With the incredible help of thousands of Melbourne’s music lovers, the Save The Tote crowdfunding campaign was a raging success!
Almost 12,000 supporters came together to help Shane & Leanne Hilton Save the Tote - a rock music venue in Collingwood that has hosted the likes of Paul Kelly, the White Stripes, You Am I and Courtney Barnett and remains a mainstay for local acts, particularly punk and rock bands.
Introduction - A record-breaking crowdfund on Pozible
When the previous owners of the Tote announced their plans to put the venue up for sale, Shane and Leanne from the Last Chance team jumped to action. They needed to raise $3 million to purchase the hotel and save it from being snapped up by a developer.
“The Last Chance to Save the Tote campaign wasn’t just about protecting the walls, but everything that happens within them,” Shane told the Guardian in May 2023 (here).
Lifetime Members of the Tote + Last Chance
Of the 12,000-strong community that collectively crowdfunded to help The Last Chance team secure the Tote, 1096 people opted to select a reward of becoming a "Lifetime Member" of the Tote and the Last Chance for life.
All supporters pledging $1k+ on Pozible were rewarded with Lifetime Membership, along with a range of other merchandise, recognition and exclusive benefits including four T-Shirts, Tote Compilation Vinyl, each member's name on the supporter wall inside the Tote Band Room and each member's name on the Lifetime Members Board in the Front Bar of the Tote.
updated: Feb 6, 2024
Claiming Lifetime Membership through Frontcover
To allow supporters of the crowdfunding campaign to redeem their ongoing benefit of "10% Off for life" - Shane, Leanne and Gaz turned to Frontcover to help fulfil and communicate the benefits - primarily through the issuance of digital Apple and Google mobile wallet passes.
The digital wallet pass solution allows venue staff, particularly bar staff, to verify and authenticate a lifetime member, before discounting orders of food and beverage at each of the locations.
Setup
The community manager, in this case, Gareth (Gaz) Harrison, completed the community profile, membership and benefits setup by following these steps:
Setup a Community Profile on Frontcover, which included:
a Community Title;
featured Social links + Website links;
a Community Summary (About)
a list of FAQs
set the Location, Category and Tags, mainly for SEO
adding Content Cards as updates (including video updates) and a letter to members.
adding Community Managers (just Gaz for now).
Set up the Lifetime Membership and Benefit(s), including:
uploading a Membership Image as a visual (see below and image specifications here);
a Membership Title, Membership Summary and Membership Description
setting the Number of Available Memberships
setting the Eligibility (in this case uploading a list of eligible emails from the Pozible supporter data);
a Benefit Title and Short Summary;
adding Redemption Instructions Summary; and
configuring the styling of the Apple and Google Wallet Pass and also the Benefits showcased on the community profile (see immediately below).
Onboarding Members - how 60% of the community was onboarded in less than 3 days!
Immediately after the Last Chance to Save The Tote community profile was launched, the team did the following to deliver the benefits to the 1096 Lifetime Members:
Create a mailing list of eligible members (which includes mobile numbers) and uploaded the list to MailChimp (their Email newsletter service).
Prepared content for an email (in MailChimp), a Whatsapp message based on Frontcover's template and a short SMS.
LEARNING One of the key things that made their onboarding process so successful was their omnichannel approach to communicating the availability.
Launch Day
The plan was to keep the communications simple and invite eligible members to the Frontcover profile to watch the video update and claim the lifetime membership.
Email
The first comms was an email, updating members on progress and how to claim the lifetime membership & benefits through Frontcover.
Whatsapp bulk message
Since email open rates and click-through rates can be very low the team chose to send a WhatsApp message to notify the eligible members of the launch along with a link to claim the membership and benefits.
The message was sent to everyone who hadn't already claimed through the email. The notification message was sent approximately 2 hours after the initial email.
The message also included a line to instruct eligible members to check their email inbox for the email above.
SMS
The final initial communication on the launch day was an SMS. For all undelivered Whatsapp messages, an SMS was sent with a very short message with a link to the Frontcover profile and a mention to eligible members to check their email inbox.
Launch Results
Over 56% of people took up their Lifetime Membership in the first 36 hours post-launch. And, within 60 hours, 60% of the members had already claimed their life membership.
Scanning Solution for venue staff and managers
Frontcover provides a simple out-of-box scanning solution to verify Apple or Google wallet passes. This was particularly important for the operations team, to ensure discounts were tracked and managed.
The solution, which is accessible to all members, logs all verified (and verification failures) scans - along with the person who scanned the QR code.
The service also provides a self-verification tool to allow members to check in and confirm their verification status - rather than require individuals to scan and verify everyone individually.
Updates: Location-based alerts (turned off for now)
Initially, the Apple wallet passes were configured with the geo-location coordinates for both The Tote Hotel in Collingwood, and The Last Chance Rock and Roll in Melbourne. Location-based alerts were set to notify holders with a "You're near the pub" message on their unlocked mobile devices.
However, many lifetime members were getting alerts as they passed by the venues on their commute to work in the morning - since the venues are very close to key train, tram and road routes.
The team chose to roll out an update for all 660 previously issued wallet passes - to turn this feature off and re-visit the configuration and alert at a later time.
What's next?
With over 650+ lifetime membership passes issued and counting, and an ever-growing list of community supporters, live music gigs & new merchandise - we're excited about the prospects of new membership tiers, new member benefits, and deeper levels of community involvement with the Tote and the Last Chance live music venues.
So, watch this space for news and updates on how our teams build on what we've started!
