For those who are not aware, @tim and I executed a grant to create a PoolTogether event at Permissionless. The idea was to learn how the Protocol can start to market at events effectively and see how we could help build community and TVL.
The ultimate learning that we had was:
a. Events present an AMAZING opportunity to build leads for our multi-delegator sales tool
b. Events can help us raise awareness and drive deposits from individual contributors but more experimentation is needed.
If you were at Permissionless or involved with the planning, please add/change any comments on the the key learnings:
PoolTogether Permissionless Debrief
# Background:
The first ever Permissionless event took place in Palm Beach Florida between May 17-19. PoolTogether determined that the cost of sponsorship was too significant, but instead wanted to experiment to learn if it could effectively run a guerilla campaign and drive budget to protocol.
# Campaign:
PoolTogether created special Hawiian shirts with the message “Ask Me How To Win $10,000” with a link to the website winfreemoneydaily.com as well as special POAPs to give away to attendees.
If attendees claimed the POAPs and deposited $100 ptUSDC, they were entered into a draw to win 1 of 3 $10,000 delegations for one month.
Additionally, PoolTogether threw an event at Civil Society, a brewery near the event conference and set up an EventBrite for attendees to RSVP their attendance where attendees also received a free PoolTogether towel.
# Results:
POAP Campaign
PoolTogether distributed a small amount of POAPs, approximately 200 POAPs.
51 POAPs were claimed an approximate 25% claim rate
14 people deposited or had already deposited a 25% deposit rate
Winfreemoney.com had 55 website visits
Brewery Campaign
128 people RSVP’d for the event
66 HIGH VALUE emails from DAOs/NFT projects to approach for the multi-delegator tool
60 people were issued tickets
Approximately 45 attendees at the event
# Learnings
POAP CAMPAIGN
- You can’t rely on Poolers
Poolers who attend events are not being paid to do so on behalf of PoolTogether and can’t be reasonably expected to spend parts of their days handing out POAPs. If we are going to attempt guerilla campaigns at future events, we will need to either:
- Compensate poolers for their attendance
Or
-
Hire and train local brand ambassadors to represent the protocol
-
Poaps do drive interest
People are interested in POAPs and will claim them if they are clearly explained to attendees
- Delegations drive action
The winners of the POAP delegations were extremely excited to win and specifically went out of their way to deposit into the protocol.
Brewery Event
- People are interested in PoolTogether
When PoolTogether throws an event, people talk about and want to show up
- We can generate a lot of high value leads
Big names from big projects will show up to PoolTogether events
- Poolers are great ambassadors
At PoolTogether events, Poolers are great ambassadors for the protocol and will be more than willing to engage people in conversation.
- PoolTogether’s assets are strong
PoolTogether’s twitter and community are very strong ways to get the word out to the Defi community and drive attendance.
Recommendations
- Have separate objectives
The POAP campaign is an interesting experiment to drive awareness and TVL from events, but it is completely separate from the Brewery meet up which is great to generate leads and build relationships for the multi-delegator tool. Setting objectives and separate budgets for each in the future is recommended.
- Hire brand ambassadors
If it is determined that PoolTogether wants to engage in a TVL/depositor campaign, hire dedicated people to focus exclusively on the distribution of POAPs and the claiming of them.
- Use high-value merch selectively
Both towels and shirts were extremely popular, however, they were both extremely expensive to produce. When trying to generate leads and build relationships, these high-value giveaways are a great tool. However, these assets should be distributed sparingly to the general public as the cost/return ratio doesn’t make sense.
- Get email consent/use a professional event management tool
It is very important to get email consent from all attendees so that we can put them into a lead nurturing funnel while being GDPR/CASL compliant. There are lead generated based event management tools that can help us achieve that.
- Build a nurture/convert email campaign
Ensure there is quality content to send to email addresses to support the sales efforts after the event so that we can convert these high profile projects into depositors.