In-depth: How I use Bonjoro to suprise and delight my patrons

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I’ve been using Bonjoro for a few months to communicate with my patrons, and I wanted to share what I’ve learned!

What is Bonjoro? It’s a service that makes it easy to send personalized video messages via email.

How does it work? Using their website or app, you record a short video (mine are usually 45-60 seconds) for a single person. When you click send, the video is uploaded to Bonjoro, and then Bonjoro sends an email to the person you specified. That email contains a video thumbnail and a short message, and tells the recipient to click to watch the video. When the recipient clicks, they are taken to a web page where they can watch the video and (optionally) write a reply to you.

What’s the value of doing this? It provides a moment of “surprise and delight” for the recipient, because they have probably never received a personalized video message from anyone. Unlike email, there’s no way to fake personalization with a video, so the recipient knows that you took the time to record it just for them. I can’t prove it, but I believe that sending Bonjoros leads to higher patron retention and a stronger affinity to me and my brand. Plus, I actually enjoy sending them… it feels good to tell people that you appreciate them! :heart_eyes:

When do I send a Bonjoro to patrons? Currently, I send a Bonjoro when (1) a new patron signs up, (2) a patron edits their pledge, (3) a patron has stayed with me for six months, or (4) a patron cancels (either explicitly cancels or just fails to fix a declined payment by the end of the month). I’ve also experimented with sending a Bonjoro to remind a patron to fix a declined payment, but I stopped sending those because it felt a bit weird to me… I like to focus my Bonjoros on expressing gratitude.

Why send a Bonjoro to someone who cancels? I want to thank them for their past support, give them an opportunity to provide feedback, and communicate to them that it’s totally fine that they cancelled (I’m not upset at them!) and they are still free to contact me.

What do I say in my Bonjoro video? Here’s a real Bonjoro I sent that you can watch.

How do patrons react? About 90% of people open the email from Bonjoro, about 80% of the people who open the email watch the video, and about 50% of the people who watch the video write me a reply. (That’s an amazing level of engagement!!) The replies are usually along the lines of “this is so surprising”, “wow thank you for sending this”, “I’m really glad to support you”, and “here’s why I joined as a patron”.

Doesn’t it take a lot of time to send these? No, it actually takes very little time. Bonjoro is designed around making the recording and sending process as efficient as possible. I wait until I have a few videos to send, and then I walk outside for 5 minutes and record all of them at once. Because of integrations (see below), that is all the work that is required.

How much does it cost? Here’s the pricing page. There’s a free plan, a $25/month plan, and a $45/month plan.

What can you do with the free plan? Send unlimited videos, access your analytics, and use 1 integration.

What’s an integration? Integrations allow your Bonjoro account to talk with other applications you use… such as Patreon! Once you enable the Patreon integration in your Bonjoro account, you will automatically get a Bonjoro “to-do” added to your account every time a new patron signs up, which includes their name, email, and pledge amount. This means that there is no typing or work involved, other than recording the video itself! All you have to do is open up the Bonjoro app on your phone, and it will show your “to-do list”. Then you tap on a name in your to-do list, tap again to record, tap to stop recording, and tap one final time to send. Bonjoro already has their name and email address (due to the Patreon integration), and thus it can go ahead and email the video to the recipient.

What more do you get with the $25 plan? You get 3 integrations, 1 message template, and custom branding:

  • Having 3 integrations means that you can connect to Patreon plus 2 other services. For example, you could connect Shopify and then a Bonjoro “to-do” will be added to your account every time someone makes a purchase from your online store.
  • Having 1 message template allows you to pre-fill the subject line and message text that gets emailed to the recipient, which ensures that the email wording matches your “brand voice”.
  • Custom branding allow you to customize the landing page of the video, namely the background image, logo, and call-to-action button. (With the free plan, your video landing page will have Bonjoro branding, and the call-to-action button will be “sign up for Bonjoro”, which might be confusing to recipients.)

What more do you get with the $45 plan? You get unlimited integrations, unlimited message templates, and a couple other small features. This is actually the plan that I use. The price seemed crazy before I signed up, but after using Bonjoro for a while, I realized I needed access to multiple message templates. Why? Because I send Bonjoros to patrons for 4 different reasons, plus I send Bonjoros to people who purchase a product I sell (which has nothing to do with Patreon), and all of those situations need different branding (in the email and on the landing page). If you only have 1 message template, you have to make your email and landing page branding much more generic.

Is it worth the cost? I can’t prove it, but I think so. If a handful of patrons stick around that otherwise might have cancelled, then I have covered the cost. It also creates a deeper connection between patrons and my brand, and the value of that is hard to measure. Also, I plan to continue expanding the situations in which I send a Bonjoro (both related and unrelated to Patreon), which makes it more and more likely that Bonjoro is providing monetary value to my business.

Are there any discounts? The only “official” discount I know of is an unspecified discount for nonprofits. However, after I signed up for the free Bonjoro trial and decided I liked using it, I sent a Bonjoro to the Bonjoro team making the case for why I deserved a discount, and they gave me a good discount! :raised_hands:

Any other Bonjoro hacks/tips? Yes! Bonjoro integrates with Zapier, and Zapier integrations do not count towards the Bonjoro integration limit. Since the Zapier free plan gives you 5 free integrations, you could integrate Bonjoro with 5 different applications via Zapier, even when using the free Bonjoro plan. (Zapier is also the only way to automatically create Bonjoros for scenarios like “patron edits pledge” and “patron cancels”.)

I hope this information is helpful to some of you! I’m more than happy to answer questions if you have them! :bulb:

Also, if you want to see what it’s like to receive a Bonjoro, feel free to send me your email address in a private message, and I’ll gladly record one for you! (That way, you can see what the email looks like, what the landing page looks like, how replies work, etc.)

Kevin

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Thanks for this post! I have been using Bonjoro for about a year for my patrons and you really put a lot of great info in here.

Do you have an automation you use for (3) when a patron has been with you for six months? I would love to add some time based reward videos!

Thanks!

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@dearestscooter You’re very welcome!

I actually don’t have an automation that creates a Bonjoro “to-do” after a patron has pledged for six months. Instead, I create those Bonjoros manually. (As an aside, I track each patron’s pledge length in a Google Sheet that is automatically updated via Zapier.)

Since you’ve been using Bonjoro for much longer than me, I’d love to know: Can you tell whether it has made a meaningful impact on your Patreon campaign, especially with respect to patron retention?

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I have sent out at least a thousand of them over the past year, but I am not super great about tracking the data. I can say that it makes me FEEL like I have some influence or control over patron retention, even if it is small an indirect.

In addition to saying thanks, I direct the patrons to an FAQ page I have set up for common questions they might have about getting their rewards, I have found that to be a huge help.

Happy to chat about it anytime!

From what I have seen what really works is the genuine gratitude you are talking about, using the patrons name at the beginning and end, and keeping the videos around 30 seconds.

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That’s great to know… thanks so much for sharing! I hadn’t thought about creating an FAQ page.

By the way, you should be receiving a bear suit :bear: from Bonjoro :point_down:

15%20PM

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Got my suit and was wearing it the other night!!:rofl::bear:

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I LOVE bonjoro, thank you for this amazing info, I’m going to use it to powerup my bonjoro big time!

PS: I’m proud to say I recommended to bonjoro that they get in touch with Patreon when i first started using the beta bonjoro, cos i was sure it was a match made in heaven. Happy to be so right :innocent::tada::grin:

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@dataschool thanks so much for your in-depth explanation. I wish I had the courage to try it but I think I’m too shy, also I’m not a native English speaker which makes it even harder. But reading all your positive experiences, maybe makes me want to try it one day <3

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Could you tell me the steps you have set up in Zapier to update patrons every month? Which columns do you use, etc? There are so many in Patreon API, I get super confused about what’s relevant!

Do you have different Zaps? One for new patron, one for updated patron, one for deleted patron?

Thanks so much, no worries if you don’t have time :grin:

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That’s a great question! Let me see if I can summarize:

  • Patreon has two Zapier integrations: the current version (3.1.0) and a deprecated version (2.2.0). For those who don’t know, “deprecated” just means that they will eventually stop supporting it (and possibly disable it entirely).
  • I actually use both integrations. Version 3.1.0 provides more in-depth info, but version 2.2.0 is more reliable (I just sent in a support ticket to Patreon to let them know about the reliability issues with 3.1.0). If you were starting today, just use the current version (3.1.0 or later).
  • With 3.1.0, the triggers to use are “New Member Pledge”, “Updated Member Pledge”, and “Delete Member Pledge”. With 2.2.0, the triggers to use are “New Pledge”, “Updated Pledge”, and “Delete Pledge”.
  • Each trigger is linked to a single zap, which adds a row to a Google Sheet. One sheet for new pledges, one sheet for updates, one sheet for deletions.
  • I use the “new pledges” sheet as the master tracking list. When there are new rows in the updates sheet and the deletions sheet, I use that info to annotate the new pledges sheet (so that it always has the current data).
  • As for what data I track, I think these are all the fields I use: pledge_relationship_start, first_name, last_name, email, amount_dollars, and title (from the tiers section). For edited and deleted pledges, I also track lifetime_support_dollars.

Hope that answers your question! :raised_hands:

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Amazing, thanks so much! I think I just about get it :yum:.

Did you start by exporting all your current patrons to a google sheet and use that for the ‘new pledges’ zap?

And, just to confirm: do you have 3 separate Google Sheets, or one sheet with 3 ‘pages’ (I don’t know the terminology :innocent:).

Thanks again, super duper useful info here!

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Actually, I set up the Zapier integration right before I started my Patreon campaign, so that I would have data from the very start. However, exporting current patrons from the Patreon website would be a good way to start (though you may need to filter out some of the irrelevant records/fields).

As far as I know, the “file” is called a Google Sheet, and each tab within the file is also called a Google Sheet… super confusing :thinking: Anyway, I use one file with three tabs (one tab each for new pledges, updates, and deletions).

Glad this info helpful to you! :smile:

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Hi Kevin,
Thanks for your un-depth discussion of Bonjoro.
Does Bonjoro immediately have access to all your Patrons and their email addresses?
Warm wishes,
Jai

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Perfect, yes the fact that a sheet is called a sheet and a sheet within a sheet is also called a sheet…well, it seems a little silly :wink:. Now i understand ya, thank you for your time! I can see I’m finally gonna have to cough up for the monthly pro Zapier account. Been trying to keep it below 5 zaps for ages, but this is getting outta control :yum:

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No, rather they have an integration with Patreon such that when new patrons join your campaign, a Bonjoro will be created. (Alternatively, you can use Zapier to create the Bonjoro, in which case you can add Bonjoros based on other conditions, such as “edited pledge” or “deleted pledge”.)

In any case, it only creates Bonjoros going forward - it doesn’t create Bonjoros for things that have happened in the past.

That being said, you could export all of your patron data from Patreon (as a CSV file) and import it into Bonjoro.

Hope that helps! :+1:

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Thanks so much, Kevin.

Warm wishes,

Jai

राम राम राम राम राम राम राम राम राम राम

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@dataschool this is one of the best posts I’ve ever read!! thank you so much for providing such a thorough and thoughtful post about your Bonjoro experience. DMing you now to get your info so I can send you some goodies to say thanks! :sparkles::gift:

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The first and only time a creator sent something to me from Bonjoro it got deleted as spam without even being opened.

Nothing about Bonjoro itself, I just wasn’t expecting anything from them so out it went. I’m guessing if you’re going to use this as part of your Patreon contact with a supporter, you might want to say something about it in the Thank You notice.

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@Th_Mole Interesting! I have only ever sent Bonjoros as a surprise to patrons, and my email open rate for May has been 95%! So in my case, the messages ending up in trash/spam is not a concern, even when sending them to patrons without warning.

There are two things I’m doing that might positively affect my open rate, however:

  1. I don’t use the default Bonjoro subject line, rather I customize the subject line so that a patron would recognize that it’s related to my Patreon campaign.
  2. I verified my business domain with Bonjoro, which allows Bonjoro to send emails from my email address rather than from bonjoromail.com. Many of my patrons subscribe to my email newsletter, and thus they may have already whitelisted my email address (implicitly or explicitly).
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Yup, that’s a good call. The person who sent it to me didn’t do either of those two things, which is how I know it was from Bonjoro. It wasn’t until later when he was going on about how great it was that I made the connection.

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