Today’s Tip: Create Kickstarter custom referral tags and use that page as a promotional checklist.
Kickstarter URLs that include a custom tag allow you to track sources of traffic for your campaign. While this information isn’t available right away, I found that brainstorming and creating these tags helped me identify locations where I might be able to generate traffic at all stages of the campaign. You can find the section for creating these custom links under the Kickstarter promotion tab.
Aside: The BackerKit launch letter I created to send to previous backers made a good starting point for the text of all additional (often shorter) promotional posts.
T minus 6: Lump Dog™ Launch Journal
During the Lump Dog crowdfunding campaign, I am recording a journal of my activities each day. The goal is to have a record of what I did so I have something to refer to when I do my next campaign. Hopefully, this will also give you ideas for your own campaigns.
Recent tasks
Added a “NEW KICKSTARTER!” menu item on my Shopify store, tlsscomics.com.
I set up a BackerKit landing page using a modified version of the text from the prelaunch email message. Although this page seems a tad redundant to the Kickstarter prelaunch page, I still created one. It was easy to create, so it was worth trying. I’ll be watching to see if it helps the campaign.
I promoted the prelaunch page on important Discord servers, Twitter feeds, LinkedIn, and other sites using unique custom links for each.
Helpful resources
Tools used
Scrivener
Microsoft Word
Canva
Descript
Adobe Photoshop
Apple Preview
What I am waiting for
Lenticular cover images
Team biography updates
Lesson learned for next time
I should have created a colour palette for the campaign and saved the primary hex codes. I found I was guessing these values too often, so having them on a post-it note on my desk would have been helpful.
Snapshot (What I’m currently monitoring)
Current pre-launch page followers: 33
Instagram ad spend
Landing: $41.53 CAD for 2884 views, 127 prelaunch page visits. $0.33/visit
Alien: $68.01 for 4353 views, 235 prelaunch page visits. $0.29/visit
The number of people clicking the “notify me on launch” button has been nominal.
BackerKit Launch e-mail. 217 were sent, 97 were opened, and 14 clicked. (The BackerKit Launch service costs $99US for 60 days.) This is by far the easiest way to reach previous backers. Note that it has been three years since my last campaign, so the response has exceeded expectations so far.
Up next
Work on the Kickstarter video. I’m still waiting for a few illustrations I want to add to the video, but I can work around those.