Over the weekend, I was really chuffed to reach my first goal on Patreon. In just a few weeks, too. A real feel-good moment.
A couple of Patrons have emailed me since to say that they have received a notification from Patreon with the good news. They wanted to congratulate me but also to let me know that they thought it sounded a bit too ‘finite’.
The subject and opening line reads:
Jack Lowe reached their goal of $1,000!
and then:
Thank you! Your pledge helped Jack Lowe reach their goal:
I think they’re right. It sounds like I’ve done what I set out to do and that’s that. One Patron joked, “Can I stop paying now?”
He was only joking, of course, but it was the first thing he thought nevertheless.
Is there any way the wording of this could be altered, to be more open-ended and motivational? Perhaps reminding Patrons that this a work in progress and that there might be more than one goal on a Creator’s page?
As it happens, the wording of my goal ends with:
Thank you for your pledges so far…keep 'em coming!
So, if people read on (which they often don’t), they’ll come to that. But perhaps Patreon could think of saying something similar and/or something like:
Spread the word and help XXXX increase their income/Patrons…
This could very well be the reason that each and every time I achieve my current goal, at least 2 Patrons drop. I have been up and over my current goal over 5 times in the past year, and I still am unable to maintain it. I am really curious if this is the reason.
I’ve found that my goals motivate not only me, but my patrons as well. I’ve noticed when I had monetary goals I’ve had patrons pledge the difference so I can reach that goal as opposed to a reward amount and now that I have community goals, they tend to pick up momentum the closer I am to the next goal. My patrons are very excited about helping me achieve goals and I usually get great feedback after the emails go out, but I have to agree that “Such and such has reached their goal!” sounds very final.
Any chance of a rewording of the emails instead of just canning them? Something like “Such and such has reached their 2nd (or whatever number) goal thanks to you! Click to see what’s next!” Something like that not only implies that there are multiple goals to achieve, but that we’re not done and their continued support will help to achieve future goals.
I agree with this. Re-wording them to encourage people to keep pledging, on Lochy’s point, maybe add in how much to the next goal, etc would be really beneficial. @carla
Great feedback. We totally agree, but want to turn these off for now, because they don’t do these things. We need to think about better ways to message these things and to celebrate milestones and do so in a way that is meaningful to both the creator and the patron.
Thank you for taking this feedback on board and for thinking about it, @carla — much better to turn them off for the moment until you come up with a better way to do it.