Email Marketing is the Most Cost Effective Marketing Channel for Kickstarter Campaign

Email marketing best practice in Kickstarter campaigns

Tuson Ong

December 17, 2021


Summary of email marketing best practice in Kickstarter campaigns:

  • Pre-Launch: collect email leads through landing page
  • Launch: 

        - Send newsletter to the collected email leads

        - Purchase newsletter from 3rd party


Create Your Own Email List

All successful Kickstarter campaigns had done a great job on email marketing. Before the campaign officially launched on Kickstarter (usually on Tuesday morning EST time), creators ran pre-launch advertising campaigns and generated a decent amount of email leads.

When the campaign launches the first email to the leads helps most of the campaigns reach the funding goal in an hour, if not in less time. 
The quick-win matters a lot for a successful Kickstarter campaign. You`ll create the momentum and establish a positive image on the whole platform. 


It will show the other potential backers how popular the product is and makes them feel safe to pledge, because there are already so many people pledged it easily gives the potential backers the hint it is a good campaign to join.

The organic traffic inside Kickstarter also is very important. The pre-launch email leads will ensure you have good traffic and conversion immediately after you click the launch button. If you can have at least 100 backers on the launch day, it is highly likely that your campaign will be on the top page of pupolarity. 

Kickstarter has many returned backers (definition: backers who pledged more than 1 campaign) and they check the popularity list everyday. If you secure a slot on the first page, you will have a good result from the organic traffic.

Now you have the email list and you can send as many newsletters as you like, but according to the best practice, you should delete those emails who have pledged the campaign and try not to send too many emails in a short period of time. It will bother the potential backers and the unsubscribe rate will rock if you do so.

Based on our observation, the average cost to acquire one email lead is $3. It can cost a lot if you keep pushing the lead base to get bigger. You should also test the quality of the email leads and verify their willingness to purchase late when your campaign is alive. 

You can charge $1 as the deposit to lock the super early bird price, and it is a trustworthy way to test the quality of an email list.


Purchase 3rd-party Newsletter Service

There are some service providers that offer email blasts for Kickstarter campaigns. We have senior team members who run campaigns and test all of them. The results were okay - usually a few pledges. Considering the cost (less than $500) they deserve the associated credit. 

However, if you are expecting a significant result you should check out PledgeBox Newsletter Service. Here are the screenshots of the Kickstarter dashboard and show the effectiveness of the newsletter.
PledgeBox newsletter service launched in Sep 2021, and has generated over $3 million direct & tracked conversion pledges to the campaigns. 


If you have a alive campaign and want to apply for the newsletter blast, feel free to contact support@pledgebox.com