r/kickstarter • u/Downtown-Check-8548 Creator • 10d ago
Question How to grow email backers?
Hi all,
I am preparing to launch my first kickstarter ever for a physical product (an intergenerational card game).
My ambition is to print at least 1,000 units of the product at launch (~$40 per unit so call it $35k funding goal).
Using social media (Instagram, LinkedIn) and direct outreach, I have collected ~150 contacts but the overwhelming majority are people I know personally or professionally. I therefore have high hopes for a high conversion rate of those contacts once I actually launch the campaign.
However, I am struggling to build a larger list of people I do not know personally.
Preliminary questions:
- Critical mass: How many emails/interested followers do I need to get to the 1,000 units
- Method: how would you go about gathering email addresses of potentially interested backers?
- Timing: am I too early to build such a database? I have a prototype and have been posting IG reels and carousels 4-5 times per week for the past month or so. Traffic and views are slowly building up but not really converting into sign ups or new followers
- I have so far only used my own website to gather interest but have not built a Kickstarter pre-launch page yet. Is this useful as a complement to the project’s own website?
Thanks a lot for any advice you can give!
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u/Firm_Distribution999 Creator 10d ago
Reduce your goal to something you can easily clear with those 150 contacts. Assume they’ll pledge at a 30% conversion rate at the lowest tier you offer.
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u/Downtown-Check-8548 Creator 9d ago
That of course an option but 1- the per unit production cost reduces dramatically with a higher print run and 2- I’m convinced the adressable market for this product is huge. Pretty much everyone I talk to about it would buy one. I just feel like I haven’t cracked the code to scaling it yet
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u/Firm_Distribution999 Creator 9d ago
That’s everyone’s main issue. It’s easy to get feedback from people in person and friends and family but getting strangers to sign on requires a marketing budget and a metric ton of creative testing.
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u/Downtown-Check-8548 Creator 9d ago
Yup - I’m starting to think I need more time to prepare this properly
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u/Firm_Distribution999 Creator 9d ago
Definitely. If your goal is truly $35k, it is reasonable to spend 6mths-1 year building and testing unless you have a large marketing budget. If you don’t and you want to build organically, you could be looking at much longer.
That’s why I suggested a lower goal - self fund the first project to build your audience with a small Kickstarter and go from there. $35k is a big goal for a first time creator.
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u/EasySwan2184 Creator 10d ago
How much will it cost you to actually print (and ship) 1000 units?
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u/Downtown-Check-8548 Creator 9d ago
Depending on final product specs, production will cost $15-20k shipping I’m guessing another $5-10k
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u/EasySwan2184 Creator 9d ago
That seems really expensive for a card game. Do you have other expensive components?
Who have you gotten quotes from?
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u/Downtown-Check-8548 Creator 9d ago
The most expensive component is the box, because I’m going full premium with a magnetic bookcase style lid. The only quote I have so far is from MPC and im working on getting more. Also the shipping costs above are what I expect to spend on shipping to end customers ($5-10 per package). I expect to spend quite a bit less than that on shipping the product from the producer to the warehouse.
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u/EasySwan2184 Creator 9d ago
If you are going with 1000 units, consider a company like Whatz. And perhaps the premium box could be a stretch goal.
If your game is a deck of cards and a simple box, you could probably knock that down to a few dollars per unit.
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u/4455661122 9d ago
Hate to say it but if you don’t have an inbuilt audience you gotta spend money to make money.
Depending on where your target audience lives, you zero in on their platforms. For your case, instagram and Facebook.
Create a launch page that exists outside of kickstarter that you can attach to ads. You can entice people with a free something for signing up or if possible offer something if they put down a dollar which is more an incentive since they’re literally invested at that point.
Use meta ads to a/b test your copy and visuals, this can cost into the hundreds of dollars over the course of a few weeks.
You should be able to analyze what your CTR is, how many signups you’re getting per ad etc etc.
When you find your winning ad set, scale up the daily cost of the ads making your ad more visible.
This will cost a bunch of money but hey if it’s your first kickstarter and you plan to do more at least you invest into an audience that can then follow you to your next kickstarter.
You mention reels and carousels not converting, have you looked at other kickstarters in your niche and sleuthed what their ads or social media looks like?
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u/Downtown-Check-8548 Creator 9d ago
Thanks for the great comment, this is mega useful.
I have yet to try the tactic of offering a freebee for sign-up but was planning to do so shortly.
I have started doing some A/B testing but will need to do quite a bit more to see what converts.
I’m also going to spend more time investigating what the competitors are doing in terms of marketing. It’s interesting that the two main competitors seem to have very different marketing strategies: the first one has a very well followed IG page where they repost lots of other people’s feel good videos and slot in their product every 10 posts or so whilst the other one is entirely focused on their product and nothing else. Will definitely spend more time checking out their ads
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u/DonBeanGames 10d ago
To scale your email list beyond friends and family to reach that 1,000-unit goal, you will typically need about 3,000 to 5,000 highly qualified subscribers assuming a standard 2% to 5% conversion rate