This year, the US federal tax deadline is April 18, 2023. If you aren’t already prepared to file, you still have some time to get started. Whether you prepare your taxes on your own or hire a professional, you might find that filing after a crowdfunding campaign is a little more complex than filing personal income taxes. In order to accurately report crowdfunded income, you may need very specific data about when you earned money and where that money came from. While we can’t offer accounting advice — and always recommend that you consult with a tax attorney, accounting adviser, or your local tax authority — there are a few issues that the crowdfunding creators we’ve worked with often run into, and that you should keep in mind while getting ready for tax season.

Crowdfunding income must be reported on your tax returns

You will need to pay tax after crowdfunding if backers receive something of value in exchange for pledging, which is generally the case when raising money through reward-based crowdfunding. Crowdfunded money received as a gift is usually not considered taxable income. When you file your taxes, you should be reporting all of the income you made through your Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or Crowdfunding by BackerKit projects for the year. There are serious consequences, including fines and prosecution, for not reporting all business income or for incorrectly reporting income. We recommend that if you’re a crowdfunding creator who has raised funds through Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or Crowdfunding by BackerKit, you speak to a tax professional to ensure that you are meeting all of your tax obligations. 

How can crowdfunding creators determine how much money to report on tax returns?

The crowdfunding platform you use will send a 1099-K form to you if you raised more than $20,000 with more than 200 backers, and you have a US bank account. The form will detail the gross amount of revenue you earned from crowdfunding transactions, and assist you in reporting your income. 

However, the 1099-K form doesn’t tell the full story about how much money you, as the campaign organizer, need to report. Here are a couple of reasons why:

1. Even if you don’t meet the thresholds for receiving the form, you are still required to report your crowdfunding income. 
2. According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website, the form does not “include any adjustments for credits, cash equivalents, discount amounts, fees, refunded amounts or any other amounts.”
3. Project transactions that were generated outside of Kickstarter or Indiegogo won’t be reported on the 1099-K that you receive from them, but you’ll still have to pay taxes on those funds.
4. Some of the money included in the form may be tax-deductible. 

To see what your true taxable income is, it helps to get a breakdown of the money you made. If you were keeping very clear records throughout your campaign about how all of your funds were being allocated, you can use that as a guide. But if you haven’t done that, you don’t need to worry. With BackerKit Accounting Reports, you can see all of the money you raised through Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns as well as money raised through BackerKit. 

Download the Expected Revenue Report to get a detailed breakdown of where your revenue is coming from. Along with backer identification data, like email and location, this report shows you the pledge level cost, pledge level upgrades, add-on cost, shipping cost, tax cost and total cost for each backer. 

This report details the expected revenue for your backers in BackerKit, meaning this is what your project is expecting to collect based on the current backer data (regardless of survey completion) in BackerKit. The report will be more accurate after you’ve successfully charged your backers in BackerKit. 

This report can also be helpful throughout the year for bookkeeping purposes. For example, in some states, all shipping charges are considered taxable. In other states, shipping charges aren’t taxable. With the Expected Revenue Report, you can see which state money is coming from and how much of that money is allocated for shipping, so you can determine if funds are taxable.

Decide which accounting method you’re using

There are two accounting methods: accrual accounting and cash basis accounting. With the accrual method, you record revenue when you provide goods or services. If you’re using cash basis, however, you record revenue when you receive money, even if you haven’t delivered the goods or services yet. 

When you pay taxes, you’ll need to classify income based on the accounting method you’re using. If you’re using the cash method, and you collect money from your backers during the 2020 tax year, but won’t ship out rewards until later in 2021, you’ll have to report the money on your 2020 tax returns. If you’re using the accrual method, and you collect money during the 2020 tax year, but don’t ship until the 2021 tax year, you won’t have to report that income on your 2020 tax returns. Instead, you’ll report the income the following tax year.

Crowdfunding creators often use the accrual method. It allows you to offset some of the costs associated with shipping and manufacturing that might occur several months after you’ve finished your campaign. 

Regardless of the method that you’re using, you will want to know when transactions occurred. To do this in BackerKit, you can take a look at the Collected Revenue Report. This is an Accounting Report that shows you all of the transactions that happened in BackerKit. Also, toward the bottom of the report, Kickstarter or Indiegogo transactions will be listed in the section titled “platform_pledge.” The report displays the backer ID, backer email, backer state, backer country, transaction ID, transaction date, transaction amount, and transaction source.

Ensuring you have enough money to cover taxes

When it comes to paying taxes, no one wants to dip into funds that weren’t already earmarked for that purpose. As a creator, you may need that money to cover other aspects of your project, like manufacturing costs. You can make sure you have enough money on hand to cover your taxes by doing the following: 

1. Factor the taxes you’ll have to pay into your funding goal. You should consult with an accountant and look up the federal tax rates to get an idea of what you’ll owe. 
2. Take some time to research the benefits of the accrual method of accounting. As mentioned earlier, you may be able to write off expenses that occur after you’ve collected money from your backers. This could relieve some of your tax burden.
3. Collect additional taxes in BackerKit. Using the Tax Rules feature, you can charge an additional percentage based on the total cost of the backer’s pledge level plus the cost of any add-ons selected in BackerKit (minus shipping).

This feature lets you set a tax rate based on country and/or state. Doing this may increase the amount a backer will owe, which will give you additional funds when paying income tax. One added bonus: If you have backers in the EU, you can also add your VAT number and VAT address in the Tax Rules section. This information will show up on your pack list and backers’ confirmation screens and emails. 

What about sales tax?

Depending on where you’re located, you may need to pay sales tax. Typically, crowdfunding creators will only have to pay sales tax on transactions if they have a significant connection to the location of the backer. So if you live in California, you may have to pay sales tax on all of the transactions from backers in California. 

To figure out your sales tax obligation, you will need to identify where backers are located. 

Trying to manually divide backers up by location can be challenging — especially if you have a large number of US and international backers. One way to make this process easier is with BackerKit’s Segments tool. Segments allow you to zero in on specific backer data points.

Use the tool to split up your backers into smaller groups based on criteria such as location, the items they purchased, or pledge level. 

Tax season can be stressful. But when you’re prepared, you can face it with confidence. Contact our team to learn more about these BackerKit tax tools and other features that will help you stay organized and manage your crowdfunding campaigns. 

Disclaimer: BackerKit does not provide tax advice. The information presented here is for informational purposes only, and does not constitute tax, legal, or accounting advice. Consult a tax attorney, accounting adviser, or your local tax authority regarding crowdfunding tax implications and obligations that pertain to your project. 

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in 2021. It has been updated for relevance and accuracy.

The post How Can Crowdfunding Creators Prepare for Tax Day? appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Crowdfunding is all about community. One of the guiding principles of our new crowdfunding platform, Crowdfunding by BackerKit, is that “backers make it better.” Backers not only help projects grow, but are also an important part of the creator’s journey. But what if there was a way to really take your backers on a journey — an adventure! And wouldn’t it be great to not only allow them to participate by backing but also empower them to shape the project? These were the questions that the team behind Purrtagonists: Fabled Felines explored during their recent campaign.

Purrtagonists launched on Crowdfunding by BackerKit, which is currently in Beta, in October. A collaboration between artists Alchemy Art, Blushsprout, and ChocolateRaisin Fury, the project is a story-driven collection of Dungeons & Dragons and cat-themed enamel pins. Each of the furry felines featured in the designs is part of a guild setting out on an adventure.

The project had great designs and the creators put a lot of thought and preparation into the campaign, so it was no surprise that Purrtagonists was a success in terms of funding — it surpassed its goal and raised more than $24,000. But what really sets this project apart is that the Purrtagonists team found a novel way to keep their audience invested from start to finish: a “choose your own adventure” style campaign that replicated DnD gameplay.

The Challenge

All three of Purrtagonists’ creators had experience running successful crowdfunding projects in the past. They’d all also been able to build large audiences through their previous work. As a treat for their communities and to make the Purrtagonists campaign stand out from what they had done previously, they wanted to create a social, interactive campaign.

The project’s enamel pins are DnD themed and the Purrtagonists team came to BackerKit wanting to launch a campaign that mirrored what it’s like to play DnD. They’d envisioned telling an episodic story about the cats featured in the pin designs and then using polls to allow their backers to vote on different story outcomes that would change the direction of the project and the rewards offered.

Since launching the crowdfunding platform in June, we’ve been working with creators to develop tools to enable them to collaborate better and collect feedback from backers. One of those tools is the Polls feature. Most creators on Crowdfunding by BackerKit have been using polls in a more straightforward way. For instance, Westley Coleman, the creator of Novel Travelbooks, asked his backers which of his designs they were most excited about to determine what would ultimately be produced. Similarly, during the campaign for Smut Peddler X & My Monster Girlfriend, Iron Circus Comics asked their backers which design they should choose for their exclusive day-one backer pin.

The Purrtagonists team would essentially be using polls to get the same kind of information other creators were after but through interactive storytelling. This was something that we hadn’t explored before. We were excited to run this experiment with the tools we’d created to see how we could meet this need. We immediately started working with the Purrtagonists team to create the interaction and engagement that they were after.

If you’re interested in enamel pin crowdfunding projects like Purrtagonists, we hope you’ll check out Crowdfunding by BackerKit’s Pintopia in January. Learn more about the lineup here. 

The Solution

The plan was to present a new chapter of the Purrtagonists story and a poll to go along with it every 48 hours. But obviously for this to work, you need people who care about the project to participate. There are a few ways that BackerKit and the Purrtagonists team’s combined efforts were able to make sure that participation happened:

• Polls on BackerKit are designed to ensure that only people who are invested in a creator’s success are able to cast votes. That’s why only people who backed a project can participate.

• We suggested that the Purrtagonists team post an update to their project page with the new chapter and poll when the content was ready. On BackerKit, updates are automatically sent to everyone who has backed the project as well as anyone following the project.

• The updates the Purrtagonists team posted were incredibly entertaining. The writing was fun, evocative, and perfect for an audience of fantasy fans.

In the project’s first chapter, backers were asked to choose whether they wanted to “head left for monsters, cheese, and loot” or “right for chests that may or may not be traps.”

52% of voters chose “Cheese” and in Chapter 2 it was revealed that this choice unlocked a new fabled feline: Soot.

Structuring the campaign in this way created an extra layer of excitement. It gave backers a reason to return to the project page and deepened the connection between backer and creator.

The Results

There were a total of 14 different polls. Not only were they able to maintain a consistent level of participation, but during the middle of the campaign, they actually had one of their best-performing polls. The sixth poll they shared attracted 21% of their backers. What’s more, the polls generated conversation, providing yet another way that the Purrtagonists team was able to engage with their backers and gauge interest in the story and the designs.

As a repeat crowdfunding creator, you want to build a relationship with your audience. You want them to continue backing your future projects. So if you’re able to not only deliver an excellent product but also create an excellent experience, you’re more likely to turn a backer into a fan who will be happy to support your next endeavor.

The Purrtagonists team and what they were able to accomplish are great examples of why we built Crowdfunding by BackerKit. We believe that backers make crowdfunding special and that they help shape projects. And that’s exactly what backers did for Purrtagonists — they actually determined the direction of the project. It’s inspiring to see this type of innovation and exciting to think about what Purrtagonists’ creators will come up with next.

We love working with people who value experimentation, want to push themselves creatively, and are always thinking of new ways to engage their communities. If this sounds like you, please apply to launch your next project on Crowdfunding by BackerKit. We are currently accepting applications for 2023.

The post How Backers Helped Shaped the Purrtagonists Crowdfunding Project appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

We’re teaming up with Panda Game Manufacturing to help set you up for success when designing your next board game. 

Could your board game design use 25 wooden cubes instead of 50? What are some of the least expensive components to customize? How can fewer components increase sales? Join Panda Sr. Project Manager & Prepress Specialist Tyler Lipchen and Sr. Project Manager Stephen Wren as they present Game Design with Manufacturing in Mind, a presentation on optimizing your tabletop game design for mass production.

The 20-minute presentation will be followed by a live Q&A. This show is for game designers, publishers, and anyone interested in the inner workings of board game manufacturing!

Expect to Learn:

* Expert guidance on how to design your game

* How to optimize your game designs for mass production

* Insider board game manufacturing tips and best practices

* How your plans will affect your crowdfunding strategy

Hosted by:

Jason Furie – Senior Community Manager, BackerKit

Presentation by:

Tyler Lipchen – Sr. Project Manager & Prepress Specialist, Panda

Stephen Wren – Sr. Project Manager, Panda

*Be sure to stay for the LIVE Q&A with BackerKit and Panda!

SPECIAL OFFER: Attendees and viewers of the show are eligible for Panda’s new client discount of $500+ on new projects! Details of the offer will be given during the presentation.

The post Livestream: Game Design with Manufacturing in Mind appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Join us Wednesday, May 26th at 10 AM PT for Landing Page Do’s and Don’ts. During this live presentation, BackerKit will be covering everything you need to know about building an expert-level landing page to help grow your email list. RSVP today!

The email list you build before your crowdfunding launch is essential to your success. Mobilizing the people on that list can help you reach your goal. That being said, this isn’t just a numbers game. To get the best results, you have to remember that you aren’t simply trying to get as many subscribers as possible. You’re actually finding and creating a community of supporters who will back your crowdfunding project. 

We spoke to six successful creators who focused on community engagement and community building in order to grow high-quality email lists for their crowdfunding projects. Each offered advice for anyone who is looking for new ways to connect with their target audience.

Build a landing page that makes a strong first impression

“To actually be able to build your email list, I think you need a decent-looking landing page, explaining the basic concepts of the [product] and showing some art, so people can get a decent grasp and a feel for the [product]. You basically want an elevator pitch that can pique their interest and attention.” — Assar Pettersson, Beast

A landing page not only provides you with a way to collect email addresses, but it also introduces your project to prospective backers and should entice them to sign up for your email list. For Assar Petterson and his collaborators Elon Midhall and Aron Midhall, creating strong imagery for their landing page before they’d actually developed a final prototype for their tabletop game, Beast, was a critical part of building hype for their launch and attracting an audience.  

“I would start to seriously collect emails once you have something to show. We didn’t really seriously start to collect emails until we had amazing graphics of the game box. Because the first impression is really important.” — Elon Midhall, Beast 

You don’t need an overly flashy page and you don’t necessarily need a prototype right off the bat, but you do want anyone who visits the landing page to quickly understand what your project is about and why it’s exciting. That means that you have to have a firm grasp of what makes your project stand out from the crowd.

Ask for feedback

“I joined a couple of queer athletic Facebook groups. I was also already in some, and I posted my landing page. A big part of getting emails was asking for feedback on the pin. I’d say, ‘Hey, guys, I’m making this thing. You are the people who know best. What do you think?’” — Romy Simpson, Athletics Pride Pins

No one should be developing a crowdfunding campaign in a vacuum. Even if you are a solo creator, you need to ask for feedback along the way. Finding out what people think about your project is a way to refine a product or idea, but it also has the added benefit of getting people invested in what you’re working on. 

Romy Simpson, BackerKit Associate Product Manager and creator of Athletics Pride Pins, really focused on collecting feedback while building their email list. First, they reached out to family and friends and then they talked to a wider, digital audience to get their opinions on the pin project.

It can be hard to just ask people to sign up for your list, particularly in an online forum or group where the rules concerning self-promotion may be murky. But you don’t always have to be that direct. When you share your landing page and ask for feedback on your project, you’re creating conversation, you’re showing people that you value their opinions, and you’re inviting people to join you on your crowdfunding journey, which can be more enticing than simply asking people to subscribe to your email list. 

“I learned that people want to be helpful. People want to support you. People are excited to help things come into being. But, you’ll never know if you don’t ask. So you have to be OK with asking,” Simpson says.

Attend events and make real connections

“Find places where you like to engage. No matter what category you’re in, you can find an event. Maybe it’s a craft fair. Maybe it’s a design and tech lightning talk. Maybe it’s one of the millions of board game events. You want to not only attend these events, but go with a really simple way to collect emails and a really simple way to present your product — so that could be an image or a physical demo. There has to be some simple visual content that will draw people in.” – Jason Furie, Rental Rumble

It can be hard to put yourself out there at events. Networking is challenging for a lot of people, especially when you’re trying to market an idea or yourself. However, attending events that are related to your project category or theme will bring you together with a receptive audience, which hopefully will make it easier to talk about what you’re working on. 

While attending a major, national rowing event called Head of the Charles, Simpson was able to get sign-ups for their pride-themed rowing pin project by heading over to a booth operated by rowers from the LGBTQ+ community. Prepared with a QR code on their phone, Simpson, who initially thought their project might be too niche, met people who were excited about the pins and was able to direct them to the project landing page.

When Jason Furie, BackerKit Community Manager and creator of the tabletop game Rental Rumble, was building his email list, attending in-person events produced the best results.

“In-person events — nothing in my experience, converts better than that, for free. And by ‘free’ I mean ‘without spending money on ads.’ In-person events convert really well because there’s a human element,” Furie says.

When you’ve made a real connection with someone — whether that’s at an in-person or digital event — you know they’re signing up for your email list because they’ve talked to you and are genuinely interested in your project. It just makes sense that this type of person would actually end up becoming a backer.

Be genuine when reaching out to influencers

“The biggest thing when you’re engaging influential people is that you need to convey your passion. If they sense you’re really passionate, they’re likely to give you some time to hear you out. And it’s hard because it can be quite daunting going to these people. [When I reached out to influencers], I wasn’t necessarily saying, ‘Hey can you post this?’ I was just like, ‘Hey, I’m doing this thing. I think it’s pretty cool. I’m really passionate about it. Hopefully, you are too.’” — Charles Skender, Plant Light No1

Having just one influential person link to your landing page or endorse you can have a major impact on your subscriber count. But actually getting an influencer to pay attention to you is tricky. Who should you reach out to and what do you say if you do get their attention?Charles Skender, creator of Plant Light No1, says that leading with your passion and connecting with people who share those passions are the keys to influencer outreach. When deciding who to connect with, Skender paid close attention to the influencer’s mission and if it aligned with what he was doing. 

“Rather than influencers who build their social identity as a way of monetizing, [I looked for influencers who] were experts in their field and then had a large following,” Skender says. “The biggest help to me was a fellow called Joost Bakker. He’s a multi-disciplinary designer and sustainability advocate. I’d been following him for years because he’s done some pretty amazing stuff in the space of zero-waste living. That’s essentially the background I came from into this project.”

While Bakker was working on a project in Melbourne, Skender happened to be attending an exhibition nearby. Skender boldly went up to Bakker and told him about his project. Bakker ended up sharing a video of the first Plant Light No1 prototypes with more than 50,000 people on his Instagram page. “I think, the best thing about it was that it was very organic, very natural,” Skender says.

Create valuable content

“You can’t just advertise. You really need to do community building and you need to reach out. You need to have a conversation. You need to provide useful information and show what you’re doing.” — Stephen Cheng, Glove80 Keyboard

Digital communities on Reddit and Facebook can be great places to connect with people who are in your target audience. However, you can’t just drop your link and expect people to be interested in your project or sign up for your email list. This is especially true on Reddit where advertising is generally frowned upon. You have to make a contribution to the communities that you’re participating in. 

Stephen Cheng, creator of the ergonomic Glove80 Keyboard, developed a content marketing and community engagement strategy for his crowdfunding project that revolved around Reddit, and ultimately helped him gather a very strong and engaged group of supporters.

“Over a period of time we were actually creating quite a lot of content,” Cheng says. “We did Reddit posts, but it wasn’t just a bunch of pictures. It was actually an invitation to conversation, to explain much more about the ergonomics, the decisions we made, and various, very specific technical questions. And from there, we managed to build quite a substantial portion of an email list.

Cheng’s MoErgo Reddit user profile features links to their Twitter profile and Discord to give people additional ways to stay connected and updated on project developments. Most of the Reddit posts are sharing content without asking anything in return. However, there are a few posts that link to an “interest survey” where Cheng is primarily asking for feedback.

“We had this survey that probably took about 10 minutes to go through. And we made it such that the only way to join the newsletter list initially was through this survey,” Cheng says. “If you are going to join the newsletter, I know that you actually spent 10 minutes to fill out the survey.”

In conjunction with his Reddit strategy, Cheng learned that the best way to ensure that he’d built a community that would show up and pledge to his crowdfunding project was to put up a small barrier to entry. While it’d be wonderful if you were able to attract thousands of subscribers, ultimately you want to connect with people who will back your project. While this certainly isn’t the only way to build a quality list, it did help Cheng achieve an impressive conversion rate.

Some techniques shared here may not be effective for every creator or project. But, experiment and see what works for you. Whichever strategies you choose  — and you should try a variety — remember that building an email list is part of community building. All of the creators that we’ve spoken to approached this process with that mindset. You have to participate in a community to build a community. You can’t expect everyone to flock to your project page without putting in the work. So go out there and make those connections. It’s one of the most important things that you can do to prepare for your launch. 

Are you ready to put these tips into practice? Try BackerKit Launch. It’s an email marketing and analytics tool designed specifically for crowdfunding creators. Sign up today, and start growing your community with a customizable landing page. Then, use Launch to test the quality of the email list you’ve built.

The post 6 Crowdfunding Creators Offer Advice on Community Building appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Updated August 30, 2023

Your crowdfunding platform won’t serve up backers to you. You have to find them. So, before you launch your campaign, you need to build your email list. You have the power to get your project funded by growing a community of email subscribers and getting them excited to pledge to your campaign. 

Collecting email addresses can be a daunting task when you’re just starting out. However, there are so many different ways to get the ball rolling.  

First, build a landing page

A landing page is a standalone web page used to achieve a specific marketing goal, like collecting emails (whereas your website is more of a hub for your brand). This page is the foundation of your online list-building efforts. You will be directing people to it as you prepare for your campaign. You can create a landing page using BackerKit Launch — an email marketing and analytics tool designed specifically for crowdfunders. Simply sign up for Launch before your campaign begins to start collecting emails through your landing page. 

The landing page for your project should be short and sweet. It should feature: 

• A headline. This could be the name of your crowdfunding project.
• Supporting copy. A brief description of your project concept or brand works well. If you have a launch date, include that too. 
• A call to action (CTA). This is what you want visitors to do. In this case, the CTA will probably be something like “sign up for our email list to get updates on our project.”
• An email opt-in. This is the form where people submit their email addresses and agree to receive marketing emails from you. 

You can spruce up the design with your logo or campaign image, but keep the design uncluttered and the text minimal. You don’t want there to be anything on the page to distract visitors from subscribing to your list. 

A landing page is very important for your campaign’s success. This landing page for Ages of Cataria gets straight to the point, encouraging sign-ups in a single sentence.

1. Reach out to friends and family

The first people you should be reaching out to are your friends, family, and colleagues. They’re likely to be the easiest to sell on your crowdfunding idea because they’re actually invested in your success. Also, when you’re starting from scratch, having a few people on your list right away can give you a little bit of an emotional boost and be motivating. Send out an email with your landing page URL to the people in your immediate network, asking them to sign up and spread the word about your project.

2. Add a link in your social media bio and email signature

Any time you communicate with new people is an opportunity to build your email list. So, once you have your landing page up and running, put it everywhere potential subscribers will see it. Start by adding the link to your social media bios and your email signature. 

On LinkedIn, X (Twitter), and Facebook, you can go one step further and pin a post to the top of your profile that directs people to your landing page. Once you have your link on display, keep engaging with your audience and building your community on these platforms. Post regularly, sharing information about your project and other information that’s valued by the community.

Developing your social strategy

In these Facebook posts from The Story Engine Deck  — a deck of creative prompts for stories, D&D campaigns, and character concepts — you’ll see the creators talk about their product as well as social media holidays that relate to their niche.

They also share “work in progress” photos to give their audience a look behind the scenes and get them excited for an upcoming launch.

If you’re stumped about what to talk about, take a look at what other creators are doing and model your posts after theirs. Don’t forget to use relevant hashtags to give your posts more exposure. You can take a look at which hashtags are popular in your niche by looking at which ones popular creators are using or trying a tool like Hashtagify. 

Staying active on social will draw more people to your profiles, and ultimately more people to your sign-up page. It will take time to build up your community this way. But the quality of the connection you make with people will be deeper, which is better for your project in the long run.

3. Do a cross-promotion

Are you friendly with any other crowdfunding creators? Is there a creator whose work you admire and whose project appeals to a similar demographic as yours (but isn’t in direct competition with you)? If so, you should set up a cross-promotion. 

Cross-promotion is a form of marketing in which two or more project creators agree to promote each other’s campaigns to their respective audiences. You can do it while your project is live to drive more pledges to your campaign, but it can also be a good tool for collecting email sign-ups before you launch. If you’re launching on BackerKit, you can join our Creator Community on Discord to look for other creators who may be interested in joining forces.

Working with your partner

Ask your partner to share your email sign-up link with their community and agree to do the same. A social media blast is one obvious way to promote each other. But don’t forget about email. If your partner is sending out email marketing messages or newsletters to their subscribers, they might be able to save some real estate in those emails for your sign-up link. 

Other places to promote include:

• Project update pages
• Blogging platforms like Medium
• Co-branded ads
• A shared booth or table at a convention

Don’t be afraid to get creative and experiment. 

4. Host a giveaway

Getting new email contacts is a cinch when you host a giveaway. Find an attractive prize and ask people to sign up for your email list to be entered for a chance to win. Promote the giveaway on your social media accounts, get friends to share it with their networks, and ask your current subscribers to share the giveaway link with friends. You could even team up with your cross-promotion partner for a joint giveaway to get even more exposure.

Selecting the perfect prize

You may be tempted to offer an expensive or flashy prize. A new computer or a top-of-the-line TV will bring in a ton of entries and email contacts, right? But, you have to ask yourself if those are really the people you want on your list. Yes, offering a gaming console will attract a lot of people. But how many of those people will be interested in your project?

The prize you offer should be related to your project. A comic book creator, for instance, may offer an exclusive print or custom portrait. A board game creator could offer a one-of-a-kind set of dice. 

The prizes offered for Rental Rumble’s giveaway tie into the board game’s retro video store theme. The giveaway was also affordable. Rental Rumble co-creator (and BackerKit Community Manager) Jason Furie only spent $10 and was able to get 100 email sign-ups.

When the prize is relevant to your project, you’re more likely to attract people who will be interested in pledging to your crowdfunding campaign down the line.

5. Connect with influencers

If you’re working on your first crowdfunding project and haven’t really made a name for yourself yet, it may be hard to get in touch with someone who has hundreds of thousands of followers. But that’s OK. There are still plenty of other people who have a solid, engaged following or audience that will be happy to connect with you. In fact, someone who only has a few thousand active followers could be better for you than someone who has 200,000 followers who don’t generally engage with their content. 

Finding the right partner

People may say “no,” people may not get back to you, people may say “yes,” and then never follow up with you. So, cast a wide net. Reach out to micro-influencers — someone who has between 1,000 and 100,000 followers — in your project category, as well as your dream, big-name collaborators. 

To find influencers in your niche, try searching on Buzzsumo or Hootsuite. Both of these platforms have tools to help you identify influencers according to topic and location.

How to reach out

Send the influencers you find a polite message describing your project. Try sending them a Direct Message on social media or an email if they have contact information on a website. Offer to share your prototype (if you have one) with them, so they can try it out for themselves. Finally, ask if they’d be open to sharing a link to your landing page with their audience. 

Some influencers may be so excited about your project that they’ll share your link out of the kindness of their hearts. But don’t assume that that will be the case. They may have a fee for this kind of promotion or maybe they’ll just want to get your final product free. Just understand that while this technique can help crowdfunding creators build an email list and give you great exposure, you’ll have to demonstrate how working with you will benefit them.

6. Attend or host an event

Whether you host an event yourself or attend one thrown by a larger organization, conventions, meet-ups, industry parties, and seminars are important networking opportunities. Events are not only a chance to connect with people who can subscribe to your list, but they’re also great places to learn from experienced creators. 

Seek out events that are in some way related to your project or project category. Depending on what you’re creating, craft fairs, tech conventions, tabletop protospiels, and film festivals are just a few options to consider. Remember to plan ahead. Some events have registration deadlines, so look for dates that are at least two months away. 

If you’re attending a convention where you’ll be setting up a table or booth, don’t forget to bring a clipboard, paper, and a pen to collect email addresses from people who stop by to chat with you.

Can’t attend an event in person? There are online networking events and other virtual summits happening more and more these days. Seek them out on platforms like Facebook and EventBrite. If you don’t see anything that appeals to you, create your own event. Hosting a webinar or livestream, in which you describe how you developed your project and offer tips to viewers, could help you grow your audience.

7. Join Facebook groups and other online communities

Do you make enamel pins? Are you a filmmaker? Are you an author? Whichever category your crowdfunding project falls under, there’s bound to be an online community of people who would be interested in it. Go and find your crowd! 

Start by searching general crowdfunding Facebook groups. Next, take a look at Facebook groups, Discord, and Reddit to find communities related to your niche. Find the places where people are having conversations about the types of products that you are creating. Engage with them, share your opinions, and start building relationships. These could be some of the people who end up pledging to your campaign. 

As you spend more time in these places, you’ll find opportunities to either share a link to your landing page or ask people if they’d be interested in signing up for your list. You don’t want to lead with a “subscribe to my email list” request. But there will be times when it makes sense to drop a link into the conversation. 

Some groups encourage members to share their crowdfunding projects. However, other groups specifically ask users not to do this. So, make sure that this type of promotion isn’t against the community rules.

8. Write a guest post for a popular blog

Writing a guest post for a well-known blog is an excellent way to build your brand and bring some attention to your work. Even if you have your own blog, a guest post is always worthwhile because it introduces you to an even larger audience. In your post, you could write about your project and what you’re hoping to accomplish with it. But this can also be an opportunity to position yourself as an expert in your industry. 

If you’re a tabletop creator, for example, you may have some insights into playtesting that would be interesting to other aspiring tabletop creators. Or you might want to share a Top Ten list of the best games of the year. Whatever you choose, make sure that it’s related to your project — even if it’s only thematically related and not directly about your project. Most importantly, get the website you’re writing for to include a link to your landing page or website as the post’s CTA. 

Tracking down blogging opportunities

To get started, make a list of some of the online publications and blogs that you visited while you were developing your project. Which of these sites have audiences that are similar to your project’s target audience? You can also use Sprout Social, Hootsuite, and Buffer to easily search for and identify popular blogs. Once you’ve narrowed down your list, contact the blog’s owner or editor through their website or social media, and pitch your idea.

9. Encourage referrals

Once the email subscriptions are rolling in, start leveraging your current audience to get more contacts. Encourage your subscribers to share your landing page with their communities. You can offer a reward to individuals who share your link and bring in new subscribers. To do this, you’ll need a way to track referrals. Take a look at referral software like ReferralCandy. However, it may be easier and less expensive to reward all of your subscribers with a discount, premium content, or early pledge access if you hit a certain number of new sign-ups within a given time period. 

10. Use lead ads

Lead ads are used to find people who will be interested in your project and collect their contact information. This type of paid advertising can be a powerful tool for crowdfunding creators to build their email lists in many cases. If your project is something people want and you do lead ads right, it can be the best marketing dollar spent. However, if you’re going to do lead ads, they must target well.

Thinking about using lead ads for your campaign? Follow our step-by-step guide to make sure your ads are set up and optimized correctly. Get the guide here.

Facebook Ads allow you to target audiences by demographic information like age, gender, country, and interests, so you can reach the people who are more likely to be interested in your project. To ensure you get this critical part of your ad campaign right, visit the Facebook ads guide to learn how to set everything up. If you would prefer to have an expert take the reins, consider a marketing agency or service like BackerKit Marketing. You will be able to speak to an expert who will let you know if you are a good fit for this type of marketing or if it’s better for you to spend your budget elsewhere. 

It’s important to understand, however, that running ads isn’t a substitute for any of the tactics listed above. They should be used in conjunction with other list-building techniques. Ads also will not save a failing campaign. You will have to put in the leg work to build your community.

How crowdfunding creators can build an email list the right way

As you’re building your email list, keep the following best practices in mind.

Subscribers must opt into your list

It really won’t matter how many people are on your email list if those people aren’t genuinely interested in your project or projects like yours. This is one reason why it’s so important that everyone on your list has opted in to receive your emails. Another reason why it’s important is that you don’t want your IP address blacklisted or be blocked from using your email service provider. This will happen if you get a lot of spam complaints from people receiving your emails — which is bound to happen if the recipients didn’t opt in to your list.

Stay compliant with email marketing best practices and keep your subscribers happy by doing the following:

• Set expectations. When people share their email addresses with you, let them know that by signing up they agree to receive marketing messages from you. 
• Don’t buy an email list. You don’t know where contacts on these types of lists have come from and they certainly haven’t chosen to sign up for your list. There’s no use in spending money on this. 
• Let them opt out. At the bottom of your emails, there should be a link giving them the option to be removed from your list.

Focus on the quality of the list

It would be great to have a list of 10,000 people. But a smaller list of 400 people who are all ready to pledge to your campaign could end up being better for you. After using the above tactics to grow your community, you’re likely to have a high-quality list. But you can use BackerKit Launch to test the strength of it. With Launch, you’ll be able to see how many people on your list have pledged to crowdfunding campaigns in the past and are therefore more likely to pledge to again.

Incentivize sign-ups

What are the benefits of signing up for your list? Will subscribers receive exclusive insights into your project’s development process? Will they get some kind of discount or early access to your campaign when it launches? 

Your subscribers will end up helping you reach your funding goal, but this is a two-way street — you have to offer them something of value in return. Value here doesn’t necessarily mean monetary value. It can be content or simply updates on your project. World Anvil Publishing, for instance, offered a digital “Quickstart” guide for their game, Dead Air: Seasons when collecting emails before their launch.

But whatever you choose, it should be something that is enticing and that you can realistically deliver.

Don’t spam your list

As you’re growing your list, you’ll have to simultaneously keep the group of subscribers you already have engaged and prepared to pledge on launch day. But you don’t want to send so many emails that you become an annoyance. You also don’t want to send emails that aren’t related to the kind of content you promised subscribers you’d be sending. 

It may take some trial and error to figure out how often you should send emails and what you should be saying. But, as a general rule, you probably don’t want to send more than one email per week. You should also keep the content relevant to your project or industry. Just remember — no one wants spammy emails. If you see that people never open or click any of your emails, you should stop what you’re doing, and reassess your email strategy. 

Track and measure your progress

Set goals for yourself. How many email addresses would you like to have collected in a month? After you’ve decided on a number, evaluate how you’re doing on hitting your list-building goals. If you’re not close to the number you thought, it may be time to revisit your strategy. Maybe you should test your landing page copy. Perhaps the messaging isn’t resonating with visitors. 

See which channels and techniques are delivering the most email subscribers. If one seems to be a major driver of sign-ups, you may want to devote more energy there. Your time is valuable — don’t waste it on methods that aren’t bringing in results.

Takeaways

• Setting up a landing page is a crucial first step. This is where people will go to sign up for your email list online.
• Networking and collaboration can introduce your project to a wider audience. Don’t be afraid to reach out to fellow creators or influencers who are targeting a similar audience. 
• Demonstrate your value. People will want to sign up for your list or help promote your project when you explain the benefits of the relationship. 
• Set milestones. Decide how many people you’d like to have on your email list at various points in time, and then track your progress. 

To start building your email list, create a landing page with BackerKit Launch. Sign up for free today.Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in 2020. It has been updated and revamped for accuracy.

The post How to Build Your Crowdfunding Email List in 10 Steps appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Every crowdfunding project needs a landing page well before they launch.

There’s one pattern across ALL crowdfunding campaigns that helps creators launch with confidence—gathering emails of interested people who are ready to back on day 1. Your landing page is a crucial element on your path to success and BackerKit is here to help you create one that expertly showcases your product.

Expect to learn:

• The core non-negotiable elements that make up an expert landing page
• Best practices for creating compelling content on your landing page
• Key DO’S and DON’TS when creating your landing page
• The anatomy of some of our favorite landing pages
• How you can start making a landing page right now

Landing Page Examples:

• Pizza Pinz by Jason Furie
• Houseplant Oracle Deck by AG Oracle
• Return to Dark Tower RPG by 9th Level
• Blade Runner RPG by League

Create YOUR landing page today FREE with BackerKit Launch

BackerKit Launch is a marketing and analytics tool specifically designed for crowdfunding creators of all sizes. Build your community, launch with confidence.

Who should register for this event?

Anyone who wants to learn what it takes to craft an expert-level landing page to help build community before your next crowdfunding project launch.

Hosted by:

Jason Furie (Senior Community Manager, BackerKit)

RSVP and mark your calendar for:

Thursday, May 26th at 10 AM PST

The post Livestream: Crowdfunding Landing Page Do’s and Don’ts appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Updated August 30, 2023

You’re getting ready to launch a crowdfunding campaign. You’ve got your prototype and you’re about to set up your crowdfunding campaign page. But have you taken time to build your email list? Whether you’re launching on BackerKit , Indiegogo, or Kickstarter, an email list isn’t just something that’s “nice to have” — it’s the foundation of your campaign. If you don’t have a strong email list, you’re going to have a hard time reaching your goal. To give your project the best chance of success, building an email list of people who have shown interest in your project or projects like yours is essential. Here’s why:

1. Email list size can be an indicator of crowdfunding success

Email conversion rates — that is, the number of people on an email list who end up pledging to a campaign — vary. However, in most cases only a small percentage — generally, we find around 1%to 5% — of the people on a high-quality email list will end up backing your project. A high-quality list is one in which subscribers knew what they were signing up for when they submitted their addresses and where addresses were collected through legitimate means. Legitimate list-building tactics include collecting email addresses through in-person events, online forum communities, and social media. 

When you plan for your campaign knowing that a relatively low percentage of people on a legitimate email list will convert, you can get a good estimate of a couple of things:

1. What would be a reasonable funding goal for your project
2. How many email contacts you should be shooting for 
3. What the average price of your rewards should be

A note on email conversion rates

If you’re eyeing a $10,000 funding goal, and you have an average pledge of $100, you’ll need to get 100 backers to hit that goal. With a 5% conversion rate, you should have at least 2,000 people on your email list. So what if you were getting ready to launch, and you didn’t have that many people on your list? Does that mean you’re going to fail? 

Well, not necessarily. First of all, it’s important to note that the number of people on your list is just one of the factors that contribute to your campaign’s success. Campaigns fail and succeed for a number of reasons, including not clearly communicating what the product is, not properly structuring reward tiers, and not effectively marketing the campaign once it’s live. Additionally, there are some cases where a smaller list may suffice. For instance, you may have a personal list of people who have pre-committed to backing or that you know are invested in the success of the project.

That 1% to 5% conversion rate isn’t prescriptive, but it is something to keep in mind. Taking it into account can help you focus your list-building activities and put you in a more comfortable position on launch day.

However, when you collect a specific number of email addresses that lines up with your funding goal, it puts you on the right track. So if you don’t have the list that you need, it would probably be best to postpone your campaign until you do.

Adjusting your funding goal

The creators of Shapes — a metal cable holder that keeps your workspace organized — first launched their project in 2016. They set a $3,000 funding goal. But when it didn’t look like they were going to hit their goal, they decided to cancel their project and re-launch.

The second time around, they set a goal of $1,000 which was based on the number of people they had in their audience. Interestingly, their new campaign actually ended up surpassing their goal, raising more than $5,000. 

Like Shapes, War of Ashird, an RPG video game, had struggled when they initially launched the project. The creators didn’t have a strong audience coming into the project and were only able to raise around $51,000 of their $82,000 goal before they cancelled the project. 

They took some time to revise their outreach strategy, lowered their funding goal to $31,500, and relaunched the project. Not only did they hit their new goal, but they were also funded in just 12 hours. When their campaign ended, they’d raised $201,199. 

Quick tip: Ideally, a crowdfunding creator would have a decent email list before they launch. But if you’re already in the middle of your campaign, and realize that you don’t have the support that you need to get funded this time around, there’s no shame in relaunching. Actually, a failed project can be an excellent learning experience for a first-time creator. Look at it as an opportunity to build a stronger community.

2. You can’t count on people discovering your project organically

One misconception that a lot of first-time creators have is that they can just launch a project and potential backers will magically land on their campaign page. But the likelihood of people seeing your project without you doing any kind of promotion or community building is slim. 

Quick tip: Collect email addresses with a project landing page, using BackerKit Launch — an email marketing and analytics tool for crowdfunding creators. The page should describe your project and have a call to action requesting visitors submit their email addresses to get updates. Direct visitors to the page through platforms where your prospects live, like social media, YouTube, or online forums. Consider cross-promotion, in which a partner shares your landing page with their audience.

Build early momentum with a strong email list

Regardless of the platform you’re launching on, the first 48 hours after you launch are critical, and set the momentum for your campaign. This is the time when the most people will back you. With a strong email list of people who are enthusiastic about your project, you can secure those important, early pledges. In the days leading up to launch day, you should be sending emails to your subscribers to get them excited about your project and ready to pledge right away. You should also make sure to explain how crowdfunding works for those members of your audience who’ve never pledged before. It’s important to create an email strategy and send out messages at strategic times before and during your campaign.

Quick tip: Make sure to collect email addresses from people who are likely to pledge and even become advocates for your project. Tap into existing audiences. Who are the people you can count on to pledge early and have shown interest in the work that you do? Family, friends, co-workers, and social media followers should be the first place you look.

3. Validate your idea with your email list

You may have what it takes to succeed, but wouldn’t it be nice to find out what people think about your idea as soon as possible? Before you even have a prototype you can — and should — validate your crowdfunding concept by building your email list.

Are people interested in what you’re offering?

The idea behind this is simple: if you’re planning a crowdfunding campaign, and having a hard time getting email sign-ups after sharing your concept with your target audience, you might not be ready to launch. Alternatively, if people like the idea, and are excited about it, they’ll be happy to sign up for your email list. In this way, you can gauge interest in your project and start validating your idea. 

Of course, email sign-ups aren’t the only indicator of whether or not you have an idea worth pursuing. You should also be researching what competitors are doing, if any similar ideas already exist, and your target audience’s needs. But you must take a long, critical look at your concept if you’re really struggling to collect email addresses.

Get feedback from your subscribers

One added benefit of building your email list right away — even if that list is very small, at first — is that you can get feedback on your project from your subscribers. Send out surveys or updates on how the development process is going, and find out what your audience thinks. In doing this, you’ll get valuable insights about what they’re looking for or areas of your project that you might need to refine or rethink. 

What’s more, this type of communication is an excellent way to get your growing audience invested in your campaign and your success. If they were able to offer their opinions as you developed your project, they’re going to be excited to see and back the final product.

Quick tip: Once you have a list, use BackerKit Launch to test its strength. Using Launch, you’ll be able to see which of your email contacts have pledged to crowdfunding projects before, and are therefore more likely to back your project. After you’ve launched, visit BackerTracker to see if you’re trending to hit your funding goal. If it doesn’t look like you’ll hit your goal, you may want to consider canceling your campaign, and relaunching later. 

4. Your crowdfunding email list is the foundation of your marketing strategy

Are you thinking about using Facebook ads to get more backers and promote your campaign? Awesome! But you should know that ads aren’t a substitute for building your email list. If you launch your campaign, and midway through, it’s trending to fail, ads will not save your project. 

If you’re interested in a performance marketing service like BackerKit Marketing, there are a number of factors that will make your project a good candidate for this. BackerKit Account Executive Robert Wickham says, “for people who are planning their campaign, an email list is relatively important. Not having one — or having too small of a list — disqualifies them.” Another factor that Wickham looks at once the project is live is how well the campaign is performing day-to-day, and whether the creator is able to maintain that momentum. 

There are other qualitative and quantitative factors that determine whether or not ads will be a cost-effective solution for a creator (these are things that you should discuss with a representative for the performance marketing service you’re planning to use). But the bottom line is that you need the community and momentum that having a strong email list provides you with to even be a good fit for paid marketing.

Quick tip: Looking for free ways to get more backers? Before you launch, spend some time joining Facebook groups and online communities related to your project. Engage with these people and try to build genuine relationships with them. If it makes sense and isn’t against the community rules, let them know about the project you’re working on. The new friends might be want to sign up for your email list and support your campaign. 

Takeaways

• Creators who don’t have a strong email list pre-launch struggle to get pledges. 
• Around 1% to 5% of the subscribers on a high-quality email list will back your campaign. Make sure that you have enough people on your list to hit your funding goal.
• It’s important to get pledges within the first 48 hours of your launch. Sending messages to subscribers on your list pre-launch can help you secure those essential, early pledges.
• You can’t expect people to stumble across your project on your chosen crowdfunding platform — you have to take the time to grow your audience before you launch.
• If you can’t get subscribers, it might be a sign that you need to rethink your project. 
• Ads aren’t a substitute for community-building.

Start building your email list today by signing up for BackerKit Launch.

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in 2020. It has been updated and revamped for accuracy.

The post 4 Reasons Why You Need a Crowdfunding Email List appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Updated October 12, 2023

Building an email list is one of the most important things you can do when preparing for your crowdfunding campaign’s launch. The people on this list will be the ones who show up to support you early on, helping you set the pace for the rest of your campaign. If you’ve already started building your crowdfunding email list — or just aren’t sure how to get started — you’ve probably realized that it isn’t easy. This work takes time, persistence, and creativity, which is why you must approach the email list-building process in a strategic way. 

As you’re developing your product and preparing your campaign, you should invest time in building a strong email list. The strength of your email list is a factor of the quality and quantity of subscribers. That means, when building a list, you need to go beyond just monitoring your subscriber count to find ways to assess their likelihood to convert to backers. 

To make the most of your efforts, you’ll need to optimize and refine your strategy as you go. Here are a few ways to maximize your list-building activities so you can launch with confidence, knowing that you’ll have a community ready to back your project on day one. 

Building a high-quality crowdfunding email list

Not all leads are good leads. For a crowdfunding creator, a high-quality email list is simply a list of people who are likely to back your project. Here is how you can start a high-quality email list for your campaign:

• Make sure everyone knows what they signed up for.  You should always be transparent about what people can expect from you in exchange for sharing their information. If, for instance, you held a giveaway to collect leads, you’ll need to make sure that people know that they’re signing up to get updates on your crowdfunding campaign. You also need to consider whether your giveaway might motivate people to sign up just for a chance to win a prize.
• Keep your subscribers engaged once they’re signed up. Communicate with your subscribers on a regular candence, and pay attention to how they engage with your emails. High-engagement levels are often a signal that your subscribers have a high level of interest in your project. The most common types of engagements are email opens and clickthroughs (though you can create various ways for subscribers to engage with you beyond the email).
  
• Don’t buy email lists. Sending unsolicited messages to people who didn’t opt into receiving your emails can be illegal, according to GDPR and CAN-SPAM Act. Legal ramifications aside, the leads on a purchased list don’t know who you are, don’t know about your project, may not know anything about crowdfunding, and are extremely unlikely to help you get funded for all of these reasons.

From our experience, around 1% to 5% of subscribers on a high-quality list will back a crowdfunding project. In comparison, low-quality lists often get conversion rates that are close to 0%. When looking at the size of your list, keep this in mind to get a rough idea of whether your list is large enough to support your campaign.

Assessing the quality of your email list

Lead qualification is the process of determining which of the people on your email list are most likely to back your project. We’ve found that people who have crowdfunding experience, meaning they’ve backed projects in the past, are more likely to pledge to campaigns than others. Our powerful email marketing tool, BackerKit Launch, can help you assess the quality of your list by identifying what percentage of your subscribers have crowdfunding experience.

You can use Launch to see how many of your leads have crowdfunding experience. Looking at this number is a great way to gauge how prepared you are to launch.

Quick Tip: One easy way to get your project in front of people with crowdfunding experience is by creating a landing page using BackerKit Launch and then listing it on BackerKit. By doing so, your landing page will be shared with a large audience of crowdfunding enthusiasts.

Optimizing your email list-building strategy

Building a strong email list takes time. Experimenting with different approaches and analyzing your results is essential to improve the impact of your efforts. Here is a good place to start: when people start signing up for your email list, take a look at where they’re coming from by analyzing the referral sources and ask yourself:

• Where am I getting the most sign-ups from?
• Where am I getting the fewest sign-ups from?
• What are my conversion rates? (That is, the number of people visiting your landing page from a single source vs. the number of people who actually end up signing up.)

If you’ve created a landing page in Launch, you’ll be able to see all of this information in one convenient place. All you have to do is go to the “Landing Pages” dashboard and select “View Results.”

This information will tell you what’s working and what isn’t (or what’s not working as well as you may have hoped), but it’s also going to tell you where to focus your attention. You’ll have a lot to juggle as you’re preparing for your campaign’s launch, so you don’t want to spread yourself too thin and you shouldn’t waste time on something that isn’t working.

The results you see on our dashboard — also referred to as performance metrics — tell you what is happening. Use these performance metrics as a jumping-off point to dig deeper and assess the whys that are driving the performance. Those insights will enable you to improve what you’re doing and build on your success.

Here are some areas to explore in your analysis to uncover the underlying drivers of your efforts’ performance:

• Audience: What do you know about them? Is there any unifying demographic information? Use what you discover here to create messaging that will resonate with them or to find similar audiences in other channels.
• Content and presentation: Is the content or the way you presented it in a high-performing channel different from what you did in other places? Are people on Instagram, for example, more receptive to the type of messaging or format you’re using than people on Facebook? Use what you find out to refine your presentation.

Quick Tip: Watch this BackerKit Launch walkthrough to learn more about how the platform can help you build your email list, activate your audience, and get funded early.

Growing a list after crowdfunding success

Email list-building never ends for a crowdfunding creator. If you’re a creator who has run a successful campaign and you’re planning to launch a new project, you will have to go out and grow your email list. This is especially true if you’re hoping to raise more money than you did previously. 

When you start sharing your new landing page, pay attention to how many of the leads have backed your campaigns in the past. BackerKit Launch is the only email platform that allows you to do this easily. Look in your Landing Page results tab, and you’ll see the number of leads who are your previous backers.

Not only is this a way to qualify your leads — you know that these people are likely to pledge — but this information can also show you how much more work you have to do. If you want to grow your existing community and increase your funding goal, you’ll need to reach people who aren’t already in your community. Keep an eye on this number to make sure that you’re on the right track. 

To build the best email list for your crowdfunding project, you have to be deliberate. You have to be strategic. Celebrate when you get new leads, and then take a moment to look at your results and replicate what’s working. You can start building your list today and preparing for your campaign by signing up for BackerKit Launch.

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in 2022. It has been updated and revamped for accuracy.

The post How Strong Is Your Crowdfunding Email List? appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Updated September 22, 2023

Experienced crowdfunding creators know that one of the keys to running a successful campaign is to bring your own crowd when you launch. This means that you need to have a group of people who want to back your project that you can email and mobilize when the campaign starts. One of the most effective ways to get email sign-ups before your BackerKit, Kickstarter, or Indiegogo campaign launches is with a landing page.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a standalone web page that is designed to fulfill a specific marketing goal, such as collecting email sign-ups. It can increase conversions by presenting content that is highly-focused, limiting distractions, and featuring a clear call-to-action that encourages visitors to take the desired action. 

For crowdfunding creators, a landing page should be an integral part of a campaign’s marketing strategy. Prior to launch, your landing page’s call-to-action should be focused on driving email sign-ups.

Getting started

When you’re ready to start designing your page, you’ll find that there are a lot of different landing page builders out there. For crowdfunding campaigns, BackerKit Launch is an excellent option. Launch is an email marketing and analytics tool specifically designed for crowdfunding creators. Not only does it allow you to instantly generate and then customize a landing page to collect emails, but you can also use it to test the strength of your email list to see which contacts have pledged to crowdfunding campaigns in the past, and are therefore more likely to back you.

Ideally, a landing page should be up and running well before a crowdfunding campaign launch to provide you with enough time to build an engaged audience. To make sure you have the strongest email list possible before your project goes live, you can sign up for Launch six months before launching to start collecting leads well in advance.

Looks matter when designing a crowdfunding project’s landing page

The design and content of a crowdfunding project’s landing page should be optimized to drive email sign-ups. The page should feature the following elements:

• Headline: The title of your project or campaign is an ideal starting point. You can add a short descriptionMake it simple and short.
• Hero image: The large, featured image at the top of the page should immediately grab visitors’ attention. This is how you welcome potential backers to your page and introduce them to your project. Depending on your project, this may be a high-quality photo or an illustration.
• Subhead: A short description acts as a hook for your project. Don’t reveal too much detail here — the idea is to spark the imagination of viewers, who will then scroll down and hopefully engage with the rest of your content.
• Call-to-action: The call-to-action buttons should be easy to see and prominently placed on the page. While statistics suggest only 20 percent of page visitors read ‘below the fold’, this doesn’t necessarily mean the CTA button should always be placed ‘above the fold’. It’s argued the fold is a myth, which underscores why you should always test and iterate your page elements. Also, don’t limit yourself to one button.
• Body copy: Keep the copy polished and succinct. Less is more.
• Effective design: Establishing a strong visual hierarchy on your landing page will direct visitors where to look and, more crucially, where to click. The goal is to make the course of action clear and obvious to page visitors.

You’ll notice in the examples below that there’s little visual clutter and the copy is concise, conveying the message simply and clearly. Take a look at how the design and content work in concert to urge viewers to take action.

Crowdfunding landing page examples

This landing page for Girl by Moonlight has a strong image, and the words displayed on the graphic are clear and legible. The creators also utilize a pair of dynamic headlines and subheads: “Embrace your destiny” and “Magical girls. Tragic struggles. Defiant triumphs.”

The rest of the copy on the page is concise, describing the game’s story and background in just a few sentences. You’ll also notice that the copy is broken up by images, making it easier to read than if it were a huge block of text.

The landing page for Realm Runners features an attention-grabbing header image and minimal copy. It also incentivizes sign-ups and early pledges by offering a “free reaper mini.” Offering an appealing incentive can spur landing page visitors to sign up for your email list. These might include exclusive, members-only discounts, sample goods, or a giveaway contest.

When you scroll down the page, you’ll notice that the incentive is repeated above the second email form field. This gives visitors who perhaps needed to read a little more about the project to commit to signing up a second opportunity to join the email list. 

It’s testing time

It’s important to check that your landing page is optimized for success. You can do this by conducting an A/B test between two versions of your landing page to see which elements work and which don’t. If you’re using Adwords, Google Analytics allows users to test how different web pages perform using a random sample of your visitors.

For the best results, one variable should be tested at a time. This allows you to accurately determine which page elements are attracting the most traffic. Rainfactory’s Kaitlyn Witman says high-quality photography and asset production are paramount in helping to drive conversion rates. “We’ve put pages with basic renderings or crude Photoshop assets and we’ve gotten decent conversion rates out of those because the demand was high,” she says. “But if it’s a middle-of-the-road product with mediocre image assets, the conversion rate is not going to be that great.”

Page elements to test:

• Headline and/or product description
• CTA: this will test whether the text of your call-to-action is effective in generating clicks.
• Images or video on the landing page
• Button (text, design, color): changing the size and/or color of your button may yield surprising results. Testing the button text will be crucial in reaching your conversion goal.
• Form length
• Length of copy: test whether longer or shorter copy works best for your product.

Crafting a successful landing page can involve many iterations before it achieves the agreed upon benchmarks, and sometimes changes need to be made after the landing page is live to increase conversion rates.

“It depends on if we reach the target metrics that are agreed upon between the marketing team and the client,” Witman says. Usually, it’s a constant cycle of test and improve.

“Let’s say we end lead generation with a piece of copy that we really like — that’s what we generally lead with going into the campaign. But it has been the case that there may be some better-performing ad unit that we launched during the campaign that outperforms everything that we did pre-launch, and we use those learnings and recycle them back into the other campaign assets.”

Getting ready to launch a crowdfunding project? Create a landing page for your project, so you can start building your email list today with BackerKit Launch. 

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in 2017. It has been updated for relevance and accuracy.

The post Designing an Effective Crowdfunding Landing Page appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

BackerKit Launch can help anyone reach crowdfunding success. Join us for a live walkthrough on Thursday, January 27th to learn how to build and activate your community. 

As we begin another year, we know that many of you are hoping to bring new and exciting crowdfunding projects to life. If you’re a first-time creator, or even if you’re not, it can be difficult to figure out exactly how to launch a successful crowdfunding campaign or know when you should introduce your idea to the world. If you don’t know where to begin, it’s always good to hear from folks who have done it before and learn from their experiences. In fact, this is exactly what we do here at BackerKit.

Our crowdfunding experts have talked to thousands of successful creators about how they prepared for their campaigns. We also have several creators on our team who know first-hand what works and what doesn’t. Since 2019, we have been focused on developing a process that creators can follow to achieve the best possible results for their crowdfunding project.

BackerKit Launch is our latest tool to help you seamlessly navigate the journey of launching your crowdfunding campaign. It’s an email marketing and analytics platform specifically designed for crowdfunding creators, giving you insights about your backers that you can’t get from other email tools. Whether you’re an experienced creator with many projects under your belt or a first-time creator just getting started, BackerKit Launch can help anyone take the next step towards making your creative ideas a reality.

How creators are leveraging Launch for crowdfunding success

We’ve seen that the most successful crowdfunding creators have engaged communities of supporters that they’re able to mobilize on launch day. Getting early pledges is the key to creating the kind of momentum that will get your project funded. We designed BackerKit Launch with this idea in mind.

In the past, creators have been able to effectively activate their previous backers and get support on day one by using Launch to:

• Track conversions for their returning backers and optimize their marketing efforts for their most loyal fans. 
• Deliver messages at strategic points before and during their campaign using Launch email templates.
• Anticipate how backers will convert during upcoming campaigns by analyzing previous backer behavior. 
• Send custom messaging to the right people by filtering out folks who have already pledged. 

Learn how to get funded early using BackerKit Launch. Check out our webinar for a live demo of our latest features and tips on how to get the most out of this powerful tool.

What’s new in BackerKit Launch

Community is the heart of crowdfunding. Launch is a tool that was built around that concept. We wanted Launch to be something creators use to grow, understand, engage, and leverage their communities for crowdfunding success. So, we’ve spent a lot of time developing four new features that expand what you can do with Launch:

1. Generate a landing page and collect leads for your upcoming project
Building a list of potential backers before you launch is the best way to ensure success. You can now instantly generate a landing page hosted by BackerKit that will help you collect leads for your upcoming project and start building your email list. 

2. Get insights about the leads you’re collecting to see if you are reaching the right audience

When preparing to launch a crowdfunding campaign, it’s important that you have an email list of people who will actually be interested in your project or are interested in supporting crowdfunding projects. A list of 45 people who are likely to pledge is more powerful than a list of 1,000 people who have no real interest in crowdfunding. You can now analyze the email addresses collected in Launch to see how many of those people have had past crowdfunding experience and are, therefore, more likely to pledge to your upcoming project.

3. Share your landing page with BackerKit’s large backer community

One of the biggest challenges that any creator has is getting a receptive audience to notice your project. Launch makes it easier to get more eyes on your landing page. You can choose to list your landing page with BackerKit’s backer community to get signups. Your upcoming project will be shared with enthusiastic backers who will be notified when you launch. 

4. Check whether you’re ready to launch

The best time to launch a crowdfunding campaign is when you know that you have all of your bases covered. Evaluate whether you’re ready to launch by going through our pre-launch checklist and getting a custom readiness assessment. We are here to help you with any questions you might have to get you prepared for your launch.

Anyone can get started now with BackerKit Launch

Crowdfunding doesn’t have to be totally unpredictable. You have more control over your project’s performance than you may think. Launch can help anyone maximize their campaign’s potential. Whether you’re a repeat creator who’s launching your next project in a few weeks, someone planning your first project this summer, or you’ve just begun developing your project idea, the time to get started is now.

The post Are you ready to launch your crowdfunding project? appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

UPDATE: BackerKit is hosting a live demo on Thursday, December 16th at 10 AM PST that will show you exactly how to run Facebook Ads for your Kickstarter launch. SAVE YOUR SPOT

If you aren’t going into a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign with a good set of leads, your campaign is already dead in the water. From hosting giveaways to running cross-promotions with other creators, there are a lot of different ways that you can start building this list. For crowdfunding creators, one extremely powerful way to do this work is by using Facebook lead ads. 

Lead ads allow you to connect with potential customers that you normally wouldn’t have access to, and then collect their contact information. If your project is something that people want, and you do lead ads correctly, this can be one of the most cost-effective ways to build your list. It’s a great option for creators who have a limited budget but who still want to spend some money on ads. In fact, lead ads have a much higher potential on ROI than even live campaign ads; and we would know because we’ve done both for thousands of campaigns now.  No matter the size of your total marketing budget, the first dollar should always go to lead ads.

However, to get the most bang for your buck, you have to make sure that these ads are targeting well and reaching the right audiences. This can be a bit tricky because of the delayed feedback loop; you really can’t know how well your lead ads are performing until they’re done and you’ve launched your campaign. Luckily we’re here to help with the following step-by-step guide on how to do crowdfunding lead ads. We can’t guarantee success, since ultimately the biggest variable is how badly people want your product. But if you follow these steps, we can guarantee you won’t totally fail!

The Basics

If you haven’t already set up a Facebook Business and Ads Manager account, do that first. Once you’ve done that, set up your Facebook Ads Manager under your Facebook Business account. While it’s possible to set up an Ads Manager under your personal Facebook account, it won’t have the full capabilities of your Business Manager account. So get these two foundational steps done before doing anything else.

Creating a Facebook Lead Gen Campaign Ad: Step by Step

Go to your Ads Manager. Click the Green “+ Create” button to create a new campaign.

In the ensuing pop-up, select “Lead Generation” as the campaign objective.

In the next window, you should land on the page to set up your “campaign” level settings. Input the name for your campaign. Otherwise, leave everything else “default” and click “Next” on the bottom right to get to the ad set settings.

Input the following information into the ad set settings:

Name your Ad Set

Lead Method: Instant Form

Select the Facebook Page of your Business

Dynamic Creative: Turn On

Catalog: Skip / Leave Default

Budget and Schedule: 

• Set Budget: I like to use the “Daily Budget” option because it offers more flexibility over time vs. the  “Lifetime Budget” option.

Audiences

We’re going to deep dive into the audience portion of the ad set setup because it is the single most important factor in a successful lead gen campaign. 

For most creators, you’re going to want to focus on two major groups of audiences:  Facebook Interests and Facebook Lookalikes.

Audience Type 1: Facebook’s “Detailed Targeting”

Facebook “Detailed Targeting” allows you to create an audience based on interests and characteristics that Facebook believes its users have. Given the omniscient data-hoarding that Facebook is infamous for, this targeting option can be a powerful tool for creators like yourself, given a handful of constraints.

But first, make the following selections in the fields you see:

Custom Audiences: Skip over this setting.  

Locations: Set to “United States.”  

The dropoff in conversion rate is steep when choosing anything beyond the United States, so you should stick to just the United States if you’re on a limited budget. There are two exceptions to going beyond the United States:

• Exception #1: If you have a budget beyond $20,000 just for lead gen ads, consider expanding to United Kingdom, Canada, and maybe Australia (English-speaking countries). 
• Exception #2: If you are shipping to or from somewhere other than the United States. If, for instance, you are based in the UK and plan on launching a smaller project that is only targeted to Europeans, then go ahead and expand your lead-gen reach outside of the US.

You might be tempted to expand beyond the United States because the cost-per-leads tend to go down when you do. Resist. The goal is not to get the cheapest cost-per-lead, the goal is to make sales on your future Kickstarter project. There’s a reason why United States audiences are more expensive, and why everywhere else is much cheaper.  

Age: Most Kickstarter backers are between the ages of 24-45.  

Gender: Only exclude Men or Women if your product is really only for one or the other. Otherwise, let Facebook’s machine figure out the balance. Even if, say, 75% of your customers are male, don’t exclude women.  

Once you’ve finished making your selections, you’re ready to set up Detailed Targeting. 

Detailed Targeting

The selections you make here can make or break your Kickstarter campaign. It’s disturbingly easy to set too broad of an audience, which basically lights your marketing budget on fire. Don’t light your budget on fire. Do this instead:

In the first box for detailed targeting, add the following:

• Kickstarter
• Crowdfunding
• Indiegogo

We’re going to layer in other interests below, but the above filter is super important and should not be skipped in most cases. The main objective of the above filter is to target folks who are already crowdfunders, who are already familiar with how crowdfunding works, and possibly already have an account ready to go on Kickstarter and/or Indiegogo.  

Crowdfunding is such an exotic transaction model that its salience for targeting is even higher than the kind of product you’re going to launch. For example, say you are launching a camping tent project. If you could only pick one detailed targeting item, I would choose ‘Interest: Kickstarter” over “Interest: Camping” or “Interest: REI” because “Kickstarter” is literally that much more relevant when defining an audience for your campaign.

Fortunately, you don’t have to pick just one detailed targeting item. Once you fill in the appropriate crowdfunding items, click the “Narrow Audience” button below:

This is where you layer in interests and items more relevant to your product. 

The first audience of “narrowed detailed targeting” should be broad and include generic topic terms, where audiences tend to be fairly large. Examples: 

• Board Game/Tabletop Game
• Cooking
• Outdoor Recreation
• Gadgets

If you take Board Games as an example, the detailed targeting segment of your ad set build should look like this:

There’s your first audience. Publish that ad set. We’ll get to how to build ads later.  

Once published, it becomes much easier to duplicate ad sets so that we can create more audiences.

Creating Your Duplicated Ad Sets

In your duplicated ad set, keep the same Detailed Targeting crowdfunding filters (“Crowdfunding”, “Indiegogo”, “Kickstarter”), but experiment with other secondary “narrowed” interests.  

So in the above tabletop example, remove “Tabletop game” and “Board Games” as the narrowed secondary interest. I personally like to find more specific keywords and interests to define an audience in duplicated ad sets. This includes names of brands or interests that you know that the more dedicated folks in your product category would know. 

So for the above tabletop example, here are a few other Detailed Targeting interests I would use to define new audience/ad sets:

• Boardgamegeek
• Wizards of the Coast
• Geek and Sundry
• Dice Tower
• Miniature Wargaming

More Product Category Examples

Thus far we’ve mostly talked about how to structure detailed targeting items for tabletop games. Below are more examples of how I would explore detailed targeting for other product categories, with the umbrella interest at top and the specific interests beneath it: 

• Outdoor Recreation
  • REI
  • Patagonia
  • Backcountry.com
  • Gore-Tex
• Gadgets
  • Consumer Electronics Show
  • Engadget
  • Gizmodo
  • CNET
• Cooking
  • Food & Wine
  • Le Cordon Bleu
  • Culinary Institute
  • Eater
  • Cooks Illustrated

Audience Type 2: Facebook’s Lookalikes

If you’ve ever dug into Facebook ads, you’ve probably heard of their Lookalike audiences. For those unfamiliar, it’s Facebook’s audience generating tool, where you input a highly relevant “source” audience — typically your customers — and Facebook ads harnesses its vast powers of psychographic data and machine learning to create a larger audience that it deems most similar, according to your target parameters. 

The most typical audience involves using an audience of your previous customers as the “source,”, and setting “United States 1%” as a targeting parameter. Facebook will then output an audience of 2.4 million Americans (1% of the US’ population) its machines deems the most “similar” to your customers. As Facebook’s learned machines get increasingly more learned (on its inevitable path to human subjugation), Lookalike audiences have become increasingly more effective.

Lookalike audiences can be effective for lead targeting, especially if you already have 1000+ good email subscribers or customers in the United States to input as a seed (if you don’t, substitute Facebook page engagers, Instagram engagers, or website retargets as a seed).  

To learn more about the mechanics of generating Lookalike audiences, head over to Facebook or check out this in-depth resource from Hubspot. Once you feel you have the hang of Lookalikes, you should consider layering in some of the detailed targeting interests we outlined above. Remember, crowdfunding is a key behavioral filter. As good as Facebook’s machines are, they haven’t quite reached mind-reading omniscience yet, so it can be helpful to give the machines a little head start, especially on a limited budget.

A Quick Note on Creating Ads

Creatives are the images, videos, and other visual and written elements that you’ll include in the ad. Although developing creatives is mostly a straightforward process, here are some thoughts and frequently asked questions on how to approach this process:

• In the ad set steps above, we had you pick the “dynamic ad” format. This is good for beginners because it essentially allows you to upload multiple variations of copy, images, calls-to-action, etc., and let the Facebook machines find the best performing variations and combinations.
• Include short, snappy and longer copy and different types of imagery. Don’t over-optimize for one format. 
• Don’t overthink the importance of creatives. Dedicate more time and resources to getting the audiences right
• Limit the number of questions you include in your lead form. Email and name should suffice.
• Direct people who’ve filled out the lead form to your pre-launch project preview or follow page on Kickstarter 

Where to Find Leads

Once you have lead ads delivering, you might be curious where you can grab the leads.  It’s a little confusing at first because it does not live anywhere on Facebook ads. Instead, you’re going to want to go to the “Publishing Tools” section of the Facebook page you are using to serve the lead ads:

https://www.facebook.com/<you_page>//publishing_tools

Once there, look for the “Forms Library” tab on the left navi (see red arrow below):

Checking For Audience Quality

Getting feedback on the quality of your lead gen targeting is tough because you won’t know which members of your audience backed your project until the Kickstarter ends.

One common mistake is to bias your budget towards audiences that convert to leads at a cheaper cost-per-lead. Resist the temptation. Quality audiences should be more expensive. 

BackerKit has an amazing tool in BackerKit Launch. Not only does it enable you to create a landing page to start collecting email addresses, but it also gives crucial pre-launch feedback on your lead audience quality. Upload your list and it will tell you what percentage of your list has previously backed a project (that we know of). You can choose to segment and upload however you want; however, we recommend segmenting and checking by audience (i.e. ad set), since it’s the biggest variable for success.

Facebook Lead ads enable you to reach the audiences that are most relevant to your project. It will take some experimenting and testing to get the best results, but if you use this guide, the work will be well worth the effort. Always remember, though, that you should also be devoting some time to unpaid lead generation techniques as well — doing things like engaging with groups that are related to your project category and collecting leads within these groups is important. When paid marketing and organic community-building are used together, you’ll only increase your chances of crowdfunding success.

If you’d like to watch a live demo version of this blog post, check out our webinar, Step by Step: Facebook Lead Ads For Your Kickstarter Launch.

The post How To Do Lead Ads for a Kickstarter Launch appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

**BackerKit will be reviewing select Kickstarter campaign pages live on October 14th at 10 AM PT. Submit your project here for a chance to have our team advise you on everything from project images and copy to reward tier structure and stretch goals!**

A Kickstarter campaign page is a potent tool in your marketing arsenal — it’s an important sales pitch for your crowdfunding campaign. Yet many don’t live up to their full potential: they’re disorganized, distracting, or fail to grab readers’ attention. Check out the six tips below, and find out how to make a strong impression with your Kickstarter page.

Get to the point

Project pages should deliver key points quickly and simply, rather than befuddle backers with unnecessary information. The best ones craft a compelling narrative. Your campaign page is an opportunity to highlight your project’s unique selling proposition. The title and subheading should instantly give a clear picture of what your project is about.

In the Story section of your page, explain your product and what makes it unique in the first two sentences. 

To avoid the TL;DR trap, keep things short, simple, and scannable. Also, consider breaking up lengthy text with subheads, bullet points, images, infographics, and animated GIFs (such as the two examples above from Peak Design’s Mobile Kickstarter campaign.) 

Nobody wants to read a gigantic wall of text. When you edit your text for the first time, force yourself to remove 50% of the words. You’ll be amazed by how quickly you can find adjectives or entire sentences to delete when you give yourself a word count limit.

Editing and re-editing the elements of your campaign page can take time, so make sure you’re not leaving it all until the last minute. On Kickstarter’s Campus forums, project creators say the entire planning process — figuring out what copy to write and which images to include, writing a script and filming the video — can last anywhere between a day and several months. Jean Wu, project creator of the Que Bottle says it took about a week for herself and her partner to put the page together. “It took a little more than a week to get all the graphics, video, and write all the words.”

Similarly, Redshift Sports’ Erik de Brun took a hands-on approach to the Shockstop Kickstarter campaign page design. “We wear all the hats. We’re lucky enough to have an interest in graphic design, writing copy, and producing video. We feel there’s an authenticity in us putting those pages together ourselves. We spend a lot of time trying to get it right. ” He says project creators can successfully outsource these duties to marketing agencies or freelancers, but the team “felt strongly about creating all the campaign material so that they were speaking with their own voice.”

Lights, camera, action

Kickstarter strongly encourages its project creators to upload a video as part of their campaign page. It’s an integral marketing asset for any crowdfunding campaign, but making a video can seem scary for the camera-shy. Keep in mind that your campaign video doesn’t need to be a work of art, but it should convey the purpose and intent of your project and what value it can bring to backers. It should be short: a running time of 1.5 to four minutes will satisfy those with the shortest of attention spans. For more guidance, check out Kickstarter’s guide to video best practices for tips, tricks, and advice.

Project creators don’t necessarily need to invest in expensive, high-tech equipment to make a video. Here’s a checklist of items you’ll need: 

• A smartphone or webcam: Obviously. If you’d like slicker production values, a camcorder is a safe bet.
• Someone to hold the camera: Rope in a friend with video skills or someone with steady hands, or consider hiring a videographer. 
• A film-ready space: Present your product (and yourself) in the best possible light, literally and figuratively. An ideal film space should be clutter-free and visually appealing, and have plenty of natural light.
• Your product: Make sure it’s functioning and ready to go.
• A script: This is your chance to sell your product and promote its appeal to backers. A script will help you consolidate your talking points. Write it out, edit it, memorize it.
• You: It’s nice to see the human behind the project! Be genuine and boost your emotional connection with your backers.

“The importance of having a good Kickstarter video is that you can use the video as the asset for your page in terms of photos and GIFs,” Podo Labs’ Eddie Lee says. “That way, you don’t have to do extra photography and you also have a unified look across the assets.” It’s as easy as grabbing a screencap of the relevant images and uploading them to your campaign page.

Once you have your video, you’ll want to select an attention-grabbing thumbnail image. This is an image that potential backers will immediately see on your page and anytime you share your video on social media, on your landing page, on Facebook Ads, in the press, through email, and so on. Pick a clear image of your product and if you use text make sure it’s legible.

As your campaign progresses, you’ll be able to update your thumbnail to call out any project milestones like hitting your funding goal or let people know that your campaign is ending soon. The thumbnail for the OYO NOVA Gym was updated with the exciting news that the project had become the “number one most-funded fitness product in Kickstarter history.”

Say it with images

Selecting high-quality, high-resolution images will make a campaign page shine. The more striking the image, the better. If you’re sharing your campaign page on social media, the image will often be the first thing your networks will see. If you’re not sure about sizes and accepted file types, Kickstarter offers its project creators some technical specs. It recommends that project images are 1024×576 pixels (an aspect ratio of 16:9), and that the file type is a JPEG, PNG, GIF, or BMP. Images may be no larger than 50 MB.

Use images as a way to convey information simply and more memorably. Identify areas where you can replace text with images. Pictures are more interesting and keep readers engaged. 

Remember to have a few images on your page that show the product in context. This photo from the Tiny Treehouse’s Kickstarter campaign page shows the DIY model in a planter to demonstrate how the product can be used.

GIFs bring your Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign page to life

Creators can level up by using animated GIFs to demonstrate product features. Moving images keep readers interested and are great at showing people what your product can do. 

These GIFs from the Gravgrip Kickstarter campaign page clearly and simply show the benefits of the camera stabilizer. 

If you’re handy with Photoshop, making an animated GIF from a collection of images is a simple process; if not, there are plenty of online tools like GIFMaker or Makeagif that can make animations for you.

Keep in mind that having great images may also help you earn press coverage. Blogs need high-quality images to accompany their write-ups. Having high-resolution product shots will make it easier for the press to put together stories.

Highlight press coverage on your Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign page

Speaking of press, make sure to highlight any press coverage that you’ve earned on the campaign page. If you’re doing a tech project product launch, then your audience will instantly recognize the Gizmodo, Mashable, and CNET logos, and having those press mentions will add credibility to your project.

Having the funding amount, and backer count metrics on display turns the campaign into a movement that gains speed as you add more backers and external validation from the press.

Take a look at how the Evie Blender’s Indiegogo campaign collates its press coverage on its site.

For tabletop Kickstarter projects, you can use reviews or previews of your game in the same way.

The Kickstarter campaign page for Return to Dark Tower includes review excerpts from trusted names in the games industry. 

Consumers trust word-of-mouth marketing more than they trust brands, so it’s important to include that element of social proof on your Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign page to demonstrate the benefits of your product.

Be creative with your content

Yichuan Wang, one of the project creators behind tabletop horror game Deep Madness, believes an editorial calendar helps to maintain regular communications with backers.

Wang says his marketing strategy focused on ensuring each post (whether on social media, the campaign page, or on the project creator’s website) had a clearly defined purpose and was published in a timely fashion.

“Each of our posts is carefully prepared. Attractive content is more likely to seize the attention of users,” Wang says. Rather than flood backers with promotional material, Wang advocates a more considered approach. “We regularly released a little bit of content each time — like a few photos of models or an illustration.”

In addition, Wang says that an injection of creativity or personality can make traditional updates more compelling for backers. “A highlight of our campaign was our team of professional writers,” he says. “In our updates, we abandoned the traditional informational messages, and instead wrote a lot of exciting content about the world in each post. Each update was a bit like a short story or a small slice from a novel.  That was a lot of fun for us, and our backers seemed to really enjoy that, too.”

You don’t need to be a professional content creator to be creative

Lynn Johnson, the creator of the Turtle Hat, adopted a quirky, idiosyncratic approach to storytelling on his campaign page. Johnson’s lack of fancy graphics is more than made up for with his sense of humor. The simplicity of Johnson’s story allows backers to see the person behind the project, and his project’s tagline — “You cannot take yourself too seriously with a turtle on your head” — neatly encapsulates what makes his project so unique. It’s authentic, creative — and it paid off.

Keep your Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign page fresh

A crowdfunding campaign page is often a work in progress. Podo Labs’ Eddie Lee says campaign pages can always be improved throughout the campaign. Sometimes more copy or different information would be added, or a total refresh of the page’s elements would be in order. “We tended to keep revising it,” he says. “In the first two weeks, there’s not much press about the product, people don’t know what it is,” Lee says. Potential backers are in “complete exploration mode”, so the page is tailored to that experience.

In the final two weeks of the campaign, he says, visitors are more likely to be acquainted with your product. “Maybe they’ve come to the page before and they haven’t decided whether to back the campaign, or they’ve read everything about it in the press article,” Lee says. “So you can do different things in the final two weeks, such as move the rewards higher up on the page above the description, so they start seeing prices and options faster.”

In the final week of Podo Labs’ campaign for the Jack, its Kickstarter campaign page underwent a total redesign. “When you see the comments and questions on the page, you get a sense of what people didn’t understand, as well as what mattered to them the most,” Lee says. Initially, there was confusion over how the product worked. “We had some diagrams that we thought explained exactly what it did, but people would still ask: ‘How does this work’?” In response, the team went back to the drawing board, redesigning the diagrams and experimenting with how instructions were displayed. As a result, Lee says, “we re-prioritized and made things more clear.” And even if things look pretty good, Lee warns against complacency. “The color or font selection could always be more perfect”.

Are you preparing your campaign page? Join us for a live presentation on October 14th where we will be reviewing Kickstarter pages. You can submit your project for a chance to have your page reviewed during the presentation or tune in for design tips.

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in 2017. It has been updated for relevance and accuracy.

The post Kickstarter Campaign Page Design Secrets appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.