Expectation: $35,000
Reality: $44,298

This was the week that we met, and surpassed our goal. I would have liked it to happen in week one or two, but better late than never ;)

So what has been the main driver of backers? Things have been moving so quickly that it’s hard to isolate out one single factor. Here are a few things that seem to influencing momentum:

1. Social proof/validation that the general public believes in this campaign and wants the product. Part of the validation comes from the number of people backing it and dollars raised, part of the validation comes from the project’s goal being over 70% funded, meaning that people are likely to get their reward. I’m guessing people don’t want to invite their friends to take part in something that may not be a success. Part way through the campaign I had some backers ask “what happens if it doesn’t get funded?” This reinforces the importance of getting fully funded as early as possible.
2. More exposure on Kickstarter — backers that came from Kickstarter went from about 33% to 40%. I think this was due to the $1 campaign (see last week’s lessons), which increased our exposure on Kickstarter. At the end of the entire campaign I’d like to run some deeper analysis into how backers per day affects exposure and momentum.
3. Word-of-mouth through backers helping to share the campaign and reaching new groups of people I would never have reached. There’s only so far I can communicate through my personal networks on facebook, twitter and LinkedIn, and by the fourth week of the campaign, I’m sure everybody has already heard about it. However backers that come from Kickstarter or other sources provide completely new networks of people that have never seen or heard of the campaign. I read somewhere that backers are typically not personally messaged or thanked by the creator of the campaign, so I made an effort to message each and every backer in order to engage them and also to learn more about what type of person is interested in the SunJack. These people become advocates and brand ambassadors, and I want to develop that social connection with them.

Advertising via Outbrain and Facebook seem to help, but the ROI is roughly breakeven once all costs are taken into account. I do like being able to target very specific demographics on Facebook, so that is something we will probably continue to utilize for marketing post-Kickstarter. We’ve also launched a banner on KickTraq.com for our final week, and it’s brought some conversions so at least that’s paid for itself.

As for the outsourced services, I would not recommend CrowdFundMafia. Their representative Jamie Motong never answered questions I emailed her, and they’re pretty much just a “spray and pray” service. The main guy Michael Fultz was more communicative (called me to congratulate hitting our goal), but he didn’t seem to be involved in our campaign at all apart from selling me the service in the first place.

CrowdFundBoutique finally managed to land us some exposure on a few sites that brought us some backers, so at least they’ve paid for themselves. What I appreciate from our representative Jeremy Schulkin is that I feel he actually made an effort to get us published, and at the very least, he was responsive to my questions. If these guys continue to maintain and build their media relationships, I could envision myself using them again.

Four more days, can we hit our stretch goal of $50,000?

I was curious if momentum would die after hitting the goal, so we developed a stretch goal of $50,000, which is an extra 50% beyond our original goal. The carrot is a weather-proof solution, which is something I found out was important to backers via communicating with them.

If you’ve ever wanted your very own portable energy source — you have until 12noon on Thursday to get one at special Kickstarter pricing!

Click here to become a backer — http://www.bit.ly/sunjack