Have you ever backed a product on a crowdfunding platform? Or have you ever launched your own crowdfunding campaign? According to Backer-Founder's 2021 annual crowdfunding report, total funds raised in Taiwan in 2021 surpassed NT$3.3 billion.
And when it comes to crowdfunding, SurveyCake has to be mentioned. As the survey platform of choice for many crowdfunding teams, SurveyCake is beloved by users for its polished interface, convenient dashboard, rich question types, comprehensive marketing tracking codes, and advanced analysis after collecting responses. Today, let's look at how we helped a Taiwanese crowdfunding team achieve exciting results in the Japanese market.
According to statistics from the FINDIT research team, Taiwan sees no more than 1,400 crowdfunding proposals a year, while the number of crowdfunding surveys published on SurveyCake has already surpassed 5,000, showing that SurveyCake has become an essential tool for crowdfunding teams.
In recent years, as the Japanese crowdfunding market has matured, more and more experienced crowdfunding teams have started turning their attention to Japan, using crowdfunding as a way to expand into the market. In response to this trend, SurveyCake launched a Japanese version in 2022, making it easier for Taiwanese crowdfunding brands to take on the Japanese market through crowdfunding, and Rakukyo Co., Ltd. is one company that has successfully used SurveyCake for crowdfunding.
Rakukyo's operating team is a group of Taiwanese with extensive crowdfunding experience in Taiwan, now focused on the Japanese market, running campaigns on Japan's largest crowdfunding platform, Makuake. Accustomed to using SurveyCake for pre-launch warm-up, the Taiwanese team ran into many challenges facing the Japanese market, such as differences in internet culture, which gave Ray, who led the "PasswordPocket" campaign, quite a headache.
"We tried using a paid-survey platform in Japan for pre-launch testing. Response speed was fast, but it always felt like people were filling out the survey just for the money. We couldn't be sure whether they were the right audience or just people answering carelessly for cash," Ray shared about the challenges before launch.
The PasswordPocket Team Builds a Survey with SurveyCake
After digging deeper, the Rakukyo team discovered that pre-launch surveys simply weren't a common practice in Japan's crowdfunding world. Most campaigns instead used a landing page for promotion, which is very passive and doesn't help a team understand what consumers are thinking.
Determined to use a survey for in-depth research, Ray reached out to the SurveyCake team, and together with our Japan market specialist, they worked on the survey design best suited to Japanese internet users, discussing how to build a rich, eye-catching survey with images and text that could double as a landing page.
Thanks to SurveyCake's highly flexible survey interface design, Ray tried embedding the landing page's images directly into the survey, placing a matching image next to each option, so the survey gauged consumer interest while also serving as a product pitch. One survey, two purposes.
"Compared to a landing page, a survey has stronger interactivity, and it drives traffic smoothly into LINE OA," Ray explained. It turns out Ray also used the custom thank-you page feature, automatically redirecting respondents to add the brand on LINE after completing the survey. This powerful call to action achieved a 70% add-friend conversion rate, meaning 7 out of every 10 respondents added the account as a friend, showing that consumers willing to complete the survey were high-value members with more goodwill and stronger loyalty toward the brand. The team was thrilled with these excellent results.
"SurveyCake gives us a channel to communicate with potential customers, and further increases sales opportunities."
Facing the challenge of different Japanese consumer habits, Rakukyo chose to meet it head-on, carefully designing its SurveyCake page to let the survey drive pre-launch momentum and successfully lower the cost of gaining friend-adds. In the end, the PasswordPocket campaign hit its funding target 10 minutes after launch, and by the time of writing had raised over 8 million yen, with momentum still building. The entire team is extremely satisfied with SurveyCake.
In recent years, Taiwanese companies have kept setting new records with crowdfunding campaigns in the Japanese market, yet entering the Japanese market is far from easy. Cultural differences and language barriers are details that require real attention, and only continuous trial and error can uncover the approach that works best.
Asked what other advantages SurveyCake offers, Ray noted that other survey tools felt too basic in design for their needs, adding: "What's great is that SurveyCake can flexibly switch between Chinese and Japanese interfaces. For our Taiwanese team, that saves a lot of effort in day-to-day operation."
With the launch of the Japanese version, SurveyCake connects Taiwan and Japan through surveys, helping lower the cost of language and communication. We look forward to working with Taiwanese companies of all kinds to expand into the Japanese market. If you have any questions about the Japanese market or crowdfunding surveys, or need any assistance, feel free to contact us anytime.
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