What we learned from stats breakdown of our $52,000 Kickstarter campaign

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Benjamin Button

6 min readAug 24, 2017

Transparency is the key. That’s why we decided to compare Kickstarter dashboard, Google analytics and Kicktraq charts and show you all the ingredients of our success.

This is not an article, where you have to scroll down to see the most important table. We rather put it here:

See the significant differences in their analytics? The truth is probably somewhere in between.

Find it interesting? Good. But this article is not only about one table. It’s about 7 things we will be aware of in our next campaign. And so should you.

#1: First 24 hours are the most important

We had a great start. Few hundred e-mails beforehand, huge distributor jumping in and little bit of luck — all these factors contributed to the fact that we’ve been fully funded in the first 24 hours.

BUT…

We were focusing on hitting the target goal so much that we forgot what’s important for Kickstarter algorithm:

Total number of backers > Total amount raised

That’s why we failed to rank among top projects in our Kickstarter category. That’s why our Funds raised chart looks like this:

We know it’s easier to focus on one major distributor with 50pcs than 50 backers with 1 piece. But if you’re ever in our situation, don’t forget about smaller backers.

#2: Beware of mid-campaign slump

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term, mid-campaign slump refers to Kickstarter dead zone.

Mid campaign slump = The situation when the initial promotional efforts weaken and you have to find new sources of income.

See the following graph by Kicktraq and notice the drop in pledges after the first week.

Even though we kept the campaign duration short and hit the target from the beginning, there were several things we could have done differently.

To name a few:

a roadshow in European startup capitals (Berlin, London, Stockholm),
better call-to-actions to all our campaign updates (share, ClickToTweet),
interaction with our backers (vote for colors, new ideas),
add new interesting rewards for our existing backers (2+1 for free),
cross promotion with existing campaigns from the very beginning.

#3: Bring enough traffic to the campaign page

Our page was seen 25 486 times by 15 079 unique users. Out of total page views, 19 756 sessions were active with 83,06 per cent bounce rate and average duration of 1 minute and 1 second.

This is all nice, but there is this one tiny problem. After the first week, the pledges stopped pouring in. And it wasn’t due to a fact that the product was not good — our conversion rate was 0,98%, which is great for product of our price.

People simply could not find our campaign.

Some experts say that it’s best to keep paid promotion for the last 21 days. But when the mid-campaign slump happened sooner and organic ways were no longer working, we decided to give it a go.

#4: Pick the promotion partners wisely

During campaign, we were constantly pitched with questionable offers. It’s hard to pick reliable ones, but there is one simple rule we followed:

In crowdfunding, nothing is guaranteed. And if the agency told us something else, we knew they are lying.

That’s why we’ve chosen only two reliable partners. With good reputation. And perfect reference. We thought the campaign will skyrocket. But like I said — nothing is guaranteed.

A/ GadgetFlow — moderate ad spent with 8% ROI

GadgetFlow does not offer only one-time boost, but a complex 30-day promotional package including setting up own microsite, Facebook and Instagram posts and dedicated email blast.

We’ve put a lot of hope into this, but the results were disappointing. The promotion brought 1364 people to the dedicated webpage. Out of those, 322 clicked to our Kickstarter campaign. And only 1 bought a piece. This makes it total ROI only 8%.

It is necessary not note that the promotion was interrupted by the cancellation of the campaign after less than 30 days, which influenced the results in a negative way.

B/ Funded Today — huge ad spent with 0% ROI

If GadgetFlow was a disappointment, then Funded Today was a nightmare.

They are the world’s leading crowdfunding agency, so our expectations were very high. We knew testing week is only for testing purposes.

But nobody expected that out of 4-digit budget, Funded Today would fail to bring a single backer to the campaign.

That’s why after a week, we decided to cancel the cooperation. Total flop.

#5: Media traffic is good for exposure. But don’t count on it.

The media coverage has been one of the most successful among CE projects in crowdfunding history. Benjamin Button was featured in:

It is a general rule that only 4% of all the pledges on Kickstarter are made by organic PR, but the results — 0,8% according to Kickstarter and 1,6% according to Google Analytics were below expectations.

See the spikes in visitors count? Caused by media.

#6: Don’t ignore the demographics

Kickstarter audience is made of 78% men and 22% women. Most of the visitors are 25–34 years old. And without kids.

We knew Kickstarter is difficult for women-focused projects. But we were hoping to turn these stats around.

We targeted female-focused media, set up female-targeted ads and we were hoping to get at least 50 per cent of female visitors in the age group 30–40.

But as a result, 61 per cent of the users and 70 per cent of the backers were men. And the age group 30–40 accounted only to 30 per cents of all traffic.

You simply cannot fight the demographics.