Over the last 9 years, I’ve written over 900 articles on this blog to share my thoughts, observations, mistakes, and insights with my fellow creators. That’s a lot of content to go back and read for someone who is navigating the crowdfunding process for the first time, so in this series I continue to revisit my Kickstarter Lesson posts in chronological order, highlighting the core elements of each.
Post-Campaign Communication (#61): Back in Lesson #36 I talked about regularly communicating with backers after your project. There are various tools for such communication, with Kickstarter updates at the top of the list. In the long run, though, I’ve found a combination of MailChimp, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter to be useful, all of which offer their own pros and cons. Check out this lesson for my breakdown, but overall, the key is to use a mix. In the mediums where people have opted-in to seeing all of your communication, be sure to spread out the messages and posts so people aren’t annoyed.
Early Bird Pledge Levels (#62): Forward momentum is incredibly important when you’re running a Kickstarter campaign, particularly on the first few days. Early bird pledges tiers, usually defined as timed and/or limited pledge levels at a discount price, are a great way to do this. But let’s be clear, the sole purpose of early-bird pledge levels is to give potential backers a reason to pledge now instead of later on the first few days of a creator’s first Kickstarter project. With this in mind, I think there are other ways of meeting this goal without some of the downsides of early bird pledge levels. Those downsides include: creating winners and losers, possible confusion if rewards levels are amended later, and visible cancellations.
Stay Focused or Lose Backers (#63): Staying focused is vital. If you’re trying to raise money to manufacture a game, the people who come to your project page are looking to get a game. They’re not looking for a postcard, an art print, or a t-shirt. So don’t make them weed through all that to get to what they want. Additionally, you might think that including every possible reward will help you achieve your goal, but that dilutes your core mission and adds ancillary items to your to-do list that take up your time you could be spending actually preparing your product. Stay focused on what you’re creating and you will attract and retain more backers.
The Psychological Benefits of Showing Your Face (#64): How personal should you–the project creator–be with your backers? I believe Kickstarter works best when a project is both professional and human. So when I started interacting with backers with only a company logo, I may have been communicating professionalism, but I wasn’t allowing backers to sense the passion behind the project. They need someone to root for if they’re going to get really excited about it–without that shared excitement and passion, they’re not likely to share the project with others even if they back it. And perhaps most importantly, the human element of a project creates empathy between the backers and the creator.
How to Get US Backers if You’re Running a Non-US-Based Kickstarter Campaign (#65): I think there are two primary reasons why Kickstarter projects based outside of the US don’t have as many US backers. First, US backers are spoiled by low-cost shipping. When we have to pay a larger-than-expect amount, we feel like we’re losing money. It’s going to be hard to break that sense of entitlement, so you’ll need to be creative when finding a way to ship goods to US backers. Luckily many US fulfillment centers make this easier. Second, currency conversion may put your project at a disadvantage from an international customer’s perspective. Kickstarter has made this conversion clear and apparent to backers, but this could still add a psychological barrier to entry which may need to be considered.
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If you have any questions or thoughts about these topics, feel free to share in the comments!
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1 Comment on “Quick Kickstarter Lesson Recaps: #61-65”
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On the US/non-US front, something I’ve noticed over the years is the different approach to taxes – people in the US are used to being quoted the pre-tax prices upfront, and then having a significant amount added later, while EU/UK (and various other places) default is to list the amount the purchaser pays, so US prices generally appear to be lower while EU/UK prices appear to be higher even when you end up paying basically the same amount either way.
As a UK-based backer, something I would like to see is for the standard shipping/taxes table to include approximate converted values in the local currency (particularly for regions with a single currency – something like “rest of world” that covers multiple currencies probably isn’t going to have anything better than the project’s native currency to pick). It’s not that hard to take pledge level, converted pledge level, and shipping/taxes values and use those to get an approximate converted shipping/taxes value, but it’s still an extra step when budgeting.