tiptap: Mobilizing their brand to empower their grassroots community

tiptap is a financial services startup that uses IoT technology to securely and instantaneously bridge the gap between organizations in need and individuals no longer carrying cash.

In 2021, tiptap closed on $866,775 in investments on FrontFundr coming from 317 investors as part of their $8.7MM round. Beyond their raise objective, a crucial reason they raised on FrontFundr was to make the investment opportunity accessible to Canadians. This was an important pillar to align the company’s principles of community building and awareness around their touchless giving initiative.

With a strong brand and community message, they were able to effectively move investors through the sales funnel with strategic marketing.

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tiptap’s raise in a snapshot

• tiptap raised $8,782,775 with $866,775 coming from 317 investors on FrontFundr.
• The campaign saw a 128% increase in completed investments in the final two weeks of the campaign.
• tiptap ran an integrated marketing campaign to raise awareness of the investment opportunity. They leveraged the main social media channels, YouTube, Google Display advertising, podcasts, and the Daily Hive throughout their campaign.
• From their integrated marketing campaign, tiptap saw a 13.8X return on advertising spend.
• tiptap had one of the highest conversion rates of FrontFundr users to investors with 49% of FrontFundr users investing in this campaign.
• The FrontFundr campaign amounted to 10% (making FrontFundr the third largest funder, just behind Canaccord Genuity and Haywood Securities) of tiptap’s seed round alongside traditional funding sources in private equity.
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Hitting with top of funnel with media exposure and relevant partnerships

tiptap ran their equity crowdfunding campaign across the holiday season. This can often be a difficult time for companies to raise capital; however, Tiptap's existing partnership with the Salvation Army doubled as a timely marketing campaign. Tiptap supplied the Salvation Army with their touchless payment devices for their trademark Christmas kettles, addressing a significant challenge during the season when individuals wish to contribute to those in need but may lack spare change. Witnessing the Tiptap product in action generated a widespread word-of-mouth movement, not only supporting the Salvation Army in BC in surpassing their donation goal by $1MM but also granting Tiptap significant exposure and visibility for their device and their FrontFundr campaign.

This messaging and partnership initiative was amplified with a sponsored content piece in the Daily Hive.  Published during the Christmas campaign, the article shed light on tiptap's integral role in the iconic holiday initiative. This provided context about the tiptap brand that was now being prominently seen in the streets and included a link to the FrontFundr campaign, inviting those interested to further support Tiptap's mission and join the movement.

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Targeting the mid- funnel with paid and organic social media highlighting traction

Facebook and Instagram worked really well for tiptap both organically and as a paid-advertising medium. tiptap’s marketing team estimates that they were able to achieve a 13.8X return on advertising spend for their Facebook and Instagram advertising. Most specifically, they found high engagement levels on content that highlighted monetary updates about the campaign. Their top-performing post was the day before the campaign ended when they announced they had raised over $8 million.

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Converting at the bottom of the funnel with campaign updates

Investor communication is an essential piece of the puzzle. WIth high traffic to their campaign page, tiptap shared regular updates with the followers and investors in progress, posting these updates to their page so any new traffic would see the progression as well. tiptap was able to share updates about their Salvation Army and Tim Hortons partnership which showed incredible proof of concept for the business.

“The idea of campaign updates can be daunting, but we had some that were only 5 sentences long. Frequency of updates is important, so try to engage with investors weekly and have an ecosystem of events, partnerships and other content lined up to share during the campaign.”
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- Jana Prince, tiptap campaign marketing team

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Brand identity and content are a staple of equity crowdfunding and was executed perfectly by the tiptap team. The strength of the branding and coordination of marketing activity was well-matched at targeting investors at all different points of the campaign and ultimately, not only converting their community but onboarding a number of new customers and investors.