How to build a list of potential backers before your Kickstarter campaign launches

Kickstarter is the most popular crowdfunding website in the world. What's the difference between a crowdfunding campaign and Amazon product listing? On the marketing side, it is pretty much the same.

Tuson Ong

December 23, 2021

Kickstarter is the most popular crowdfunding website in the world. What's the difference between a crowdfunding campaign and Amazon product listing? On the marketing side, it is pretty much the same.

You need to drive traffic to the page and make a good conversion, and you need to have a good ranking on the website so that more people will see your campaign/product and convert. 

To rank high on Kickstarter there is a key thing to do before you launch the campaign - build a list of potential backers. After you launch the campaign, you can send them an email notification and you will see the magic happen. 


There are 3 steps to build the email list for your Kickstarter campaign.

1. Build a landing page

A landing page is the one-page website that explains the key features of your product and attracts the potential backers to leave their emails and receive launch invitations.

To make a good landing page, you can get started with drafting the Unique Selling Proposition of the product. Think of a few key questions:

  • Who is the audience
  • What are the unique features of your product
  • How to spin the product features

After nail down the copywriting, you also need good product photos/videos to present the features in the way that a page visitor can get at first sight. Bear in mind that nowadays people just browse a website for around 10 seconds before they decide to leave or stay.

There are a lot of tools you can use to build your website without any coding background. Our team`s favorite is Webflow, but if you want a simpler solution Wix could be the choice for you.


2. Maintain the email list

Email quality also matters. If you want to have the highest quality you can use a tool like mailchimp to do the double opt-in. However, it could lower the email conversion rate by over 50% percent according to experience. In practice most of the creators choose a single opt-in and maximize the email lead number. 

It is important to keep the email list fresh by sending them regular updates about your campaign process. You can use Mailchimp to schedule email campaigns and send them regularly. But remember don`t over send the emails. 


3. Advertise on Facebook

The most commonly used advertising channel for Kickstarter campaigns is through Facebook, even for the pre-launch lead generation. 

You need to create an Ad account on Facebook and start to drive traffic to your landing page.

The cost of acquiring an email lead keeps growing because Facebook is getting more competitive nowadays. The good side is that it also proves that Facebook Ad works so there are more advertisers on it.  

In 2021, the average cost of an email lead through Facebook advertising is around $3. We recommend you have at least 3000 email leads before you launch the Kickstarter campaign, so that you can have a quick win on Kickstarter and rank higher on the popularity list. 


4. What's more

If you want to step further and ensure the email conversion rate, you can consider setting up a reserve funnel on your landing page. In short, you can ask the register to put down a small amount to lock the super early bird reward. 

It requires some knowledge of coding. We will talk about it in a future blog post. Stay tuned.