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.

When we ask crowdfunding creators which areas of their campaigns are the most challenging, the answer we hear most often is marketing and promotion. Spreading the word about your campaign is essential to your success, so you have to find a marketing strategy that works for you and your budget. We’ve collected a few of your questions on how to begin marketing for your Kickstarter campaigns and answered them here to help you get started. 

How do I get my first backers?

Start with friends and family, co-workers, and people you know who are like-minded or believe in your idea. Get them on your email list. At this point, you may only get five people who are interested, or it might be one person, but that’s ok. Then spend time building out your social media channels based on where you like to spend your time. Do you like Instagram the most? Start there. If you like Facebook, go there. 

No matter where you start building your community, make sure there’s a funnel to be able to collect email addresses because that will be the most important tool you have as you prepare for launch day. You can use BackerKit Launch to create a landing page to collect these email addresses. You’re going to be messaging the people on this list in the days leading up to your launch to make sure they have a Kickstarter or Indiegogo account set up so they’re primed to back you, educate anyone who may not be familiar with those platforms on how to use them, and encourage people to pledge. All of this will allow you to have a strong start to your campaign.

You want to incentivize email sign-ups. Use language like, “be the first to know when we’re going to launch,” when you’re asking for sign-ups. Maybe give people who sign up a soft discount for when you do launch. Maybe there’s a token that can go along with your product or your game that they can get for being an early adopter and backing in the first 48 hours. 

Take some time to research parts of the internet that would be interested in your product and then become a part of those communities. You can’t expect people to just join you without you joining them first. Next, find a few crowdfunding projects that you admire and reach out. Ask the creators questions about what worked for them. Lastly, it’s going to be tempting, but don’t just drop links to your project all over the internet. You have to be a part of the community first. 

Can you launch without huge ad spend? What are alternative options?

If you want to hit seven figures, then it’s pretty much inevitable that you are going to spend a lot. But if you’re trying to raise $100,000 or less, it’s absolutely possible to have a successful campaign without spending a lot on ads.

In order to reach your funding goal, you need to bring traffic to your campaign page. Ads do help bring that traffic, but they are by no means the only way. When you’re looking for ad alternatives, you want to make sure that you’re tapping into pre-existing communities. 

Hopefully, you will have spent some time building your own community before you launch. These people are already interested in your project, they’re invested in your success, and they’re the group that’s most likely to show up on day one of your campaign and pledge. But you’ll also want to connect with people outside of your community. 

Try building relationships with influencers in your project category who have an active, engaged online following. They don’t necessarily even have to have a massive following. If there’s someone in your network who has 1,000 friends on Facebook, and they share your project with that audience, then that’s 1,000 people who could potentially visit your campaign page and pledge. 

Think about doing a cross-promotion with another crowdfunding creator. Ask friends to do shout-outs. Send out samples of your product to communities that would be interested in it. Karen Wang from Dispel Dice worked with different publications to get coverage. When you’re marketing for your Kickstarter campaigns, it’s all about finding those communities and audiences that already exist. 

Remember that regardless of which strategies you choose when doing marketing for your Kickstarter campaigns, it will take some time to achieve the results you’re looking for. So don’t give up if you aren’t seeing an instant boost in performance. If you’ve tried everything described above for a while and aren’t seeing much progress, assess what you’re doing. Try approaching these strategies from a different angle or scaling up. (For example, instead of just having another creator give you a social media shout-out, scale up and do a livestream together. If you see something is working — even if it isn’t reaching your expectations at the moment — think of ways to build on that success.

Are you an Indiegogo creator? Check out our webinar, Expert Marketing Strategies for Your Indiegogo Campaigns, for practical tips on setting your budget.

Is there merit to running ads on your own instead of hiring an agency if you’re on a shoestring budget?

It depends on where you are in your crowdfunding lifecycle, so if you’re getting ready to launch, it makes sense to run ads on your own. You can experiment to figure out what tweaks you can make to help ad performance. For instance, you can test and learn how you should be framing your value proposition or which marketing assets fully convey what your product is about. That’s something that you should probably be doing on your own. And lots of successful creators do go it alone at first. 

However, if you are running Facebook Ads on your own and seeing results that work for your margins and return on ad spend (ROAS) target while your campaign is live, that’s actually a phenomenal signal that you should talk to an agency, and seek out Kickstarter marketing services, and not that you should continue on your own. BackerKit Marketing has audience data and technology that enables us to put your project in front of the most relevant group of people. On your own, you aren’t able to achieve this same level of targeting. But if you are able to achieve exciting results without the audience data, then imagine what’s possible with the audience data.

I’m really uncomfortable with self-promotion. How can I market myself and my project?

Humility is an excellent quality to possess, and right now, you have this cool idea that people will want to know about it. That means you have to do some promotion. 

However, you don’t have to immediately dive into the deep end. Start with a Kickstarter marketing plan that you’re comfortable with. You don’t have to jump to do a livestream if you’re more interested in email marketing, or vice versa. You can gradually build up to other marketing techniques as you get more confidence and experience. 

Next, look to other creators. That may mean that you go out and get advice on how they’re handling marketing or you look at their social media content, Kickstarter ads, and partnerships, and see what’s working. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You’ll learn so much about marketing for your Kickstarter campaigns by connecting with others.

If you’re still finding this challenging, get someone else to build the hype for you. This could be a collaborator, an influencer, a freelance marketer, or an agency. You aren’t expected to be an expert at everything. Part of managing a successful crowdfunding campaign is knowing when to ask for help. 

Finally, think about why you decided to launch this campaign in the first place. Is it something you’re passionate about? Will your product help or entertain people? Focusing on that motivation and how you’re actually serving your audience (and not being boastful) can make it easier to push past that initial discomfort. 

However you choose to tackle marketing for your Kickstarter campaigns, be authentic. Tell your story and explain why this project is important to you and how it will benefit your backers.

Are you planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign soon and want to get started with BackerKit Marketing? Click below to see if your project is a good fit for the service.

The post BackerKit Q&A: Marketing For Your Kickstarter Campaigns appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Seven Dane Asmund has launched multiple publishing, tarot, and dice crowdfunding projects. However, they never imagined that their latest project would be as successful as it was. The Alleyman’s Tarot, a mismatched tarot deck featuring cards by an impressive lineup of artists, was funded in under 12 hours. By the end of the campaign, it had raised $1,404,172 with 19,275 backers, and is now the most-funded tarot project on Kickstarter. We recently spoke with Asmund about their life-changing campaign, trans visibility in crowdfunding, and the importance of establishing genuine relationships with your community and collaborators as a creator.

What is it about crowdfunding that keeps you coming back?

In short? Crowdfunding is needed to pay my bills. I don’t get enough passive income from my store or online items. It also just feels like more of a “real deal” when you crowdfund. People come together to make it real all at once. There’s a community, repeat backers — it’s just more personal.

How did you get into making tarot cards?

So when I started crowdfunding, I was making TTRPGs (tabletop roleplaying games, like Dungeons and Dragons) and card games. It wasn’t going poorly, but it definitely wasn’t bringing me any income. I reached out to The Caretaker, who runs the Tumblr-famous blog Normal Horoscopes, to ask them if they’d be down with having a book made of their best blog posts. That project became Furiously Prognosticating, the first of my projects to make over $3,000 on Kickstarter.

The Caretaker had been designing (in concept) a strange, 99-card tarot deck that fit their practice. It was just text at that point. They were doing readings on their blog with it, and I thought, “y’know, I’ve made card games already. So why not a tarot deck?” So I floated making the Normal Tarot real [through Kickstarter]. 

We weren’t sure it would do well at all, but it blew up, passing our recent $4,600 milestone by raising $30,000. From there, we did Normal Tarot 2 with gold and silver foil, and made $130,000. And then here we are with the Alleyman’s, now the most-funded and backed tarot Kickstarter ever. Really strange, abnormal, exponential growth there.

What was the inspiration behind making a mismatched deck?

I like to work in different mediums as much as possible to keep things fresh, so I was going to pen a small, episodic slightly supernatural podcast about the Alleyman, this figure who gives readings from his strange mismatched deck that tell stories about other people, but end up being about the querent. The mythos around him evolved, but I realized I already have literally three card games, a big book TTRPG, three novels, my future Misery Tarot, Oracle Dice, and Divination Coins all in progress. I didn’t need a time sink like a podcast. So I shelved it, but I thought the mismatched deck was so clear in my mind, maybe that would be worth making. The ironic thing here is that the million-dollar stretch goal was to actually make the podcast that I’d originally made this deck for. So now I have to make it anyway.

How did you connect with all of the artists who contributed to The Alleyman’s Tarot? 

In the early days of trying to source cards, I could only pretty much get people who didn’t want pay, or for whom the free deck was enough. It was a struggle. I’d search the #tarot tag in Tumblr, DeviantArt, Twitter, ArtStation, Behance, Etsy, and Instagram, looking for cards. I scrolled through all 1200+ tarot projects on Kickstarter and reached out to all the ones that looked like they would fit the process/theme/aesthetic. I knew I had to get a good base of six or so cards that looked super good to show future potential artists or they’d think I had nothing or that I wasn’t serious. And I did!

In the early days especially, more people said “no thanks” than said “hell yeah.” It was a total slog. But as I got more and more people, some bigger names started working on the branding and did up the logo, and it seemed more real. Then I got the campaign page up on pre-launch for Kickstarter and people were just more on board. It also helped that around the mid-point of gathering cards, I actually wrote up a full contract. Many artists wanted to see it before deciding anything, which makes sense. 

After a year of struggling to get the deck together, the grand irony is that hundreds of people have reached out since it launched trying to get art or cards into it. I was begging for over a year and now I’m turning people away — some of them really cool artists that I just don’t have space for now.

As a repeat crowdfunding creator, how do you keep the community you’ve built over the years engaged?

I’ve always been a one-person project runner. In the early days, I used to personally message a thank you (not copy-pasted at all) to every backer as they pledged. As it got bigger, I couldn’t quite do that, but I’ve always made it a point to reply to every comment and message, and just be casual and open — totally transparent — in every step of the project. I think that has gone miles to ensuring I had fans. 

That being said, while my games and TTRPGs grew from project to project, it was small, small, incremental growth. It was The Caretaker, who skyrocketed my campaigns with them. And thanks to that, I had a larger audience from project to project to pull from. I can’t stress enough how important it has been having friends that actually have social media followings, cause I sure don’t.

You mention on The Alleyman’s Tarot campaign page that you’re trans, nonbinary, and queer. There are other trans and queer creators who may be hesitant to share this aspect of themselves publicly. What impact did mentioning this have on your campaign, if any?

I came out as a gay man to everyone when I was around 20. Now at 30, I’m like, “maybe I’m a woman? A straight woman? Something woman-adjacent? Definitely not a man?” It’s the right step in my life, and I realized more than anything, I want to be a public queer person. I didn’t know transgender people existed as a kid. I could have figured all this out as a kid, or a teen, if there had been public trans figures then. 

I’ve already talked to a few other trans people (and teens) and got to share with them my experience and what I’ve done and just kind of helped show them that trans people are out here doing things. I have had limited negative feedback, but it’s still been there. I’ve also seen an incredible base of supporters who are correcting other people on my pronouns, which is wild. I’m also sometimes seeing people be corrected and ignore it and go on using he/him. There are definitely two sides to the coin. 

If I had known that this would become the most-funded and backed tarot Kickstarter (2 times the backers of any other tarot Kickstarter), I would have made it even more apparent I was queer. People all over think they don’t know or have never met or seen a trans person. But we’re all over. We just usually don’t announce it because we like not being hate crimed or murdered, y’know? I’m white, and I have extreme privilege in that sphere as a trans person, it would be disappointing to have not used this as a platform to at least shout “hey look, trans people are here, making your art! You have met and interacted with us! We’re real!”

As you’ve mentioned, The Alleyman’s Tarot ended up raising over $1 million and being the most-funded tarot project on Kickstarter. What steps did you take in preparing your campaign that led to your immense success? 

People keep asking me what I did. I did a series of “How to Run a Kickstarter” posts on Tumblr a year ago that still cover what I do and think is most important. I make sure people know it’s going to happen and when, get them to follow the pre-launch page. Day one is the most important of the whole campaign. But this campaign was lightning, I don’t think I could replicate it if I tried. 

On top of what I normally do, this was my first time partnering with Backerkit for advertising from the very start, and I had 83 artists who were contractually obligated to make social media rounds about the campaign on launch day, as close to launch time as possible. The rest was just the right new deck, concept, and product at the right time. People have done collab decks where many artists did cards for one deck, but they try to unify the deck in a theme or style or frame. This was the first and only time a patchwork deck was made. Others will now try, and that’s fine. I hit it just right.

I think it also helps that I always look at how cheaply I can price something. Even though this is my full-time job now, even though I literally need this money to pay bills, I’m just not a very good capitalist. I want to give away free decks, I want to price things close to print-cost. But there was so much overhead on this project with the 83 artists that I had to price the decks at $45. I still did limited $35 and $40 tiers for people who had limited funds, and to people’s credit, there were 600+ backers on the $45 tier before the 35 and 40 tiers were filled. 

How did you plan your stretch goals? Were you prepared to take it all the way to $1 million?

Ironically, I have always overplanned my stretch goals. Like, on my projects that make $2,000, I had stretch goals that went up to $100,000. On this project, I had goals all the way up to I think $1,000,000. But before I launched, I finally swallowed my hopes and just made it more realistic, around $300,000 at most I think. Then, in the first 24 hours, we made more than the entire Normal Tarot 2 campaign, and I honestly sighed, knowing I was going to have to write up stretch goals back up to $500,000 or so. Then it just kept growing, and I filled it out up to $1.3 million. It’s hilarious that the campaign where I finally accepted my limitations went beyond anything I could have imagined.

Why did you decide to use BackerKit this time around?

It was no question. The help it offered on the latest project (Normal Tarot 2) was big, and it would have been better if I’d used it from the start. For ads, for backer management (you have so much more control over backers and their cards on BackerKit that Kickstarter doesn’t offer at all), for accepting late pledges, it’s so helpful. It’s also great for taking shipping costs. I’ve just learned that BackerKit smooths out bumps between itself and Kickstarter. 

Do you have any advice for experienced creators like you who’ve had success in the past but have set their sights on a more ambitious funding goal?

Be open, honest, make cool art, and share it with the world! Put your focus on getting the art out into the world, value your time properly, but don’t overcharge for things when you could make your art more accessible for people monetarily. I could have priced this at $50 minimum or higher, and no one would have been surprised in the tarot collecting world. This is 2 times the cards of a normal deck. It could have been $100 or something ridiculous. But I went low, made all my add-ons as cheap as possible. Sometimes, when you price fairly, people show up! 

Now that The Alleyman’s Tarot is funded, what’s next for you?

With the funds my business is making from this project, I can finally afford to hire on some writers to help me finish writing and fixing my big TTRPG system, which is the core of future TTRPG projects I want to make. I have a podcast to make now, thanks to that $1 million stretch goal. Caretaker and I are working on the Divination Coins, which should make it for an October Kickstarter [launch] if The Alleyman’s Tarot fulfills on schedule). I’m revising a novel that’s the start of a larger series that I’d like to do an official full release of this year, and I started work on a few new games. The coins should happen first, but you never know. It’s non-stop projects over in Publishing Goblin land.

Asmund’s latest project, Publishing Goblin’s Oracle Dice, 2nd Edition, is now live. Check it out on BackerKit today! And if you’d like to read more interviews like this and get crowdfunding advice, make sure to sign up for the BackerKit Community Newsletter.

The post The Alleyman’s Tarot Creator on Their Record-Breaking Project appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Crowdfunding is a journey that we probably all hope will be as simple as this:

Step 1: Have an excellent idea for a crowdfunding project. 

Step 2: Launch your project on Kickstarter or Indiegogo. 

Step 3: Get funded. 

Step 4: Send out rewards to backers.

While the steps listed above are all features of a successful campaign, there are obviously several other critical stages, challenges, and logistical issues that you’ll need to contend with to get you from “excellent idea” to “delivering rewards.” Think about it: You need backers. How are you going to get them? And what about fulfillment? Your project comes to life on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, but there are also tools and resources outside of those platforms that will help you tackle your campaign to-do list, simplify your overall crowdfunding experience, and raise more money. 

So what do you realistically have to do to get your project off the ground and funded?

Crowdfunding can be overwhelming. Connor Alexander, the creator of the tabletop RPG Coyote & Crow, was a prolific backer before launching his own project but was stunned by how complex crowdfunding was as a creator. 

“When you first get involved in crowdfunding, and you’re dealing with Kickstarter, there’s already this feeling of vertigo,” Alexander says. “It’s a bigger world than you’d realized.”

There’s a lot of pre-launch preparation you’ll have to do. Of course, you’ll have to develop your idea, turn it into a prototype (if you’re designing a physical product and not something like a theater experience), and then test that prototype and validate your idea. While you’re working on all that, you’ll simultaneously be devoting time to building a community of people who will be excited to back you when you launch. 

Once all of that foundational work is in motion, there are a whole new set of tasks you’ll have to complete to run a successful campaign. Your to-do list looks something like this:

It’s a lot to manage, but you don’t have to do it alone. 

What is BackerKit?

BackerKit is a software company that creates tools to help crowdfunding creators raise additional funds, reach new backers, and deliver the right rewards to the right places. Over the years, we’ve helped creators survey 15.5 million backers and raise $331 million. We’ve also worked with more than 10,000 crowdfunding projects, including Dispel Dice, OYO NOVA Gym, and Frosthaven. 

We take everything that we learn from working with the most successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo creators and incorporate those lessons into our core products: BackerKit Launch, BackerKit Marketing, and BackerKit Pledge Manager. Each of these three tools will help you make your way through your crowdfunding journey and manage many of the common challenges creators experience.

Challenge #1: Getting pledges in the critical first 48 hours of your campaign

Kickstarter and Indiegogo don’t instantaneously drive backers to your project once it’s live. You have to bring those initial backers to your campaign page. To get that first wave of support, you’ll need an email list of supporters who are not only prepared to pledge but who can make those pledges within the first 48 hours. If your campaign performs well early on, the crowdfunding platform’s algorithm will reward you with higher placement in search results.

“If you’re able to get in the top 20 campaigns [on Kickstarter], people naturally and organically are going to be finding your campaign. Not just on that top 20 trending [list], but you’re also going to be ranking highly in different categories,” says Chris Livingston, Gravel co-founder and five-time successful Kickstarter creator.

Leverage your existing audience and get early pledges with BackerKit Launch

BackerKit Launch helps you get those early pledges and activate your community. It’s an email marketing and analytics tool specifically designed for crowdfunding. Like a standard email marketing platform, you can collect email addresses (or import an existing email list) through Launch and communicate with your audience. But it also allows you to take a more data-driven approach to your launch, providing you with insights you can’t get from other email tools. Here’s how it works:

1. Build your email list

You can’t expect Kickstarter or Indiegogo to deliver backers to your campaign page organically. You have to bring those backers to the party. One way of doing this is by growing your community and building your email list. With Launch, you can create a landing page to collect email addresses and start doing that community-building work early on. It’s free to start using Launch landing pages. And once you’re ready to start sending out emails through Launch, you’ll have all of that data right there in one convenient place, so you’ll be primed to begin promoting your campaign.

2. Test the strength of your email list

Before your campaign is live, you can import your email list into Launch to test its strength. You’ll see who from that list has already backed crowdfunding projects and is, therefore, more likely to support your project. Armed with this data, you’ll know if you have to spend more time building or educating your community or if you’re on track to have a strong showing on day one.

Sign up to check out BackerKit Launch and test the strength of your email list for free!

3. Deliver the right message at the right time

Anyone can use Launch to mobilize supporters and create personalized email marketing messages. Launch connects directly to Kickstarter and Indiegogo, so you’ll get real-time pledge information once your project is live. This means you’ll be able to track conversion rates and see who from your email list has already contributed and who hasn’t. You can segment — or group — the people who haven’t pledged yet together and then tailor messages to that audience to encourage them to support you. This kind of personalization is the key to driving conversions.

4. Serial crowdfunders can eliminate launch day surprises

If you’re a creator who has run multiple successful Indiegogo or Kickstarter campaigns, you can import past projects into Launch and get insights into your previous backers’ pledge behavior. By looking at Launch data, like how much money repeat backers contributed to your other campaigns and when they pledged, you’ll be able to anticipate how those backers will convert during your upcoming campaign. 

Take what you’ve learned about your audience to create custom messages to drum up excitement and secure early pledge commitments. If you’ve consistently engaged this audience in the days leading up to your launch, there shouldn’t be any surprises when it comes to your day-one performance. 

ComixTribe publisher Tyler James has managed 16 successful Kickstarter projects. He tried Launch for his latest project, Counting, Colors & Cthulu, making use of the platform’s email templates and landing page feature to get backers to commit to backing on day one.

“What’s cool about this is that [Launch] actually creates an automatic pre-launch page that you can send backers to that let’s them click a button that says they’re in. Then it tracks how many backers from the audience that you sent it to actually click that button,” James says. “It’s great to get micro-conversions before you ever launch your Kickstarter project.”

In the first three days, Launch generated an 81x return on investment for James, and 205 of the 359 people who pre-committed to backing had already pledged. 

Getting started with BackerKit Launch

Who should use it? Anyone who is ready to start building their email list or who has an email list of fans. Launch is especially powerful for creators who’ve run successful campaigns.

When to use it: Before or after your project launches, up until it ends. 

When to sign up: As soon as you have an upcoming project and are ready to let your community know about what you’re working on. 

Challenge #2: Finding new backers

After you’ve had a strong launch, you’ll want to keep that momentum going, and bring in more backers. This means you’ll need to extend your reach beyond your own community and start connecting with a larger audience. But how do you build your audience? And with a long to-do list and budget concerns, how do you attract those new backers in the most cost and time-efficient manner possible?

Organic — or unpaid marketing — like social media and email promotion should be the foundation of your outreach strategy. You’ll maximize your budget if you first put the time into that grassroots relationship-building and promotion. Once you’ve had success with organic marketing, and you’re seeing conversions that you can track to your efforts, you can add some fuel to the fire and ensure your campaign reaches its full potential with paid marketing.

Drive pledges to your live campaign with advertising designed for crowdfunding using BackerKit Marketing

BackerKit Marketing is highly-targeted Facebook advertising designed for crowdfunding and run by a team of experts. With a database of more than 18 million backers, we help connect you with people who’ve supported projects like yours in the past and are more likely to pledge to your campaign. BackerKit covers the initial ad spend to maximize your funding potential, so you can scale without going over budget. Here’s what you can expect:

1. Connect with your target audience

It is possible to run Facebook Ads on your own. In fact, we encourage crowdfunding creators to run their own ad campaigns before reaching out to us to see what kind of return on ad spend (ROAS) they see. However, on your own you won’t be able to achieve the level of targeting you can with a service like BackerKit. 

“You make an educated guess that males ages 25–42 living in these six US cities and with an interest in tabletop games are going to be the people interested in your tabletop campaign. Your backers probably are a subset of that group,” says BackerKit Sales Operations Manager Robert Wickham. “But you’re also paying Facebook to show your campaign to people who aren’t interested, which drives up your costs without giving you the results you’re looking for.” 

GravGrip’s Kevin Thomas did well marketing on his own, but BackerKit’s targeting capabilities took his campaign to the next level. 

“I was already off to a good start at around $133K. I recall being funded using just a few Facebook Ads I set up and my pre-marketing email list. The second BackerKit ads went live, we saw insane ROAS! It was over 10x for a few days,” Thomas says. 

2. BackerKit Marketing won’t save a failing campaign

If your campaign is trending to fail, BackerKit Marketing isn’t going to turn that around. Our marketing services should only be used to amplify the promotion that you’ve already done. We want you to use your money wisely, so we have very specific qualifying criteria. Generally speaking, you’re most likely to be a good fit for BackerKit Marketing if:

• You know at least 500 people will show up to your page organically.
• Your margins are strong enough to support a commission on each sale and the cost of ads.
• Your category has broad appeal.

Apply for BackerKit Marketing to have your project reviewed by our team.

Getting started with BackerKit Marketing

Who should use it? It’s best for projects that would be on course to exceed funding goals. You must be a BackerKit Pledge Manager customer to use Marketing. 

When to use it: Once your project is live. 

When to sign up: The best time to reach out to our team is 1-3 months before launch. However, we can drive great returns mid-campaign, so you can still get in touch if you’ve already launched. 

Challenge #3: Staying organized post-campaign and keeping backers happy

Once your project is finally funded, you’ll have to send out surveys to collect backer data and ship out rewards. A project with a smaller number of backers may be able to handle this part of the process on their own, managing all the data through spreadsheets. However, as your project scales and your funding goal and backer count increase, things get more challenging. You could potentially have mountains of information to sort through once you head into the fulfillment phase.

Raise additional funds, reach new backers, and manage orders with BackerKit Pledge Manager

BackerKit Pledge Manager streamlines everything you’ll have to do after your campaign, helps you stay organized, and automates essential fulfillment tasks. You’ll use BackerKit to send out surveys to your backers. All of that information will be collected and visible in one convenient place. 

If you have a lot of variations of the items you’re offering backers post-campaign (such as T-shirts that come in a variety of colors and sizes), you’ll have the unique ability to set up stock keeping units or SKUs (a short, unique identifier assigned to each individual item you provide backers) in BackerKit. The Item Generator makes the ordering process easier for backers, generates accurate counts for manufacturing, and streamlines fulfillment.

With Pledge Manager, you’ll be able to find individual backers, deal with special requests, and segment your audience (in case there is a specific action that you only want to apply to a certain group of backers). 

After the GravGrip Kickstarter campaign ended, Thomas says that BackerKit boosted his efficiency. 

“I would say that BackerKit Pledge Manager saves me 2-4 hours a day. The [number] of questions that require looking up a user and exactly what they ordered came in by the hour. BackerKit makes this process extremely easy,” he says.

You’ll also be processing orders through the Pledge Manager. We directly integrate with 3PL (third-party logistics) providers like Shopify and Easyship, making it easy to export orders to your fulfillment partner. Here are a few more features that will help you have a strong finish to your campaign:

1. Earn more with add-ons and pre-orders

You can continue raising money after your campaign in BackerKit through add-ons and pre-orders (or late pledges). Add-ons are items that backers can purchase in addition to what they’re receiving through their pledge. A pre-order store allows you to offer people who missed the opportunity to pledge to your campaign another chance to join in on the fun. Both of these features allow you to have the biggest campaign possible.

2. Get support for you and your backers

As prepared as you may be, you can’t anticipate all of the challenges you’ll face during fulfillment. From answering backer questions to dealing with international payment processing, there will inevitably be issues that you may not have the expertise or time to manage promptly. As your partner, the BackerKit team is prepared to help. With Backer Support, backer emails go directly to our expert support team who will keep your inbox under control by resolving 90% of backer requests. If you’re struggling to set up add-ons or have fulfillment questions, our Success team is there to offer guidance.

Getting started with BackerKit Pledge Manager

Who should use it? Crowdfunding creators who have successfully funded. 

When to use it: After you’ve funded.

When to sign up: Before or after you’ve launched.

Are you ready to launch your crowdfunding project? Download our crowdfunding checklist to see if you’re on track.

Preparing for your campaign

When planning your campaign, think about everything you’ll need from start to finish. You don’t want to be so hyper-focused on the idea of reaching your funding goal that you neglect to take the fundamental steps that will help you raise the money you’re looking for. If you don’t know what you’ll need, ask other creators and check out resources like the BackerKit blog and the BackerKit Community Newsletter to get tips on the do’s and don’ts of crowdfunding. 

You’re going to have to develop a budget well before you actually launch your project. When you’re doing this, you’ll not only want to figure out the costs of things like manufacturing and the development of creative assets, but also the costs of the tools that will make your campaign more manageable.

Running a crowdfunding campaign can be overwhelming, whether you’re an experienced creator or you’re thinking about launching your first project. BackerKit Launch, BackerKit Marketing, and BackerKit Pledge Manager can add structure to your journey, help maximize every opportunity you have to raise funds, and make the whole process run smoothly. You’re a creator — you should be devoting your time to bringing your cool ideas into the world. BackerKit’s tools were designed to make it possible for you to focus on doing what you love. 

The post What is BackerKit? appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

How do you get more eyes on your Kickstarter or Indiegogo project? The Gadget Flow team knows how challenging this can be. Since 2012, they’ve been introducing millions of people to exciting products while also offering crowdfunding creators a way to increase the visibility of their projects with potential backers. If you’re hoping to give your promotional strategy a boost, Gadget Flow is an excellent addition to the other marketing and community-building strategies you may already be using.

Gadget Flow is perfect for backers and creators

Gadget Flow is the original product discovery platform for staying up to date with the latest tech, gear, and most incredible crowdfunding campaigns. Reaching over 28 million people per month, their iOS and Android apps support AR and VR for next-level product exploration. With over 20,000 live products across 250 categories, they feature 12 new discoveries every single day.

For backers, all of this eliminates a lot of the leg work you have to do to find projects that resonate with you. The platform is built to make product exploration simple and fun. You can save products to a wish list and create custom feeds according to your interests. Gadget Flow also has hundreds of buyers guides that work for any budget. 

Creators get to feature and promote their campaign in front of a targeted audience, manage their listing through their proprietary dashboard, and get support from their 24/7 team. Gadget Flow has worked with over 5,000 campaigns since 2012 and they are certified experts on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Their community includes a lot of backers and product enthusiasts that are looking to discover and support new products daily. 

How UVMask worked with Gadget Flow to raise over $3 million

UVMask is a reusable air purification and anti-pollution face mask with UV protection. The project’s 50-day campaign launched on Kickstarter in June 2020. UM Systems, the team behind the project, set a $20,000 funding goal. But by the end of their campaign, they’d raised $3,019,833 with the support of 14,404 backers.One of the factors that contributed to the campaign’s overwhelming success was Gadget Flow. Boz Zou, CEO of UM Systems, says, “Gadget Flow helped us in raising $3 million on Kickstarter by generating an incredible 8x ROI. They were easy to work with and we got to introduce our UVMask to a massive and relevant audience in a matter of days.”

Gadget Flow worked with Zou and his team to spread the word about their project through a combination of techniques. First, UVMask was listed on the Gadget Flow website. The project was also shared out to their audiences via social media, newsletters, and a dedicated email blast. 

After 30 days, UVMask had received over 2.5 million impressions and 7,894 clicks. Gadget Flow also drove that amazing 8x ROI that gave the campaign the boost it needed to surpass its initial funding goal. UM Systems is currently using BackerKit Pledge Manager to survey their backers. 

Make sure people know about your project

You don’t have to promote your project on your own. There is an entire ecosystem of tools and services that can help your crowdfunding campaign find its audience and reach its goal. Visit Gadget Flow to learn more about how they work with crowdfunding creators.

The post How Gadget Flow Helps Creators Find More Backers appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Tabletop gaming is more than just a hobby for Dispel Dice creator Karen Wang — it’s been an important emotional, social, and artistic outlet for her. When she started sharing photos on Twitter of the designer, handcrafted dice she’d created, people wanted to buy them. Wang felt that producing her dice on a larger scale would be a great way to contribute to a community that has meant so much to her. To do this, she turned to crowdfunding, launching her first Kickstarter campaign in 2019. 

The gorgeous, multicolored, sharp-edge dice were bound to attract a large audience. But Wang never thought the Dispel Dice Kickstarter campaign would be as successful as it was. She set a $20,000 funding goal. By the end of the campaign, she’d raised more than $2 million. Raising 100 times your original goal is impressive for any creator, but it’s especially remarkable for a first-timer. Although Dispel Dice’s performance was unexpected, Wang wisely set up the infrastructure to handle this type of success. She worked with friends, mentors, and BackerKit to get prepared.

Pre-launch considerations

Like many first-time creators, Wang was nervous going into her campaign.

“I was constantly thinking ‘What if no one buys my dice? What am I going to do?’ I’m using all of my money to get here. So it was very frightening,” she says. “When I think back to that time, I was basically a nervous wreck every day leading up to the campaign.”

However, Wang’s friends, several of whom were experienced crowdfunding creators, told her that she’d actually need to prepare for the project to do a lot better than she hoped it would. Obviously, they believed in her and her work, but Wang’s friends were also speaking to a larger crowdfunding truth. Pre-launch preparations should not only pave the way for you to hit your funding goal, but also make it possible for you to manage a campaign that exceeds your expectations. 

What would she do if she had thousands or tens of thousands of backers? How would she handle fulfillment? Would she have the bandwidth or expertise to manage all of that backer data? Despite her nerves, Wang was mulling over these types of questions as she developed her campaign plan. 

Anticipating fulfillment and shipping challenges

Even with guidance from experienced creators, Wang knew that there would be things that she’d only have insight into once she started her campaign.

“My background isn’t in operations or logistics or shipping or fulfillment, and so I really didn’t know what I was going to need,” she says. “And I didn’t know what some of the problems were going to be with Kickstarter’s software or organizing the backer information.”

Wang was also concerned about how she’d calculate shipping costs. She didn’t want to end up overcharging and also didn’t want to have to foot the bill because of a miscalculation. She wondered how she would calculate sales tax per state and which states she was going to need to pay sales tax in. She’d known people who had run businesses and faced these issues, and understood that these were areas where a lot of small companies stumble. 

Other experienced Kickstarter creators suggested that she use BackerKit to tackle these challenges.

“I had known someone who had run Kickstarters pretty much every year, multiple times. He recommended BackerKit, so that was what really got me looking at it,” she says. “Having met someone who tried fulfilling without BackerKit and then tried fulfilling with it was useful because they were able to describe the logistical nightmare that not using BackerKit would be.”

She decided that she would use BackerKit Pledge Manager to survey her backers after her campaign ended and manage fulfillment.

Kickstarter dice campaign raises $1 million in less than 24 hours

Take a look at the comments on the Dispel Dice Kickstarter page and you’ll read glowing praise like, “I’ve been waiting to throw money at your for months” and “these dice are gorgeous. Who wouldn’t want them?” People were excited about this campaign, even before it launched. At the time, designer DnD dice collections — particularly the high-quality, luxury dice that Wang was creating — were rare. This project stood out. 

On the first day of the campaign, Dispel Dice surpassed its funding goal, raising $1 million and unlocking all of its stretch goals. 

This level of success doesn’t just happen by chance. Before launching, Wang and the Dispel Dice team worked hard to bring attention to the project. 

“We sent out some sets to people to preview. We sent them out to influencers and friends as well. We had a small sample sale prior to the Kickstarter, so that people could at least see them and hold them,” Wang says.

They also worked with a few media outlets, including Polygon and Kotaku, to get coverage on the project. 

Their outreach efforts in combination with the quality of the dice were two major factors contributing to the project’s performance. By the end of the 32-day campaign, Wang and her team had raised $2,392,156 with the support of 20,135 backers.

Keeping 20K backers happy

Wang wanted to provide her backers with the best experience possible. They were all so excited about the project, and disappointing them by flubbing fulfillment would be unimaginable to her. That being said, 20,135 backers is an overwhelming amount of people to contend with. Post-campaign, BackerKit helped Wang keep all of her backer information sorted and prepared for fulfillment.

“To be able to have all of our order data where we can update it very easily in one place, search our backers, charge them for shipping and taxes all in one place, that was really important for us,” she says.

Her two big pre-campaign concerns — calculating shipping and taxes — could be handled with BackerKit. By setting up Tax Rules, creators can charge an additional percentage based on country or US state. And with the ability to charge for shipping after the Kickstarter campaign has ended, BackerKit helps creators avoid making costly miscalculations based on estimates made before they may know the total weight of each backer’s order or costs associated with add-ons. 

BackerKit Success team provides personalized fulfillment guidance for Dispel Dice

Aside from the common crowdfunding concerns that Wang anticipated, she also had a few project-specific issues that BackerKit simplified for her. There were a number of different item variations with the Dispel Dice Kickstarter campaign. To enable backers to choose the options they want while filling out their post-campaign survey, Wang would need to set up item stock keeping units, or SKUs in BackerKit for each variation. 

When you have a lot of items and options, you can end up with a lot of different SKUs. BackerKit Lead Customer Success Manager Antonio Rosales worked with Wang to keep the SKUs manageable and devise a solution that would work for her campaign’s unique needs.

“We actually had to create additional SKUs for each tier level because the dice sets cost a slightly different amount per tier level,” she says. “For example if you buy two sets it’s cheaper than if you buy one set, and as a result, that’s a completely different SKU. Having BackerKit be able to organize and set that all up for me was very helpful because I’d never done that before and I didn’t want to set up something like 800 SKUs.”

Wang found BackerKit’s platform to be intuitive and she appreciated the assistance that was offered when tackling these kinds of unexpected issues. 

Raising an additional $800K through BackerKit Pledge Manager

With BackerKit, creators have the opportunity to raise additional funds through add-ons — extra rewards that backers can purchase in addition to the items they receive for their pledge — and by creating a pre-order store — a site where people who may have missed the campaign can purchase items.

Wang implemented both, adding $875,052 through BackerKit after her campaign had ended.

Finding a dedicated crowdfunding partner

Though Wang initially only intended to use BackerKit to survey backers and manage fulfillment, the BackerKit team worked with her to develop other strategies to amplify the work that she’d done on her own. For example, Wang had put a lot of effort into building her community. By the time Dispel Dice launched, she had over 40,000 people on her email list. Having a strong email list is a fundamental part of crowdfunding. Mobilizing these supporters is the key to building a campaign’s momentum. Before the campaign ended, the BackerKit team suggested that Wang use BackerKit Launch for a final promotional push. 

BackerKit Launch is a crowdfunding email marketing platform that helps creators leverage their audiences to reach their funding goals. Because Launch directly integrates with Kickstarter and Indiegogo, creators are able to see in real-time who on their email list hasn’t yet pledged to their campaign. With that data, they can create targeted email marketing messages to encourage that segment of the list to pledge. 

The Dispel Dice team used Launch to let their community know how much time was left for them to pledge.

Of the $2,392,156 Dispel Dice raised, $51,128 can be attributed to Launch and the emails sent in the campaign’s final hours. 

Entering the homestretch

Wang and the Dispel Dice team are currently focused on fulfillment. Because of the scale of the project, there will be two different shipping waves — one in 2020 and one in 2021. BackerKit is making this process easier. 

“Being able to send out a lock down address form, so that we can say ‘don’t fiddle with this’ to a specific segment of our backers was incredibly helpful,” she says. “Because we have the 2020 and the 2021 waves, we didn’t want to ask people in the 2021 wave to lock down their addresses until we were ready to send out their orders.”

The success of the campaign has allowed Wang to start building out her team. And while fulfillment may be the top concern right now, she would love to create more in the tabletop space. 

“I think when I visited the BackerKit office, one thing that was really incredible was that I’m walking by all these products that were just an idea at some point and were brought to reality through the combination of work between a bunch of small businesses, creators, and the customers that were willing to take the risk and crowdfund it.”  

Are you a tabletop creator preparing for your upcoming launch day? RSVP for our webinar on crowdfunding your tabletop game to learn everything you need to know to set yourself up for success. And if you’d like to find out how BackerKit can help at each stage of your crowdfunding journey, please contact our team. 

The post How Dispel Dice Managed Their Crowdfunding Success appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Managing a crowdfunding campaign may be time-intensive, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. To understand everything that goes into a Kickstarter campaign and keep yourself on track, here is a basic overview and checklist of steps you’ll need to take to set yourself up for a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Pre-Launch Kickstarter checklist

If you plan to launch a crowdfunding campaign either on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, the work you do before launch day will be a major factor in whether or not you hit your funding goal. This is why you should take your time during this stage. It may take 6 months to 1 year to get ready. It could take longer. Regardless, don’t cut corners, ask for help from experts or other crowdfunding creators if you’re confused, and do your research. 

There may be things that you don’t know that you don’t know, so carve out some time to just read about crowdfunding best practices or watch crowdfunding webinars while completing the following essential pre-launch steps. 

(It should be noted that some of the steps below will be happening concurrently and that you may have a reason to change the order based on your project’s needs. While the order is by no means set in stone, it is crucial that you complete these tasks before you launch.)

1. Create a separate Kickstarter checklist for personal goals and expectations

Down the line, you’ll need to set a funding goal. But well before you start crunching those numbers, you should be writing out your personal expectations for your campaign. If, for example, you were to break even by the end of your campaign, some people might not see that as a success. However, if you’re looking at your campaign in terms of growing a lifetime audience, the campaign could be extraordinarily successful in your eyes if you’ve built a large, engaged community by the end of it. 

So what is it that you want to accomplish? Aside from hitting your funding goal, how will you measure success? You may find it helpful to create a separate Kickstarter checklist for those personal campaign goals and expectations, and then check your progress as you go. 

2. Create your prototype

Start visualizing your product idea by designing a prototype. Your design will undoubtedly change as you get more feedback and start testing, but the earlier you begin that iteration process the sooner you can make those changes. You want to start validating your idea as soon as possible. With a prototype — even if it’s very rough and DIY — you’ll be able to see what’s possible and what’s still needed.

3. Identify your team members and team roles

Who will handle social media and marketing, create campaign assets, and write all of the copy on your campaign page? Will you be hiring a professional agency? Will you do it yourself?

While research shows that crowdfunding campaigns with teams raise over three times as much as solo creators, if the scope of your project is relatively small, you may be able to handle everything on your own or with a group of dedicated friends at your side. But, as your project scales, you’ll likely need a larger team of professionals and crowdfunding services to market and help manage your campaign. When selecting your team, consider partners who have worked with projects like yours, can share verifiable results from their past work, and who have different areas of expertise than your own. 

4. Develop and price your product

Figure out what it will take to bring your cool idea to life. Start by conducting market research, asking yourself questions like:

• Who is my target audience and what are they looking for?
• Are there similar products on the market? 
• Are there any projects on Kickstarter or Indiegogo that are similar to what I’m working on? What features do they have? Which features are they missing?
• What’s the typical price point for these products? 
• What were the funding goals for these projects and how much did they end up raising? 

The answers to these questions will help you figure out your unique selling proposition — or the thing that sets you apart from the competition — and give you some insight into what backers are willing to pledge.  

With this information in mind, you can begin developing a budget. Write out everything you’ll need — from prototypes, manufacturing, and production to packaging, shipping, and fulfillment. If you plan on using BackerKit Pledge Manager, you’ll also need to factor that into your budget. Then, estimate or get quotes on all costs associated with your project. Having these costs along with your market research data will enable you to calculate your funding goal so that it covers your expenses.

5. Build your community and email list

It’s important to recognize that the number of people you have on your email list will correspond to the number of backers and pledges you receive. Experts generally say that 5% of the people on a high-quality email list will become backers. If you end up having a $10,000 goal and an average pledge of $100, you’ll need 100 backers to get your project funded. With a 5% conversion rate, you’ll need 2000 people on your list. That number may seem daunting, but list-building is an ongoing process and you should give yourself enough time to grow the community you’ll need. 

Get started by creating a landing page where you can collect emails from prospects. You can build your page free using BackerKit Launch. Drive people to that landing page by networking at online or in-person conventions, engaging with Facebook groups and other online communities, connecting with influencers, hosting giveaways, and using lead ads. 

A random list of email addresses won’t help you much. It’s the quality of your list that’s important, and not the sheer number. Remember it’s 5% of people on a high-quality list that convert. You want to connect with people who are excited about what you’re creating and not just looking to get something free in a giveaway. 

Once you have your list, test its strength using BackerKit Launch. This tool lets you see how many people on your list have pledged to Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns in the past, and are more likely to pledge to your campaign.

6. Set up your campaign page

Your campaign page is your sales pitch to backers, so it needs to be compelling. To make sure you get it right, keep the following in mind:

• Your video should explain why you’re launching your project and the benefits it offers backers. Keep it as short and informative as possible (under the 2-minute mark tracks the best).
• Images should be high-quality and high-resolution. Using animated GIFs to show your product in action is a nice way to grab people’s attention. Focus on making sure your main image is eye-catching, as this is what most people will see. Limit text and make sure it looks good scaled-down, since many people will be viewing it on mobile devices. 
• Copy should be straightforward. Deliver key points quickly and simply. Don’t forget to have someone double-check everything for typos. 
• Reward tiers should cover a range of price points to encourage people from diverse financial backgrounds to contribute. Limit reward tiers to 3-5 pledge levels to avoid confusion. Remember, if you’re using BackerKit, you can create custom bundles with add-ons after the campaign, which can give you the freedom to make rewards simple, while also giving backers an opportunity to get additional items. 
• Showcase product preview videos and highlight any prototype reviews and testimonials from playtesters or product testers. 

You’ll have to get your project approved by the platform you’re using before you launch, so don’t forget to review your platform’s requirements and campaign page optimization tips. (Check out this Kickstarter guide and this Indiegogo guide to make sure you’re on the right track.) Also, keep in mind that this approval process can take at least 2-3 business days, so factor that into your crowdfunding timeline. 

7. Set up your Pre-Launch Page

After you get your final project page approved, you can create a Pre-Launch Page to promote your upcoming project on Kickstarter. Use the page to share information about your project and get people excited about the campaign. On Kickstarter, visitors to your page can choose to be notified once your project launches.  

According to BackerKit research, projects with a Kickstarter Pre-Launch Page are 4 times more likely to be funded. Because getting pledges early is important to maximizing the funding potential of a project, anything you can do to mobilize your community right when you launch is critical. 

8. Create a Kickstarter promo strategy and checklist

You’ll likely need a promotional checklist or task calendar within your larger Kickstarter checklist to ensure you stay on target. First on the list, decide which platforms and marketing channels you’ll use to promote your campaign. Social media, blogs that cover products that are similar to yours, your pre-launch page, and online communities that are relevant to your project are all great places to start. 

Figure out which promotional tools can help you stay organized and present yourself professionally. When it comes to social media, for example, you’ll likely be using Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for promotion. But you can also use Buffer to schedule posts and Canva to design creative assets, and Animoto to edit videos.  

Next, create your marketing timeline. Determine when you’ll start reaching out to people who can help promote your project (press, influencers, friends, etc.), what your social media posting schedule will be, and when you’ll send out your newsletter and marketing emails. If you aren’t sure when you should be sending emails, BackerKit Launch can help with templates that are designed to be sent at strategic points throughout your campaign. 

Within that strategy, build in time for analysis. You’ll need to see what your email list growth rate is and which channels are best at bringing in new email contacts. Take this information and use it to refine your promotional tactics. 

9. Reach out to your marketing partner

If you plan on using an ad or marketing agency to promote your campaign once it’s live, you’ll have the best results if you reach out to your partner a few weeks before you launch. BackerKit Marketing partnerships, for example, should begin at least two weeks before your campaign launches.

10. Get final feedback and make sure you’ve made it through your Kickstarter checklist

See what your professional partners, friends, playtesters, and other people in your community think about your project. Share your preview link with this trusted group, and find out if your story is coming through effectively, their thoughts on your campaign’s creative assets, and any other areas that could use improvement. 

During Kickstarter campaign checklist

If you completed all of the steps on your Kickstarter pre-launch checklist, you should have a strong launch. But don’t expect to coast, even if you do well on day one. Crowdfunding campaigns typically hit a plateau during the midpoint — this is even true with the most successful campaigns like Frosthaven, so it’ll be your job to keep up the energy and excitement. You should be spending this time engaging with your community and updating your backers on your progress.

1. Announce your launch

Let everyone know that your Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign is live. At first, you may want to do a soft launch to a select group of enthusiastic fans to get the momentum going. But after that, spread the word far and wide through social media, updates on a previous campaign’s project page, press releases, and your network of friends, family, and collaborators. Most importantly, make sure to send out an email to your community with the news and encourage them to pledge.

2. Make regular project updates and answer questions

Keeping the lines of communication open is a critical part of keeping backers engaged and happy throughout your campaign, so make sure to post consistent updates on your campaign page. Celebrate project milestones, share behind-the-scenes stories about your team or development process, or ask for feedback. If nothing else, you should let everyone know if there are any new changes, developments, or setbacks in your campaign. When backers ask questions, respond promptly. If you’re getting the same backer questions over and over, add those questions to the FAQ section of your campaign page.

3. Activate community members who haven’t pledged yet

Midway through your campaign, send out another email to your community members. Let them know how many days are left in your campaign and how important their support is to you. If you’ve introduced any stretch goals, make sure to promote them. 

With BackerKit Launch, you can see which people on your email list haven’t pledged yet. Using this information, you’ll be able to send messages directly to this segment of your audience. Doing this prevents you from over-messaging people on your email list who’ve already pledged and makes it possible to send a more customized reminder to the people who haven’t backed the campaign yet.

4. Track performance

Keep track of your campaign’s progress and traffic sources, using your creator dashboard and BackerTracker — a tool that shows how your project is trending and whether or not it’s on track to meet its goal. This data shows you which channels are most effective at driving people to your campaign page and which aren’t performing well. If you’re working with a marketing agency and using Facebook Ads, review those results as well to ensure you’re getting a return on ad spend (ROAS) that you’re happy with. Use this information to adjust and optimize your strategy.

5. Set up your pledge manager

Once you’ve launched your campaign, you can sign up for BackerKit Pledge Manager, which keeps backer data organized and automates many of the time-consuming tasks associated with fulfilling rewards. Because you only need to prepare for fulfillment if your campaign is successful, it’s best to wait until you’re funded — or you’re trending to fund according to BackerTracker — before setting up your pledge manager. Make sure to announce that you’ll be using BackerKit on your campaign page.

6. Continue your marketing and community engagement efforts

Push through that mid-campaign plateau and finish strong by continuing to market. Encourage your current backers to spread the word about your project. Consider running a cross-promotion with another creator where you both share information about each other’s projects on your campaign pages. Experiment with new messaging and promotional images. Share any exciting updates in your marketing materials. Remember that it’s normal for activity to slow down in the middle of your campaign. Use this opportunity to try out new methods of engaging your backers and prospects.

Post Kickstarter campaign checklist

You did it! You hit your funding goal. And while you should definitely celebrate, the work doesn’t stop here. You still have to ship out rewards and keep your backers happy through the entire fulfillment process. And don’t miss out on the opportunity to raise additional funds. Here’s everything you need to do to finish your campaign the right way.

1. Open a pre-order store

Once your campaign ends, you can keep the momentum going outside of Kickstarter or Indiegogo with pre-orders. This not only gives people a chance to purchase items they’ve missed out on, but also gives you an opportunity to raise more money. You can use BackerKit to create a pre-order store, which enables you to manage pre-order backers and campaign backers in the same place.

2. Send out surveys to collect backer information

Get your backers’ address and payment information by sending out your surveys 14 days after your campaign has ended (this is approximately the amount of time it takes for Kickstarter and Indiegogo to process payments). If you’re using BackerKit, backers will be able to see all of the items they’re receiving based on their pledge level, make item selections (size, color, etc.) if applicable, and purchase add-on items in their survey.

3. Stay in touch with your backers

Depending on the complexity of your project, the fulfillment process could take months or even years. It’s critical that you keep in touch with your backers during that time. You should be answering any questions they have and keeping them up to date on your production and delivery timeline. BackerKit customers have the option to turn on Backer Support. If you choose this option, all backer questions from your surveys will be directed to a dedicated support lead.

4. Process fulfillment and prepare your Kickstarter shipping checklist

There are several steps you’ll have to take to get ready for shipping, so again, it might help to create a separate checklist to make sure you finish everything. First, get ready for manufacturing by finalizing your item counts. Then, obtain shipping quotes from fulfillment houses. As your items are being manufactured, you can finalize orders in BackerKit, locking down backer addresses (that is, ensuring backers’ information is correct) in preparation for shipping. Because BackerKit has integrations with a number of fulfillment partners, including Amplifier and Shopify, you’ll be able to send that information directly to the fulfillment house.

5. You’ve made it through your Kickstarter checklist — it’s time to ship rewards

Production has wrapped up, and now it’s time to ship those rewards. Notify your backers, send out tracking numbers through BackerKit, and thank everyone who contributed to your campaign one last time for their support. 

Running a crowdfunding campaign isn’t easy. You will have to dedicate months — maybe even an entire year — to complete your journey. But if you have a crowdfunding campaign plan and checklist, you’ll make it through each stage more efficiently and with less stress. You also be ready to take what you’ve learned and run another campaign. 

Are you creating your pre-launch plan? Download our Kickstarter project checklist and worksheet to ensure you stay on target. 

The post Kickstarter Checklist: Create a Plan for Crowdfunding Success appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Are you wondering how to drive more pledges to your campaign? It all starts with marketing. Let’s take a look at how marketing for Kickstarter and Indiegogo works and the strategies the top creators rely on to raise more funds during their campaigns.

Reaching potential backers

As a crowdfunding creator, you can classify the people you’ll be marketing to into two groups: (1) People who already know about your project and are invested, and (2) people who you haven’t reached yet. You’ll need to take two distinct approaches when connecting with these groups.

Convert your existing audience

Experienced creators likely already have a community of people behind them who trust them and are excited about their upcoming project. If you’re setting up a crowdfunding marketing budget and wondering where you should spend your first dollar, start with this existing audience. When marketing for Kickstarter, it’s a lot easier to get people you already know to visit your campaign page than it is to acquire new backers, so your money will go further with this group. 

This community will help your campaign build momentum. Their pledges, particularly when those pledges happen early on in your campaign, serve as social proof, convincing other people to back your project. When someone sees that your campaign is doing well, they’ll want to jump on the bandwagon.

Activating your community

To mobilize your community, and make sure you’re reaching them with the right messages at the right time, develop an email messaging strategy for your Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign. In terms of your timeline, you should be sending email messages at a few crucial moments pre-launch and during your campaign. These moments include, but are not limited to: a week before you launch your project, launch day, a few days after launching, and right before your campaign ends. 

In each email, you’ll not only need to encourage your audience to pledge early but also drum up excitement for your campaign. Tell them what problem your product solves. Give them a behind-the-scenes look at your product development or prototyping process. Offer early-bird specials. Create a sense of urgency. 

If you struggle to come up with email marketing messages or just want to make this process easier, BackerKit Launch can help. Launch is an email platform built specifically for crowdfunding. When you’re still in the early stages of your campaign, you can use it to create a landing page to collect email addresses and build your community. Once you’re ready to start promoting your campaign, you can use templates designed to be sent at strategic points throughout your campaign, and receive guidance on what to say and when to say it. 

Unlike a standard email marketing platform, you’ll also be able to use Launch to refine your messaging as your campaign progresses. Launch allows Kickstarter and Indiegogo users to track pledge progression in real-time. Using the platforms segmentation tool, you can divide your community into groups based on whether or not they’ve pledged. After segmenting your audience, you’ll be able to send targeted messages to people who haven’t pledged to encourage them to do so while also ensuring that you don’t over-message people who’ve already pledged. 

You can also import past Kickstarter or Indiegogo projects directly into Launch to see how many people on your email list pledged to previous campaigns and the percentage of pledges that came from past backers. With this data, you’ll have a sense of how many people from this group are likely to pledge to your campaign based on their past behavior and whether or not you have enough built-in support to have a strong first day.

Once you’ve started connecting with your existing audience, that’s when you can scale up and start spending money where there’s more of a risk.

Finding new backers through social media and paid marketing

You may choose to reach new backers through organic social media and email marketing. Posting regularly about your project and participating in conversations on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram in relevant communities can help you build an audience. Tools like Buffer, Trello, TweetDeck, HootSuite, and MailChimp make it easier to plan out social media posts and build emails, so you can consistently engage your target audience. To see how effective your organic efforts are, you can track traffic sources using Google Analytics.

While organic marketing is an important part of your overall acquisition strategy, investing money into outreach can give your backer count a much-needed boost. Paid marketing encompasses a whole spectrum of activities. Each of these activities varies in how effective they are in targeting the people most likely to be interested in your campaign.  

Brand marketing: The goal here is to build brand awareness and tell a compelling story. Think about Super Bowl ads — they’re not very targeted, and it’s difficult to measure the results, but they reach a lot of people. Brand marketing is not going to be a good fit for a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign. 

PR/influencer marketing: Here, you’ll identify people who may be social media influencers, bloggers, or other popular creators who produce content that is adjacent to the project category you’re working in and can help spread the word about your campaign when it’s live. This strategy can be helpful. However, it’s most powerful when used in addition to other promotional techniques. 

Demographic and interest-based Facebook Ads: Through Facebook Ads, you can effectively target people interested in technology, design, gaming, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and any other demographic that your “ideal customer” may fall into. You can also measure the results reasonably well through Facebook. This is something that you can do on your own.

Behavioral targeting: This type of targeting is the most precise and is achieved through performance marketing. Rather than merely targeting people who resemble the kinds of backers you’re hoping to attract, you’re targeting people who have performed actions or behaviors that would make them good prospects. Using behavioral targeting, you can connect with real people who have supported projects like yours and recommend your project to them through ads. This data makes your marketing dollars go further, which is why this type of marketing for Kickstarter is so popular with the top creators. 

Targeting with brand marketing is the least effective for crowdfunding creators while behavioral targeting is the most effective.

Although behavioral marketing has the strongest targeting capabilities, you can only access the audience data that you have personally collected to date, limiting the number of potential backers you’ll be able to reach. However, you can increase that audience by teaming up with a marketing or ad agency.

How marketing agencies work for Kickstarter creators

A marketing or ad agency that employs behavioral targeting will recommend your project to prospective backers through highly-targeted Facebook Ads. And while you’ll find many different ad agencies and marketing services out there, crowdfunding creators must work with partners that have experience running ads for crowdfunding projects. Agencies that specialize in marketing for Kickstarter and Indiegogo not only understand which techniques work best for crowdfunding projects, but also have access to the audiences that are most likely to pledge to your campaign. 

BackerKit, for example, has sent 17 million backer surveys in the eight years since its launch. A certain percentage of those people have opted in to receive recommendations. As a result, BackerKit has a deep well of backer data. We know when these people back projects and what their behavior is in BackerKit. Our marketing experts can then use this information to put together the most relevant group of people for your project. Just as a service like Spotify recommends music to people, connecting listeners to artists, we’re recommending crowdfunding projects to people, connecting backers with creators on Facebook. 

You can’t achieve this level of targeting on your own. You have to work with an agency with access to your campaign’s most relevant audience and deep insights into how they behave.

Measuring success

To ensure that you’re getting the best return on ad spend (ROAS) — that is, the money you’re getting back for every dollar spent — you’ll obviously have to track ad performance. One common misconception that creators have is that they need to optimize for efficiency if they want to have a successful Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign. For example, they may think that every dollar they spend on ads needs to return $10, otherwise it’s not worth their time. While it’s important to look at efficiency, chasing those super-efficient returns doesn’t have to be your primary focus. But that super-efficient ROAS is only meaningful if it’s able to scale.

Why it’s important to think about scale when marketing for Kickstarter or Indiegogo

To understand how to measure your success on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, let’s take a look at two different scenarios. 

With the first option, you’re getting a 10x ROAS after spending $100, which translates into $1000 in pledges. So if you have a 50% margin, you’ll earn $500 before ad costs. Once you subtract the $100 ad spend, your profit is $400.

With the second option, you’re only getting 4x ROAS after spending $1000. This brings in $4000 on Kickstarter. With that 50% margin, you’ll make $2000 before ad costs, and $1000 after paying for advertising. 

In the second example, you’re spending more money, but you’re getting twice as much back in pure profit. On top of this, you’re going to benefit from Kickstarter’s networking effects. When you’re able to drive more pledges to your campaign through ads, you’ll experience a boost in organic traffic because Kickstarter’s algorithm ranks projects that are doing well higher. This means that you’re going to get a lift that you don’t even have to pay for. It’s best to get your Kickstarter campaign as big as it can be as quickly as you can because everything will compound to bring more attention to your campaign and help you reach your funding goal.

When does running ads make sense?

Paid customer acquisition doesn’t work for every type of project. To make sure that you’re using your marketing dollars effectively, you should only consider working with an ad agency if you meet the following criteria:

• You know at least 500 people will show up to your page organically. These can be email contacts, friends and family, fans from other platforms, or some combination of the three. It helps if you can secure a pre-commitment to pledge. 
• Your margins are strong enough to support a commission on each sale and the cost of ads. If you’re paying the cost of advertising and you’re also paying an ad agency a commission on what you bring in, will you still be making a profit at the end of the day? 
• Your category has broad appeal. It can be difficult for a crowdfunding agency to run ads for a hyper-local or experiential project (i.e., you’re opening a restaurant or a venue).

Getting marketing assets for your Kickstarter or Indiegogo project ready

Once you’ve decided to engage with an agency, you’ll be required to send over assets — high-quality photos of your product. The images you choose can significantly impact the success of your ads, so you must get this right. Here are a few recommendations.

Tabletop games

The gold standard for tabletop games is a totally stylized image that shows your box, components, minis (if you’re doing a minis game), and product art. You want to show everything that people will be getting. The image should make the game seem expansive and convince them that this is an experience they want to get into.

Product design

You’ll want to use images that contain the device or equipment that you’re producing. Showing the product in action is particularly effective. Devices and equipment pictured in a physical environment, demonstrating the benefits they provide, generally outperform studio product shots. It should be easy to understand what the product is.

For example, this power bank image clearly shows how many devices can be charged at once while the image from the OYO NOVA campaign makes it clear that this product is an at-home exercise device. 

GravGrip triples funding prediction with help from BackerKit Marketing

GravGrip is a battery-free gimbal that keeps your phone level when you’re filming action shots. The campaign was launched on Kickstarter by Kevin Thomas, a first-time project creator. His funding goal was $20,000. 

Before teaming up with BackerKit to run ads for his campaign, he had done the work. He had a great-looking Kickstarter page, and he’d put together compelling ad assets that showed the product in motion and told a compelling story. According to BackerTracker — a tool that shows trend projections and lets you know if your campaign is on target to meet its funding goal — Thomas was on track to raise $280,000 before getting started with BackerKit Marketing. 

When a campaign is doing well like this, it’s the perfect candidate for performance marketing. In these cases, ads will amplify the work you’ve done. Once Thomas started running ads with BackerKit, the BackerTracker prediction went up almost 300% from $280,000 to $813,000 — a considerable increase.

Of those funds, only a fraction, around $350,000, is directly attributed to BackerKit’s actions. Thanks to Kickstarter’s network effects, the bulk of those funds are coming from that organic lift that occurs when a campaign is performing well. You can approximate how Kickstarter’s network effects are impacting your campaign by turning to BackerTracker. If your campaign starts to outperform its index, you can look at how much you paid for ads and compare that number to how much your campaign’s outlook has improved. 

Find a marketing partner for your next Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign

It may take some trial and error to develop the best marketing plan for your Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign. But when you have experts at your side, sharing campaign tips and strategies, you are in a better position to hit — or even surpass — your funding goal. If you’re launching your next crowdfunding campaign soon and want to get started with BackerKit Marketing, reach out to us to see if your project is a good fit for the service.

The post Marketing for Kickstarter: How to Smash Your Funding Goal appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

OYO Fitness launched their first product, the DoubleFlex Black, on Kickstarter in 2017. While you’d probably expect a portable gym that incorporates technology used by NASA astronauts to do well on Kickstarter, the DoubleFlex Black was more successful than anyone could have anticipated. The project blew past its $30,000 funding goal, raising $659,175 with 4,206 backers. At the time, it was the second most-funded fitness product in Kickstarter history.

Three years later, OYO Fitness founder Paul Francis and his team were gearing up to launch their second product on Kickstarter — the OYO NOVA Gym. On the heels of their previous success, they approached their next campaign with confidence. But the big question was, how could they build on those past wins and have an even bigger campaign this time around? 

Second project internal goal: $1 million

Kickstarter was the natural choice for the OYO Fitness team. “It’s such a great platform to take a product and get it out in front of a community of early adopters to see how it resonates,” says OYO Fitness COO Graham Ripple. They used the platform for the OYO NOVA Gym campaign because they knew it could work for them. 

They set their funding goal at $30,000. This was the minimum amount they’d need to produce the product, and it was a number they felt they could hit, given their first campaign’s results. However, like many creators, they also had an informal, internal funding goal that they were shooting for — $1 million. 

Pre-launch considerations

Even before they launched, the OYO Fitness team benefited from having a strong community of supporters behind him. In fact, the OYO NOVA Gym was developed based on feedback from that fan base. But to hit that one-million-dollar goal, they were going to have to grow that already large audience. This can be a daunting task, even for the most successful Kickstarter creators and creators like OYO Fitness who know the ropes. 

And what if they managed to double or triple the number of backers they’d previously had? How would they deal with fulfillment on that scale in a timely manner? What kind of stress would it put on their team? To scale crowdfunding campaigns, you not only need to find ways to acquire more backers, but you also need to build the infrastructure or find support systems that will enable you to manage that success. 

Crowdfunding combo power

Preparing for that best-case scenario, in which they had tens of thousands of backers, meant reaching out to BackerKit. OYO Fitness had used the BackerKit Pledge Manager to streamline the fulfillment process during their first campaign in 2017. They were happy with the results and planned on using the Pledge Manager again for the new campaign. 

After speaking with BackerKit Account Executive Yung Choi, they learned about some of BackerKit’s new services. Because of their campaign goals, Choi believed that they’d be a good fit for BackerKit Marketing — a performance marketing service, designed explicitly for crowdfunding that drives prospective backers to a creator’s campaign page. 

The OYO Fitness team already had funds allocated to use on ads, so it was a pleasant surprise to learn that BackerKit had an ad service in addition to the Pledge Manager. The creators behind the most successful Kickstarter projects of all time know that in order to scale, they need to develop a strategy and seek out partners that would help them increase their marketing efforts and optimize post-campaign fulfillment. They decided to use Pledge Manager and Ads to help achieve these two intertwined goals. 

Toning up OYO Fitness’ marketing: choosing an experienced ad agency

Facebook Ads are a paid marketing tool that can give your organic — or unpaid — marketing techniques, like email marketing, a boost. Running Facebook Ads during your crowdfunding campaign brings more exposure to your project and can ultimately drive more pledges. 

OYO Fitness used Facebook Ads during their first campaign. However, when trying this technique out at that time, they partnered up with an agency that didn’t have experience working with Kickstarter projects. “We didn’t get the return on ad spend that we wanted,” says Ripple. “The first three days of a campaign tend to bring the most support. And I think that we really missed out on that. We did not come out strong out of the gate, and I think that affected how much we raised.” 

It wasn’t until they started using a Kickstarter ad agency that things turned around for them. Finding a partner who understood crowdfunding was a major contributor to their first project’s success, and it was something they knew they would need to repeat during their second campaign.

Collaborating with multiple ad agencies

Targeting is a critical part of running a successful ad campaign. If you aren’t targeting the right audience with your ads, you’re essentially throwing away your money. This is why it’s so important to work with an agency that understands how to optimize campaigns for crowdfunding campaigns. BackerKit uses custom audiences to reach over a million crowdfunding enthusiasts. This ensures that a project gets in front of people who are most likely to convert and become backers.

The second piece to OYO Fitness’s paid marketing strategy was working with multiple ad partners. This is something that BackerKit encouraged. Backers convert in different ways. One agency may have a piece of the puzzle that another one doesn’t — they may have access to different audiences or have different marketing techniques. 

For this reason, it’s best to stick with agencies that understand the benefits of this type of collaboration. An agency that genuinely wants you to have the most successful Kickstarter campaign possible isn’t going to force you to sign any kind of exclusivity agreements. 

Achieving peak ad performance: $561K raised with BackerKit

The OYO Fitness team ended up working with four ad partners, including BackerKit. To keep all of these ad campaigns on track and ensure they were making the most of their marketing budget, Ripple, who was the primary strategist and project manager on OYO Fitness’s side, closely monitored return on ad spend (ROAS) for each of the ad partners. “This allowed me to allocate resources to them based on their performance,” he says. “We wanted to reward the partners that had found our target market.”  

A creator’s target ROAS is determined by dividing the average pledge value by the average cost per pledge. With an accurate ROAS target, creators make money while spending. So while Ripple was tracking ROAS to determine how to divvy up funds, BackerKit Creator Marketing Account Manager Chris Rojas was also monitoring performance, making sure that they were adjusting the daily budget and ads to hit those ROAS targets. 

“We had a weekly call with Chris. We were regularly having a dialogue about how the ads were performing,” Ripple says. “We would see if there were tweaks that could be made to either assets that we were giving him or the campaign page itself. It was a very collaborative process, and we felt very supported by the BackerKit team.”

Top-performing ad assets

In the end, this collaboration with BackerKit yielded $561,000 for the OYO NOVA Gym campaign. 

Reaching more than 500K backers

The OYO team needed to connect with as many qualified leads — that’s is, prospects that could become actual backers — as possible. This would primarily be achieved through ads and more grassroots marketing efforts — they were sure to get their fan base excited for the OYO NOVA Gym campaign before their launch date to set the momentum for their campaign. But as BackerKit users, they had one more marketing tool at their disposal: The BackerKit Newsletter, which reaches over 500,00 opted-in backers. 

The BackerKit newsletter is a real boon for budget-conscious creators because fees are based on results. To track performance in real-time, the OYO team could monitor an online dashboard. The newsletter gave their project more exposure — which is always a good thing — and brought them even closer to their funding goal. They raised over $28,000 through their newsletter feature. 

“The mix of the Newsletter and the Ads that BackerKit provides is such a potent combination,” Ripple says. 

The journey to $1 million

The OYO NOVA Gym campaign launched during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, the team was concerned about what effect that would have on their campaign and crowdfunding in general. But, as they saw the way the project was trending over the course of their fifty-one-day campaign, it was clear that this portable gym was particularly well suited for a time when people had to shelter in place and were working out from their homes.

Their marketing efforts allowed them to connect with thousands of people who needed a fitness product like the OYO NOVA Gym — both those who were likely to be interested in the product under any circumstances as well as this new audience of people who were dealing with the realities of quarantine. The project’s timing mixed with the preparation they’d done led to success far beyond what the team could have imagined. 

They surpassed their $30,000 goal on the first day of their campaign, raising over $175,000 from 1,200 backers. The OYO NOVA Gym was on its way to landing on the Kickstarter most-funded list. 

$4 million+ raised: Becoming the most successful fitness product on Kickstarter 

Like many of the other Kickstarter products that have raised the most money in their categories and campaigns that appear on the highest-funded crowdfunding projects list, the OYO NOVA Gym brought in a lot of early pledges. They hit their one-million-dollar internal goal in six days. But the team didn’t stop there. They made sure to keep the momentum going by utilizing stretch goals throughout the campaign, offering new color options for the OYO NOVA Gym and fitness accessories. By the time the campaign ended, they’d raised $4,411,495 and had 26,199 backers. They’d become the most successful fitness product in Kickstarter history.

“We expected to raise as much as we did in 2017, and were hoping to double it and raise past the one-million-dollar mark if we could. But we did not expect the level of support we received. It’s overwhelming and such a cool experience,” Ripple says. 

26K backers — now what?

The excitement of having just run one of the most successful Kickstarter projects hasn’t worn off. They had 26,199 backers — it’s a staggering number. And while OYO Fitness couldn’t be more pleased with their results, a larger backer count means order management flow during fulfillment can be cumbersome. Who wants to manually sort through spreadsheets with more than 26,000 backers’ information? From the get-go, the team knew they would need a survey and fulfillment solution that was more robust than what Kickstarter had to offer.

OYO Fitness is currently in the middle of the fulfillment process. The BackerKit Pledge Manager is making it possible for them to survey their backers to collect their information and then keep all of their backer data organized. They’re also charging for shipping in BackerKit, charging VAT for their EU backers, and raising additional funds through add-on sales.

“BackerKit is doing such a good job of helping a campaign get the exposure that it deserves and needs through Ads and the Newsletter,” Ripple says. “And then on the back end, they’re basically not only helping with fulfillment but also giving creators an opportunity for more sales, whether that’s using the pre-order store or using add-ons through the survey. It just makes so much sense to use BackerKit because of the holistic ecosystem that they’ve built.” 

When launching a crowdfunding project, it’s important to consider the entire road ahead. What can you do to set yourself up for success at each stage of your journey? Which tools or partners can help maximize your project’s potential along the way? Answering these questions becomes especially important when you’re launching a bigger project. With BackerKit’s help, OYO Fitness not only surpassed their funding goal but is also now able to manage the post-campaign logistics that come with being the most-funded fitness project on Kickstarter.

If you’d like to learn more about how BackerKit works with the most successful Kickstarter creators like OYO Fitness on Facebook Ads, check out our upcoming webinar, Performance Marketing Secrets of Million Dollar Kickstarter Projects.

Are you planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign soon, and want to get started with BackerKit Marketing? Click below to see if your project is a good fit for the service.

The post Launching the Most Successful Kickstarter Product in Fitness appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

After experiencing slowdowns during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the manufacturing industry is ramping back up. While factories are resuming production, you may still be wondering what you can do to shore up your manufacturing strategy. To learn how tabletop game creators can make this process run smoothly, we spoke to Kerry Rundle McIver, a Project Manager at Panda Game Manufacturing. Panda has produced thousands of tabletop games, including Root and Wingspan. They are an industry leader and understand the specific needs that crowdfunding creators have when manufacturing tabletop games. Here are a few of McIver’s top tips. 

1. Get a quote that can scale

Getting a price quote will be the first step you take to get your crowdfunding project ready for manufacturing. At this time, you will share all of the basic information about your project, including your planned Kickstarter campaign launch date and a description of your game. When you get your quote, you should have the majority of your game designed and know how many components it will have.

During the quoting phase, you will also be asked about the number of units you plan on producing. While you won’t have exact numbers before you launch your project, you should make sure to get a quote that scales. You should be able to tell your manufacturer the minimum number of units that you’ll require and get a quote for that, and also get another quote in case you need more units. It’s recommended to get one quote for your base version and another one with all of your stretch goals met. Once your crowdfunding campaign finishes and you know exactly what your manufacturing needs are, you can get an updated quote. 

2. Be aware of your crowdfunding deadlines and manufacturing timeline

Consumers typically don’t think about all of the steps it takes to bring a product to market. And as a Kickstarter or Indiegogo creator, you may be more focused on your funding goal than your manufacturing timeline. But when you’re manufacturing your game, there will be some iteration that needs to happen. There may also be some component testing that needs to happen. The amount of time this takes will vary from project to project. 

After you get your quote, you’ll move into the design verification phase where you’ll prepare your files for print. The majority of projects will have some element that needs to be fixed, so you can expect to have at least a little back and forth with your manufacturer as you get the design ready. This stage varies the most in terms of time because it’s dependent upon how quickly you can adjust and upload files. 

Next you’ll go through the pre-production phase where your manufacturer will make samples of non-printed components and send you a pre-production copy of your game. During this stage, you must make sure that everything is aligned correctly, that all materials and finishes are correct, and that all of the cards that are supposed to be there are there. After this, you’ll move into mass production, which can take anywhere from 8 to 12 weeks.   

If this is your first project, you won’t know exactly how long all of this will take. Afterall, you’re still learning how to work with your manufacturer, and they’re learning how to work with you. So when you’re telling your backers when production will be finished, make sure to build in buffer time. 

Your manufacturer will give you a timeline, but you should add a few extra months as a buffer. Remember, backers are never upset when the project is delivered early, but they’re almost always upset when the project is late. Be transparent about your timeline with your backers. Let them know how things are progressing. You may even be able to ask your manufacturer to take photos of your game in production, which you can share with your backers. Whether your project is on schedule or not, keeping in touch with backers as your crowdfunding project makes its way through manufacturing helps you build trust. 

3. Design your crowdfunding project with manufacturing costs in mind 

Being cost-conscious doesn’t mean that you can’t still create a great game. You just have to be creative and resourceful. To save money, think about ways to use components that have multiple functions, see about using your manufacturer’s existing component molds rather than creating custom ones, or consider using more budget-friendly materials. “If you have something where you need 150 wood pieces, that’s going to look really cool, but when you have 150 of anything, it can get a little expensive, and also heavy for shipping,” McIver says. In a case like this, you might consider using an alternative material, like punchboard game tokens instead of wood tokens.  

You might also consider using a smaller box. In the past, the conventional wisdom was that you want your game to have shelf presence, and to achieve that you need a larger box. But given the fact that now many people are staying indoors due to public health concerns, and so much retail is happening online, shelf presence doesn’t matter as much as it used to. A small box is less material for the box itself, which cuts down manufacturing costs. It will also weigh a little less, which will help you cut back on shipping costs. 

Let your project manager know what your budget is during the quoting process, so they can help you figure out the most affordable way to get everything you’re looking for. 

4. Communicate with your manufacturer 

Think of your manufacturer as a partner. They’re on your team and want you to be successful. You can help them and ultimately yourself by being very vocal about what you want and asking for suggestions. 

Make sure to alert your manufacturer to anything that you think would need a little extra attention. For example, you might have a plastic tray that you want packed in a specific way. Or maybe you have a hidden deck of cards that needs to be packaged in a way that prevents you from seeing the top card in the deck. The more information you’re able to give your manufacturer about exactly what you want, the better. 

Of course, if this is your first Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign, you might not know exactly what you want. This is when it’s especially important to communicate freely. If, for instance, you need some advice about game pieces or materials, you can always turn to your manufacturer. They’ve seen it all, and can give you tips and other insights to make sure your game meets your expectations. 

5. Think about stretch goals and fulfillment early

You should be thinking about fulfillment as you’re determining which manufacturer is the best fit for you. “A lot of times, I have clients who will ask for fulfillment recommendations of fulfillment partners while we’re doing the quoting process, that way they understand that leg of the process as early as possible,” McIver says. 

As you’re devising your fulfillment plan, you should consider the benefits of a pledge manager. BackerKit has integrations with a number of fulfillment partners, including Amplifier, Shopify, and Easyship. Not only will BackerKit Pledge Manager help you keep backer data organized after your campaign is funded, but it also automatically generates orders from backer survey responses. From there, you’ll be able to export the orders directly to your fulfillment partner.  

You’ll also want to think about your stretch goal rewards early. McIver says, “As we’re going through quoting, if you’ve got stretch goals in mind, ask us to quote those out for you too. Even if it’s stuff like upgrading card quality. Have us price that out for you early.” If you don’t end up reaching your stretch goal, you can include those items in your BackerKit pre-order store or use BackerKit’s add-on stretch goal feature to set an order goal for an add-on item and run a stretch goal campaign. 

Stretch goals add an extra layer of complexity to your project — you’ll have more rewards to create and ship. But if you already know how much everything is going to cost, you won’t have to scramble in the middle of your campaign, and can focus on community building and communicating with backers. 

6. Plan your shipping strategy 

Take some time to figure out how you’re going to get your game to your backers, customers, or retail outlets. Start by discussing your crowdfunding project with your manufacturing project managers early. They can give you shipping cost estimates for both ocean and air shipping. 

Another option is to charge for shipping after your campaign. This growing trend takes the guesswork out of determining your shipping cost because you’ll know how much the product weighs and won’t have to estimate. You can add shipping costs to your post-campaign survey in BackerKit. Using BackerKit’s Shipping Profiles, you can charge shipping based on the location of the backer and the total weight of the items they’ve ordered. 

Whichever strategy you choose, it’s important that you make the decision before you launch your campaign. You’ll also want to make sure that you’ve let backers know when they’ll be charged for shipping, so you can manage expectations. 

With a firm understanding of how to get your crowdfunding project through the manufacturing process, you can deliver an amazing final product and minimize delays. Get more insights and expert advice in our webinar, Crash Course in Game Manufacturing. If you’d like to learn more about fulfillment, and how BackerKit can help you deliver your game, reach out to our team. 

The post Crowdfunding Manufacturing: Get Your Tabletop Game Ready appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Repeat backers can give your campaign the boost it needs to reach its funding goal early. But how do you build a community that’s willing to support you time and time again? Aside from consistently creating exciting projects, all of the top creators focus on providing an excellent backer experience. Here’s how to get started:  

What is backer experience and why is it so important?

Backer experience — just like general customer experience — is defined by all of the interactions backers have with you throughout your campaign. If you want to build long-term value with your campaign, you have to be intentional about how you connect with your backers. The way you communicate, support, and engage them impacts their perception of you and their desire to pledge to your next campaign. Even if someone ultimately likes the product that you ship, any negative experiences along the way could discourage them from supporting you in the future.

So how can you get Kickstarter backers from past campaigns to pledge to your next campaign? As a creator, you should always be thinking of ways to make your backers happy. How can you keep them informed? How can you make processes easier for them? How can you delight them? Ask yourself these questions at every step of your campaign, and you will be on track to providing backers with an experience that keeps them coming back for more. 

A happy backer is more likely to turn into a repeat backer, and repeat Indiegogo or Kickstarter backers make your job easier. Not only can you reach your funding goal quicker with a bunch of enthusiastic fans ready to pledge on day one, but serial Kickstarter backers can be advocates, helping you promote your projects to their friends and families. It can be hard to get Kickstarter backers. But with a strong community of engaged fans, you won’t have to spend as much time or money marketing your project. Consumer statistics show that it costs five times more to acquire new customers than it does to retain a current customer. 

4 experience-boosting practices to get repeat Kickstarter backers

1. Post regular updates

You’re likely already posting project updates. But it’s important to make sure that you’re doing this consistently. We recommend that you make an update at least every two weeks, even if much hasn’t changed. Posting regular updates keeps your backers in the loop throughout your campaign and makes them feel connected to you and your project. To turn first-time backers into serial Kickstarter backers, you need to nurture your relationships, and keeping in touch is a great way to do this.

If you’re running into problems — perhaps there will be a delay in shipping or maybe there’s an issue with your manufacturer — it’s particularly important to post updates. Let’s say your timeline has changed. If you aren’t communicating with your backers, they could lose trust in you. They may even start questioning the legitimacy of your project. So if there are any issues, explain what’s going on, and let people know how you’re addressing the matter. 

When things are going well, there’s still an opportunity to make a project update. Give backers a behind-the-scenes look at what you’re doing, introduce them to your team, or share more of your personal story. In this update for the NEO Espresso Maker, the creators invite backers to see their product in action. 

People will feel more invested in your projects and your success if you include them in your journey. 

2. Keep backers excited

Add fun incentives to your campaign once you’ve launched to get Kickstarter backers excited. For example, if you’ve reached your funding goal, or you’re on track to reach it, consider adding stretch goals. A stretch goal is a funding target beyond your original goal that can help you raise money to enhance your product and offer additional value to backers.  

Tapeworm, a Kickstarter project that was funded in four minutes, had a series of stretch goals to keep the momentum of the campaign going and give backers something cool for their continued support. 

Some creators will roll out stretch goals while their project is live. So they might have stretch goals that they know they’re going to blow past, and then have another set of secret stretch goals that they’re prepared to roll out as the campaign continues to raise more money. This can incentivize backers in a lower pledge level to upgrade if the pledge level they are in doesn’t include stretch goals.

Remember, if you do add stretch goals, make sure that you have the ability to create and deliver them — you don’t want your attempt to please your backers to backfire. 

Another way to offer more value to backers is through add-ons — à la carte items that Indiegogo and Kickstarter backers can purchase in addition to the items they receive through their pledges. Add-ons enable backers to get exactly what they want by customizing rewards and receive more cool stuff from you. 

The people who backed LudoCherry’s tabletop clothes campaign had the option of purchasing a few different add-ons, including bespoke dice. 

You can also set up add-on stretch goals through BackerKit if you didn’t hit a stretch goal during your campaign. 

The best thing about stretch goals and add-ons is that you’ll be able to keep your backers excited while earning additional funds. 

3. Reduce obstacles

Put yourself in your backers’ shoes. What might they find frustrating? First, think about your campaign page. Is it easy to understand? Does it highlight all of the key features of your product? During your campaign, you want all of your messaging to be as clear as possible to eliminate any barriers to pledging.

Consider the fulfillment stage of your campaign. How will you keep backers updated on your progress? How will they know when their rewards are shipping? Is there an easy way for them to update their shipping information? Post-campaign, a pledge manager like BackerKit not only lets your backers update their survey responses and orders on their own, but also helps you stay organized.

No one wants to deal with processes or messaging that’s confusing. And you certainly don’t want to launch a sloppy campaign. Part of delighting backers is thinking about how you can simplify every step of their journey.  

4. Support your backers

Backers will likely have questions and feedback. It’s up to you to respond to them in a professional and timely manner. Of course, this can be a challenge when you’re balancing all the demands of running a campaign, but support will need to be prioritized if you want to keep backers happy. 

Supporting your backers doesn’t have to be overwhelming. You can make this process run as smoothly as possible by centralizing communication. Direct backers to one channel or platform for support, so you aren’t fielding questions from multiple places. 

There are also a few ways to minimize the number of questions you have to field. As mentioned earlier, regular project updates and making sure your campaign page is easy to understand may take care of some backer queries. The key is to manage expectations. 

That being said, even a well-planned campaign is bound to have a few unexpected problems. During your campaign, you can look to the support content on Indiegogo or Kickstarter for help. If you’re using BackerKit to survey your backers, you can enable support, and the BackerKit team will handle questions for you. 

Let’s say you have 1000 backers and 10% of them need help, that’s 100 people that you’re going to have to attend to on your own. It’s easier to balance all of your responsibilities, when you have a partner like BackerKit do the heavy lifting. Enabling BackerKit support, allows you streamline communications, as all backer emails from your survey go directly to a team of experts. Your dedicated BackerKit support lead will also review your survey before you send to make sure everything is in order. However, if you choose to handle post-campaign support on your own, BackerKit’s Help Center has answers to common backer queries. 

Most people understand that problems may arise. It’s how you address those problems that will determine if backers continue their relationship with you. 

Your backers should feel valued — your success depends on them. Even if you don’t plan to launch multiple campaigns, it’s important that you spend some time thinking about how you can improve their experience. 

Contact our team to learn more about how BackerKit can help you build a community of happy backers.

The post How to Get Repeat Kickstarter Backers appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Whether you’re planning to launch a crowdfunding project or you’ve already hit your goal, it’s critical that you think about the tax implications of your campaign. While this would typically be the height of tax season, the IRS has extended the U.S. federal tax deadline from April 15 to July 15, 2020, in response to the COVID-19 outbreak (many state deadlines have been extended as well). Although there are technically a few more months before you have to buckle down and start preparing to file, it’s never too early to get started. Crowdfunding creators should keep these five factors in mind as they get their taxes ready. 

The difference between taxable income and gifts

When you receive money as a gift, it isn’t typically considered taxable income. When you receive money through a business transaction or sale, it is taxable income. Because of the supportive, often altruistic nature of crowdfunding, the distinction between a gift and taxable income may seem a little unclear. But the bottom line is that while donations on platforms like GoFundMe that are for life events like medical bills or education are generally considered gifts, if you’re running a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign, and your backers are receiving something of value in return for their pledge, the funds are going to be subject to taxes.

Form 1099-K

Form 1099-K is a summary of a crowdfunding creator’s sales transactions and is intended to help you report your taxes. It will be sent to campaign organizers with a U.S. bank account whose campaigns raised more than $20,000 and had more than 200 backers. You should receive the form by January 31st, if you received payments in the prior calendar year. Check with Kickstarter and Indiegogo to find out more about what you can expect from the form.

When filing your taxes, remember that you must report all of the income that you made from your campaign, which can include amounts shown on Form 1099-K, as well as any other money you received. It’s important to note that creators who don’t receive Form 1099-K and didn’t meet that $20,000 threshold will still have to pay taxes. 

After you survey your backers, you can download Accounting Reports from BackerKit that provide a detailed breakdown of the funds you raised during and after the campaign. This will be helpful as you determine how much income you generated from your project. 

Keep track of your expenses

Tracking expenses is a good practice to adopt when you begin any entrepreneurial endeavor — it keeps you on budget and will reveal any bad spending habits. But when you’re preparing for tax season, this information could potentially help you save money or protect you during an audit. As a crowdfunding creator, you may be able to deduct project-related expenses, such as tier-level gifts, from your taxes. If you have all of your receipts and invoices  — from launch to fulfillment — your accountant will be better able to determine which deductions you qualify for.

End of the year crowdfunding projects and taxes

Launching your project in December could impact your tax preparations. When determining the tax year, Kickstarter points out that Stripe, their payment processor, reports the income that you’ll find on Form 1099-K according to the project deadline date and not the payout date. The payout date is 14 days after the project deadline date. So if your project deadline date was in 2019 but your payout date was in 2020, the funds will apply to your 2019 returns. 

Another factor to consider when it comes to year-end projects is your ability to offset expenses that you won’t incur until the next year. If your income and expenses are in different years, you won’t be able to deduct expenses, which means you could end up having to pay more income tax and possibly have to dip into the funds you intended to use for your project. To safeguard against this, it’s always a good idea to create a funding goal that factors in taxes and the cost of your pledge manager. You may also end up offsetting some of your tax fees through pre-orders and add-ons.  

Ensuring crowdfunding creators are compliant when filing taxes

Tax laws can vary by location. For example, depending on where in the U.S. you live, the 1099-K eligibility threshold may be lower. New tax laws will also be introduced from year to year. The best way to make sure that you meet all of your state and federal tax obligations is to speak with a certified tax professional. Even if your project goal was relatively small and your taxes seem straightforward, working with a professional can give you peace of mind during a time that is notoriously hectic.  

No one wants to scramble at the last minute to file their taxes — it’s stressful and can lead to costly mistakes. If you aren’t prepared for tax season, now is the time to get started. 

If you’re planning your campaign, our webinar on pre-launch do’s and don’ts can help you get started. Has your project already been funded? Check out our webinar on post-campaign do’s and don’ts.

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 the obligations that pertain to your project. 

The post Crowdfunding and Taxes: What Creators Need to Know appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.