Kickstarter in Review Part I: Success
[Read the full Kickstarter in Review series]
Our Kickstarter wrapped up last week with $42,818 raised from 1,232 backers!
I’ll have lots of content dissecting the ins and outs of our campaign. Mistakes made, what we could improve, where we wasted money and spent it well. But today isn’t about any of that.
Today we celebrate our successes.
For a first campaign, with a modestly priced game, we had a strong showing. $42k raised puts us in the top 15% of games projects in terms of dollars funded, and I would suspect even higher in terms of number of backers.
Let’s look at some areas we executed well, and where we had wins.
Community & Personal Connection
The biggest strength of being an indie publisher is that we have the opportunity to personally connect with our community.
During the campaign I individually messaged every backer. I’m active in our comments, on our Facebook page, and TikTok.
And it paid off.
Our community is small, but fierce. Our campaign page has over 700 comments – almost all of which are cheerleading the campaign. Beyond that, our Nut Hunt Facebook group has 323 members, and I have just over 1,000 followers on TikTok.
Leading into and through the campaign I’ve built what I expect to be life-long connections and friendships with members of our community.
Social Proof
We knocked it out of the park with social proof.
This blog and my involvement in the community has built a lot of goodwill. I’ve had a number of messages from backers saying they don’t support first time publishers but have made an exception in our case.
Which has been an incredibly validating thing to hear.
And, our review campaign, while not extensive has been overwhelmingly positive:
“This is not an overly advanced game, but for a lightweight approachable, family, or kind of evening style game, it has a lot going for it.” - Jesse Anderson (Quackalope)
“This was actually quite fun to play, and it fit’s that niche in between ‘hey we’re going to play something really heavy and we’re going to play a quick game just to have some fun together’.” - West (Quackalope)
“The type of game that would be a great addition to any collection.” - Derek Pederson (Woosung Board Games)
“Nut Hunt already safely belongs to our top 4 favorite family Euro games - along with Catan Junior, Ticket to Ride First Journey, and Honga. And that’s good company!” - Ryan Billingsley (Dad Suggests)
“A perfect combination for groups that are trying to welcome a new gamer, or for families.” - Ian Hornbacker (Board Feelings)
I think the pacing of our review and preview content was a little too concentrated – front loaded at the campaign launch. But on the whole, we have a lot to be proud of with how the game has resonated with not only our community, but also reviewers.
Mid-Campaign Organic Outreach
This is our daily funding for Nut Hunt.
As with any campaign, we suffered through the mid-campaign doldrums, but you’ll notice some mid-campaign spikes.
I made a concerted effort during the campaign to continue marketing the project. We had nice traffic from Reddit, from a positive coverage on The Dice Tower Crowdsurfing, and we engaged with our community incentivizing them to share the campaign.
Retail Engagement
Our goal with Pine Island Games is to not be reliant on serialized Kickstarters. We believe that the long-term success of our business is predicated on retail distribution.
As such, we made a concerted effort to reach out to and build relationships with friendly local game stores. We had 14 retail backers in the Kickstarter, a handful at the $1 level, and outside of the Kickstarter have almost 40 additional retail stores that have expressed interest in buying Nut Hunt closer to fulfillment.
I think these results are remarkable for a first-time publisher.
Campaign Assets
A core strategy in how we develop and invest in games is that we want to buy optionality. That is, we make substantial upfront investments in an attempt to maximize the chances that any of our games reach that tipping point and turn into an evergreen, outsized, success.
Even though the upfront fixed costs are high, we partner with the best professionals, commission the best illustration and the best component and graphic design.
That philosophy extended into our Kickstarter campaign. I am pretty happy with the overall graphic layout of our campaign page, and blown away by the quality of our Kickstarter video by Ori Kagan.
The video had 3.2k views, with a 61.88% watch to completion rate. For context 45% is considered good for a 1 minute video.
Closing Thoughts
One statistic really sums up the successes behind our campaign is our follower conversion rate. Kickstarters have a ratio of backers to campaign followers (people who saved a campaign to look at it later). Typically this number is in the mid teens.
Our game, campaign, and community converted an outsized portion of people who checked out our project. Now, it’s about getting Nut Hunt to more tables, so the game itself can convince more people that it deserves a spot in their collection.
Through our campaign we built strong relationships. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, and excited to get Nut Hunt out into the world. I think we have an incredibly strong foundation and are well positioned to grow Nut Hunt’s reach, and introduce new games to our community.
What Kickstarters have you backed that had the most exciting community engagement?
