Detailed breakdown of crowdfunding premarketing mailing list
I often hear people ask what is the best way to build an audience for your board game Kickstarter. I’ve detailed my methods in this earlier post. In this post I’ll be diving into the actual details and numbers behind the email mailing list for Fantastic Factories, which is a tabletop game launching on Kickstarter on May 29th 2018.
Overview of Sources
Far and away the largest source of emails has been demoing at large conventions, specifically PAX South 2017 (Indie Showcase) and PAX West 2017, (IndieMEGABOOTH). At both shows I had a table in a very high traffic area. Using 10 minute demos to maximize throughput, we collected over 500 emails between the two conventions.
The next largest source was signups through the website (shown as Launchrock and Squarespace) with 130+ emails. It’s difficult to tell what percentage of these signups were a result of a face-to-face interactions driving traffic to the website versus simply discovering the game online. It helps to have a mailing list signup landing page and business cards that funnel people to that page.
And finally, most of the remaining emails were through PlaytestNW. The charts only show this as a very small slice because that slice doesn’t include any playtesting events at major conventions. PlaytestNW has had a significant presence at PAX West, PDXAGE, ETX, Dragonflight, and ECCC so many of those events are actually through PlaytestNW. In total, PlaytestNW has also provided me with 130+ emails.
Return on Investment of Time and Money
Time and money are finite resources. You want to make sure you’re making the best use of both because there’s no shortage of things demand it when it comes to preparing for a Kickstarter.
Demoing at Conventions
For maximizing the email signups for both time and money, I’ve found nothing beats short demos at high traffic conventions. The challenging thing is finding these opportunities. I’m fortunate enough to live Seattle where there’s a wealth of board game conventions throughout the year. Many of them will support indie game designers and provide tables for free or cheap. I dive into more detail about this in my earlier blog post about the best ways to build a mailing list.
In the chart below, the two large months for signups are from demoing opportunities at PAX South and PAX West. The other bumps are from other local cons.
Website Signups
Looking at the numbers, the next largest source of emails is from the email signup on the website (labeled as Launchrock / Squarespace). Having a basic landing page that provides interested people the opportunity to sign up for the mailing list is important. But does simply putting up a page get you signups?
If you compare this chart with the earlier one with all sources, you’ll see a heavy correlation between signups on the website and signups at conventions. This implies that the increased website signup activity is largely due to face-to-face efforts. The website itself does not general emails but helps capture people who hear about the game incidentally at the convention or are hesitant to sign up in person.
Playtesting
Finally, you can collect emails while playtesting your game. To be honest, this is actually a really slow way of collecting emails, but is often the easiest and most accessible to new designers. It’s slow because players who are playtesting will typically play through the entire game. You might spend all afternoon playtesting your game and only come away with five emails.
However, these emails come for free. You should be playtesting your game all the time anyways for the sake of evaluating and balancing your game. The primary goal of playtesting is not to build your mailing list but you should be doing it anyways if you plan on Kickstarting your game.
Kickstarter Conversion
Here’s the interesting piece. How much is an email worth?
And the answer is: I don’t know… yet.
What I’m itching to see is how well the mailing list converts into Kickstarter backers. Knowing what percent of your mailing list will back your project can help Kickstarter creators judge whether their audience is big enough.
I’m willing to bet that not emails are created equal. Someone’s investment and support in your project is going to differ depending on whether they stumbled upon your game online or if they played a full game with you. It might also matter how long ago they signed up.
As someone who has learned so much from the experience of others who have so willingly shared information, I hope to gather this data and write a follow-up post for everyone to read.
Fantastic Factories is coming to Kickstarter on May 29th, 2018. Check out an overview video and sign up for the mailing list to be notified on launch at www.fantasticfactories.com.
