The Power of the Premium Pledge

Offering a premium pledge tier or add-on components adds a level of complexity and risk to your Kickstarter. You need to design a product, sort out additional manufacture – possibly at a subscale level, and arrange separate fulfillment.

But, premium tiers and add-ons also can add a lot to a campaign. Let’s take a look at why you should seriously consider higher tier levels for your campaigns.  

You Can Offer Cool Stuff

Maybe the most self-explanatory reason to consider higher tier options is that you can make cool stuff. For our Sigil campaign we’re offering two add-on products – wooden hex boxes in partnership with Ravenwood Woodworking & a neoprene board.

We’re also trying to sort out a super-premium tier offering with a lacquer wooden game box – although we haven’t puzzled out economic manufacturing.

Having options, add-ons, and premium upgrades adds value for your customers.

Price Discrimination

Despite the nefarious sounding name, price discrimination is about allowing consumers to pay what they want for the goods that they want.

It is the other side of the coin to offering consumers more options. They will self-discriminate based on their preferences. For instance, consumers who can afford more premium options, and find value in them, will spend more money on those items.

When some portion of backers pledge for higher tier levels, or add-ons, it raises the average revenue and (ideally) profit per backer. This allows for faster funding velocity, but also aids in a number of areas such as making advertising more profitable (and so a campaign can afford higher costs per click).

Discoverability & Momentum

It’s important not to underestimate the power of Kickstarter’s algorithm - we found that 52% of backers discover our Nut Hunt campaign through Kickstarter, versus 43% through organic or direct non-Kickstarter sources.

We don’t know exactly how Kickstarter’s algorithm weighs various factors, but it seems to be based on: amount funded and velocity of funding, backer count and velocity of backer count growth, and less substantially but still important backer activity and interaction.

Having higher tier pledge levels and add-ons can increase the velocity of funding. This can have a multiplicative effect on the overall campaign by increasing its early discoverability.

What campaigns had some of your favorite higher tier pledge levels?