Blossom Social: Turning an investor community into ambassadors

Investing can be an intimidating topic but having a strong understanding of personal finances and investing is one of the most important skills we can develop throughout our lifetime.

Blossom Social is a trailblazing fintech company based in Vancouver, BC that has embarked on a mission to empower the world to make better financial decisions. With its verified stock portfolios, trades, and investment ideas, Blossom is quickly becoming the go-to purpose-built app for investors.

Blossom came to FrontFundr intending to raise $1MM to complement an existing $1MM raised in their round backed by LOI Venture and other prominent investors. The campaign focused on raising capital to fuel growth and marketing, invest in product development and operations, and support server and API costs.

With over 100,000 investors using their app and a mailing list of over 30,000 subscribers, Blossom built anticipation for the campaign in the weeks leading up to launch. They were strategic in setting their target goal for the raise to effectively create a sense of scarcity and gamification for the raise. They also empowered their investors to become ambassadors with a great social sharing campaign. As a result, not only did they double their target raise, but they broke several FrontFundr records in the process.

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Blossom’s raise in a snapshot

• Blossom raised over $1.34 million through FrontFundr, marking the second-largest equity crowdfunding campaign in FrontFundr history.
• They had the biggest launch day ever on the FrontFundr platform with over $500k raised from 450 investors within 24 hours.
• Blossom also broke the FrontFundr record for the quickest campaign to successfully launch and close their raise at just 3.5 days!
• With a community of over 100,000 app users and a mailing list of 30,000 subscribers, Blossom had 45,000 page views in the few days they were live.
• The company’s mission is to empower the world to make better financial decisions and by opening up their round to everyone, 81% of their investors were retail investors.
• Blossom built excitement for the campaign with weeks of strategic social media posts leading to the launch of the campaign.
• The campaign had an average investment of $1,815 from 742 investors, with 78.3% of investors paying via credit/debit card.

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Building anticipation with your community

Your campaign promotions shouldn’t begin on launch day. You should start warming up your network by building anticipation before asking for their investment. Blossom started commenting on users' posts within their app and dropping exciting hints about an upcoming round on LinkedIn.

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‍Setting a target raise you can oversubscribe

A realistic and achievable target raise can be the difference between a successful campaign and an unsuccessful one. You want a target that can be fulfilled quickly to create a sense of urgency and scarcity with investors. A good target allows you to reach 100% of your raise goal to start oversubscribing the round. This social proof can get investors excited about investing since it reflects interest in the raise.

Blossom wanted to raise $1M over 1.5 months through FrontFundr to complement the $1M in existing funds raised in the round. They chose to set their target to $500k, sharing with their community that they were making this allotment available exclusively to them. They filled that goal in a record 24 hours! Since there was still so much interest to invest, they shared that they opened up another allotment of $500,000 to their community hitting the maximum amount they wanted to raise through FrontFundr.

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Turning investors into ambassadors

Blossom has a world-class ambassador program, working with over 50+ top-tier finance creators. In addition to having these financial influencers promote the campaign, Blossom turned their entire community into ambassadors.

The day the campaign launched, Blossom’s CEO, Maxwell Nicholson, sent an email to all 450 investors to personally thank them for their investment. He attached a custom graphic for each shareholder so they could share that they were now a shareholder in the company. The app was a sea of purple with hundreds of investors proudly displaying their shareholder badges.

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We’ve always promoted the fact that equity crowdfunding gives you the ability to create passionate ambassadors for your company. But not many companies truly empower these ambassadors during their raise. According to a 2019 study, user-generated content or referrals are seen as 2.4x more authentic than company-sponsored content. Blossom is a great example of how to turn your investors into ambassadors who help you promote the raise.

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“I couldn't think of a more perfect way to raise capital. We are literally a social network for investors so the community is a huge aspect. Our community is what makes our app so special. I'm so proud and honored to have nearly 1000 of our users – almost 1% of all of our users – as shareholders in the company.”