Developing Your Affirmation Strategy

The threshold between non-customer and customer can be marked by two core barriers: a creative offer and a good checkout tech stack.

Developing Your Offer
A unique, well-thought out offer is important at the Affirmation stage as it is (potentially) the first time a supporter is buying from you. 

There is no such thing as a “right offer”. There is no ‘silver bullet’ offer that is going to work like a charm for every artist across every genre.

But that’s the beauty of it.

You know your fan base - and your success at the Affirmation stage is going to be heavily dependent on how creatively you can tailor your offer to them.

As you begin to craft your first Affirmation offer, keep this in mind:

...your supporter should be receiving value from your offer. Always.

As a starting place, I generally like to structure the first paid offer for our IndieX agency clients as a $15 signed CD + 2 free bonuses - the 2 free bonuses can be anything:

• Custom print patches that serve as a lifetime discount
• Handwritten notes
• Hand pressed flowers slipped into the CD

Keep the margins high, and get creative!

Your Affirmation Tech Stack
Once you have your offer sorted out, you’ll need to figure out how exactly to make this offer to your supporter and potential customer.

You’ll need a good tech stack including an e-commerce platform, an email responder, and a fulfillment source.

E-Commerce Platforms
When selecting the right e-commerce platform (such as Shopify, for example), there are a few non-negotiable features and functionalities that you should look for:

• the ability to build a nice looking sales page
• the ability to build a nice looking checkout page
• "order bump" and "OTO" or "One-Time Offer" functionality
• custom post-purchase Thank You Pages

At IndieX, we recommend Shopify (with a Zipify extension), Woofunnels, or Thrivecart, depending on what other technology a client is using at the time. WooFunnels is a go-to option for artists who have a WordPress website. Shopify and ThriveCart are great options for extending a website built on an easy-does-it platform (like Squarespace) to a cart-based platform on a subdomain (i.e. shop.yourband.com).

Email Autoresponders
With your e-mail autoresponder you’ll want to have a system where you can collect, organize, and communicate with your customers and supporters via email. This usually is in place as a part of the Permission stage.

We recommend Drip.

Fulfillment
Lastly, you’ll need a way to manage your orders, print the shipping labels, and organize your fulfillment process. This is the less-than-glamorous part of building an online business... 

We recommend integrating ShipStation with your e-commerce platform for easy creation and printing. ShipStation makes it very, very simple to automatically receive your orders from Shopify, ClickFunnels, WooFunnels, Thrivecart, or any other platform, with the ability to set up inventory, buy and print labels in the platform, and notify customers with shipping updates.