Dropped Backers: How to recover them to avoid funding loss?

The secret weapon for creators to reclaim lost pledges and reignite the Kickstarter campaign with PledgeBox.

Cosma Zhang

May 18, 2023

Summary:
One thing that only returned realtors know. There are always dropped backers for every single campaign. The reasons could be invalid credit cards, insufficient credit, or bank security control. 

It is a bumper for all creators on Kickstarter. With PledgeBox creators can easily recover those dropped pledges/backers.

What is dropped backer exactly?

After the campaign ends on Kickstarter, there is a 14 days payment collection period. In the first 7 days, Kickstarter will try to charge each of the backers, if failed it keeps charging 2 more times. If all the charges fail, the backer will be marked as a dropped backer. 

According to what we observed, the percentage of dropped backers in a Kickstarter campaign ranges from 3%~10% of the total backers. The higher the reward price, the higher the chance of dropped orders. 

Reasons for dropped backers?

  • Credit card issues: Backers’ credit cards may have problems that prevent successful payment, such as being locked by the bank or payment being declined. 
  • Backers not receiving notifications emails: Sometimes, backers may forget to check the progress of the projects they support or just ignore the payment failure emails sent by Kickstarter, failing to complete the payment within the specified time. 
  • Incorrect contact information: If the contact information provided by the backer is invalid or expired, Kickstarter will be unable to reach them to resolve the payment issue.

How will PledgeBox help you recover dropped orders?

If you connect your campaign before it ends on Kickstarter, all the dropped backers will be imported to your PledgeBox creator account. Compared to the successful backers, these dropped backers will have a credit of 0 in their survey. 

Once you send out the backers survey, the dropped backers will also receive the invitation to pay the full amount of their rewards to recover their pledges.

Conclusion

PledgeBox offers the free backer survey to help creators streamline the pledge management process, collect payment, and upsell more funding in the backer survey.