the team and design work moving forward efficiently. We were thrilled to find that Nisha was able to focus on the big picture as well as the nitty gritty campaign details.
— Matt Walthall,
Founder & CEO, Vagabund Brauerei