10 Actionable Ideas to Boost Your Kickstarter Funding Mid-Campaign

One of the most-read articles I’ve written about crowdfunding is The Top 10 Ways to Address the Mid-Campaign Slump. It’s something almost every project encounters–you have a lot of interest early on, then new backers and activity wanes for a few weeks, culminating in an active final 48 hours.

My original article is 7 years old at this point, so I was excited to learn that creator and expert marketer Andrew Lowen had a first-hand account about what he’s doing right now for his project, Deliverance, as he reaches the second week of the campaign with over $200,000 in funding. Thanks for sharing these insights, data, and ideas, Andrew!

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The “mid-campaign” of a Kickstarter project can be a real slog. Oftentimes, board game crowdfunding campaigns see an explosion of activity in the first 2 days and the final 2 days, and the mid-campaign is the tedious part in the middle that separates the two.

I have served as a marketer for about 50 Kickstarter and Gamefound campaigns over the last two years, and most of our clients’ questions during their live campaign boils down to the following:

“What can I do to generate more activity during my mid-campaign slump?”

Diligent creators have a plan for what they are going to do to generate activity, and I did too.

But when I got there with my own campaign a few weeks ago, I found out that there is way more time available than what I prepared for.

So, in the spirit of helping my fellow creators, I thought I would write a list of the things I did (and am doing) to actively drum up new pledges and funding for my campaign!

Here they are, in order of impact:

1. Engage in your community. It is very important to respond or otherwise engage with every single comment and message on Kickstarter, BGG, Facebook (and other social media), Discord, and relevant email. It took me nearly a week to get on top of all of these, but I knew that if I wanted people to engage over the course of our campaign and advocate for us, I had to reply to every comment. Since that is well over 1,500 comments on all the places, I added 2 collaborators to my project to assist! One was my wife, and the other was a colleague that was willing to help part-time. If you want engagement, it’s not enough to like a comment on Facebook – you need to personally respond and address things where possible. As a last point here, spending the time to build a community before our campaign started resulted in the strongest marketing force that exists in Kickstarter – a community of hardcore fans! We built our Facebook Group to 2,100 fans before launching, and it’s very active! I shared my methodology on a recent Crowdfunding Nerds podcast if you’re curious.
2. Send e-mails to your list. You launched and sent an email saying so, but you should be sending updates! Send them at least once a week and re-send to non-openers after 2 days. Do not fret if some unsubscribe – some will! Your primary goal is to get supporters to back you… not keep uninterested people on your list. Pad your funding amount, and not your e-mail count. You painstakingly built this e-mail list over time, and you need to leverage it! Based on my current records, my first e-mail send accounted for $15,169 in direct pledges, and the other 4 subsequent e-mails were responsible for generating another ~$11,000.
3. Create a premium pledge level. I was originally inspired by Jamey’s article on Jack Spoerner’s Dungeons of Infinity that featured adding a premium pledge level mid-campaign to get more backers. I created 12 “Angel Investor” pledges for $749 each and 7 “Archangel Investor” pledges for $1,499. I packed a lot of value in, but mainly did it so those that were hardcore fans could get something more. We sold out of them all on day 1, and I have increased the quantity of “Angel Investor” pledges 4 times – it is currently sold out again at 30 backers, and I will be increasing it again since it is in demand. If I created 30 from the start, it would have looked different to a prospective backer if there were 16 left of 30. This was extremely helpful in unlocking big stretch goals that had large gaps in between them. I recommend asking your community about your premium pledge ideas before you go live with them to gauge interest!
4. Constantly seek podcasts and interviews. Seek them out no matter how small the audience, both in the board games niche as well as your thematic niche. Deliverance is a board game with a “Christian Fantasy Angels vs Demons” theme, so I targeted all sorts of board game podcasts as well as religious podcasts. I’m up for talking about anything, as long as it helps me reach more people! I have had great results from both. This includes live shows on Facebook and other places. While I was live with The Charity Boardgamer on Facebook, I received 8 pledges from the audience! One particular niche podcast I managed to land (at the Babylon Bee) earned me over $6,500 on its own within a week, and it wasn’t even a board game podcast! These people have followings, and when you’re a guest, you earn dividends from a group who might never have otherwise heard of your game! Never stop seeking, and don’t be afraid to ask, but you should start the conversation like a human! Which bring me to the next point…
5. Constantly seek influencers to share your project with. Let’s be clear about what this is NOT saying – do not cold-call influencers on social media asking them to promote your project. Find the right influencers, engage with them, and strike up a conversation (you know, like a normal human). Then when the time is right and they’re talking to you, mention that you’re doing a thing on Kickstarter! Let them decide what to do about that – their response might be nothing, or it could be a share! This sort of blends with the point above, but it deserves its own spot. I pitched the editor in chief of the Babylon Bee, editor of Christianity Today, and even the director of The Chosen about my game, among others. I was greeted with silence from 80% of these people, told no 10% of the time, and generated great results from the final 10%. The Director of the Chosen shared our game on his personal fan page, and the Babylon Bee invited us to talk about board games on their podcast (which I didn’t even know was an option until they offered it)!
6. Keep your review prototypes in constant motion. You should have your reviewers picked out and prepared for your campaign launch, but don’t stop there! These reviewers are willing to send the copies on to an address of your choice (provided you reimburse the shipping expense), so you should have a line waiting to take it! Even small reviewers with 100 views or less can make excellent sources of backers, and if it’s either a review or watch your prototype collect dust, the choice should be easy! I sent a single prototype to the UK that has traveled to Italy, France, and Ireland. By the end of my campaign, it will have more stamps on its passport than I do! Just make sure your reviewers know they need to get their content live before your campaign ends. Also, it’s worth noting that reviewers know other reviewers, and will send the game to these people – always say yes when they ask if they can send to a friend (Just clarify that the friend is a reviewer that will send it on after)! I sent Deliverance to Colin with One-Stop Co-Op Shop and he shared it with his friend Bairnt at Meet Me At The Table, resulting in about 1,300 additional views for free!
7. Ask friends and family for support (broadly + individually). This is more for the first-time creators out there. Your first project is your baby, and chances are your family and friends already know about it. Many would probably come out to support you if they knew how, so hopefully you let them know before your campaign start. However, I have found a lot of extra pledges by sending a personal message to a friend or family member that expressed interest, just asking if they would still be interested in supporting. I only feel comfortable asking friends and family that would want to support me – not the project. Your family/friends will support you because they love and care for you. I received zero negativity with this approach and recommend to build a list and contact one or two people each day, or more if your campaign slows and needs a little boost!
8. Post relevant things in social communities. Hopefully you have built up some social credit by engaging in board game groups on Facebook and elsewhere, because now is when that matters! Whenever you post, before getting concerned with format, make sure it comes from the heart. My best results from groups have come from posts that I wrote from the heart. In case you were not sure, those posts do not come with a link to sell people. Interested and excited people will ask for more info! And as a bonus, posts that perform well in one group tend to perform well elsewhere! For example, here are similar posts on Facebook and Reddit both doing well!
9. Take a break. Take time to do the other things you love. I knew my 5 daughters needed time with me, my clients needed me to be present, and my games weren’t going to play themselves. If you let your mind spin 24 hours a day for 30 days, you might go insane. I knew I would! Sometimes the best thing you can do for your campaign, your mental clarity, and your backers is to take a break from it all and be ready to go full speed tomorrow. Purpose yourself to do this, and I promise it will pay dividends. One of my greatest mentors told me that a CEO with poor sleep is a bad CEO, and I feel that advice applies perfectly to Kickstarter!
10. Write a helpful article for your peers. We love reading stuff. You’re going to gain a ton of first-hand experiential knowledge when you run a campaign, and sometimes the precious details of those lessons don’t last with you very long. Write them down while they’re fresh in your mind and share them with us!

I hope you found those ideas helpful – With these techniques, I have earned over 40 backers per day during our mid-campaign. We’re currently sitting at over 1,600 backers and $200,000 raised, and this is our first project.

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Thanks again to Andrew for sharing his thoughts on how he’s addressing the middle weeks of his project, Deliverance! How have you seen other creators continue to drive interest and activity on their projects in the mid-campaign period?

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