Massively successful crowdfunding campaigns are almost cliche these days. Seems any group of bright, motivated entrepreneurs can pull together a Kickstarter page and the $$$$ will start flowing in.

Unfortunately this perception is wrong. Dead wrong in fact. Like pretty much anything else, the key to executing a successful campaign is planning and preparation. At Flomio we spent the better part of two months prepping for the FloJack Kickstarter campaign. We did a tremendous amount of research and came up with a detailed execution plan before pressing the big, green LAUNCH button.

This post is a cleaned up and repackaged version of the data we gathered leading into the campaign (along with source attributions). Hope you find it useful.

Referrals: The Very Long Tail

Have a look at Twine’s referrers:

 

Source: Kickstarter Blog: The New Creator Dashboard

Kickstarter isn’t a store, it’s a marketing campaign. Every project founder I’ve talked to has seen this long tail of referral traffic. Coverage in a top tier tech outlet like Techcrunch or Engadget won’t ensure success. Your story needs to stand on its own and propagate far and wide for a successful campaign.

Project Duration: Keep It Short and Sweet

Source: Kickstarter Blog: Shortening The Maximum Project Length

The data speaks for itself – the optimal length for success is between 28 and 32 days. It’s simply too difficult to keep buzz going about your project for longer than that. Backers procrastinate and start losing interest as time goes on.

Pledge Distribution: Inverted Bell

Source: Kickstarter Blog: Shortening The Maximum Project Length

Projects will see a burst of interest in the beginning but this initial wave will quickly wear off as your first and second degree networks become saturated. You’ll need a strong PR campaign full of “spiking” strategies that engage new pockets of potentially interested users (long tail).

Reward Pricing: <$25, $50, and $100

 

Source: Kickstarter Blog: Trends in Pricing and Duration

For many projects the $100 and $50 reward levels are the money makers. However the smaller reward tiers are by far the most popular (by number of backers). They’re an easy way for people to support and spread your campaign.

Rewards: More is More

Source: ViNull – Kickstarter Stats You Can Use

There seems to be a correlation between number of reward levels and campaign success.

Video Script: Have It Your Way

As a group of left brained engineers, we wanted an objective way of looking at successful Kickstarter videos. We were specifically interested in Pebble ($10,00,00 raise), Twine ($556,000), and Smart Things ($1,200,000).

We couldn’t find any data on the topic so we did the analysis ourselves. We transcribed each kickstarter video using a service called Rev. This cost $20 or so. Then we ran each script through basic lexical analysis tool (here). Here’s what we found:

	PEBBLE	TWINE	SMART THINGS
Run Time:	02:48	02:28	04:22
Total Word Count:	359	449	907
Total Unique Words:	196	206	316
Number of Sentences:	38	30	46
Average Sentence Length:	9.45	14.97	19.72
Hard Words:	8.36%	6.90%	5.29%
Lexical Density:	54.60%	45.88%	34.84%
Fog Index:	7.12	8.75	10

Three successful videos with three distinct styles. Pebble used short, simple sentences to communicate their ideas in a very crisp manner. Twine followed the same but in a slightly less formal way. And on the other end of the spectrum Smart Things had a high-fi video with a long script composed of complex sentences and ‘harder’ vocabulary words.

If you’re interested you can analyze the scripts yourself:

• Pebble Kickstarter Video Transcription
• Twine Kickstarter Video Transcription
• Smart Things Video Transcription

Advice From the Pro’s

[vimeo 44324460 w=500 h=281]

This panel interview is full of nuggets of Kickstarter wisdom. The video reinforces and colors much of the research above. I recommend watching it, then watching it again.

The panel includes:

• Eric Migicovsky -> Pebble: E-Paper Watch for iPad and Android
• Eddy Vroman -> Brydge + iPad: Do More (iPad case)
• Michael Woods -> Trebuchette – the snap-together, desktop trebuchet

I’ve included some notes on the topics covered. Any mistakes or misrepresentations are mine. All of the good stuff is credited to Eric, Eddy, and Michael.

PROJECT LENGTH

• 30 – 45 days [37 days]
• <30d projects have highest success rate
• remind me button boosts commits at the end 

COMMUNICATION

Eric Migicovsky:

• highly encourage you to be very, very communicative with your backers. as much as you can
• three a week (in practice turns into once a week)
• don’t be afraid to post about bad news
• they’re there for the whole experience -> told a story about a laser catching fire. it’s fun!

COST AND REWARD PRICING

Eddy Vroman:

• have a base reward and an up-sell reward
• reseller packages: 10 pack, 50 pack, 80 pack (sold 7 of these)

Mike Woods:

• you have no idea what the distribution of rewards will be – kickstarter is your market research
• important to keep margins on each reward level the same
• don’t have too many (< 30)
• price needs to include: your time, shipping, amazon 3% fee, KS 5% fee
• pricing rule of thumb for CEE (consumer electronics):
  • wholesale price = manufacturing cost * 2
  • retail price = wholesale cost * 2

Eric Migicovsky:

• best price at the fold. pick macbook air resolution
• amortize all costs
• binary outcome -> go over or fail
• costing – NRE needed to bring that product to market
• “we actually needed $150k but went with $115k”
• chose “$115 not for any good reason”

PUBLIC RELATIONS

Eddy Vroman:

• one of us fully dedicated to press reachout (former PR guy)
• had a pre-populated list of 300 people (CNET, HN, etc)
• 30% backers came from Kickstarter, 70% from external (same for Pebble)
• have good coverage outside of Kickstarter
• mac blogs, exclusive with CNET
• nothing happened for first two hours after launch

Mike Woods:

• pay attention to your backer list (they had an editor from CNET). use their name / email to figure out who they are
• be really nice to the folks at Kickstarter

 Eric Migicovsky:

• 30% backers came from Kickstarter, 70% from external
• Topsy, viral analysis
• 100 points of contact
• peak and trough. common KS graph. but other bursts due to blog
• exclusive launch partner -> senior editor Engadget
• four or five hours a day doing media stuff. answer all inbound email
• adstruc :: get quotes, 50% off, $500 for billboard print + install, $10k mo
• hired a guy to handle twitter launch. respond to every tweet
• kickstarter referral is totally long tail:
  • FB 3% of referrals
  • Mac Rumors 2.5% [top referring site]
  • KS
  • KS Design
  • Google
  • Engadget
  • etc

CONCERNS

Eddy Vroman:

• nothing happened for first two hours after launch

Mike Woods:

• figure out the boring parts where you make mistakes, and correct in advance

Eric Migicovsky:

• overbuilt the PR strategy (JB: I can’t agree with this enough)
• choose final ID before you launch, can’t change
• what cool things could we announce midway through to make it better?
  • drop in bluetooth –> bluetooth LE

LOGISTICS

Eric Migicovsky:

• keep it simple as possible!
• colors, options, etc can create a huge combo matrix

OTHER THOUGHTS

Eric Migicovsky:

• nobody gives a shit about your product at first
• find people who believe in your product around the world.
• general video statistic – half the people will stop watching after 45s
• have everything in text also
• make the person push the PLEDGE button very quickly
• be convincing
• take pre-orders
  • make hardware really cheap. sell 100 rather than 1,000
  • get users. immediate feedback.
  • feedback on production
• did a lot of work before launch
  • showing it to potential customers
  • showing it to potential copy cats –> have to be ready to go into production
  • copy of product on kickstarter while campaign was underway