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STEAMTeam 5 is my first Kickstarter, and it has been fascinating to experience Kickstarter from the "other" side. We just launched last week and are at about 43%, but I feel like I've learned a ton already. Our Kickstarter is a children's book (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/28 ... drens-book). Here's what I think has worked (and not worked) so far:

During Our Pre-Launch (email list-building phase)
* Facebook ads drove the most cost-effective sign ups.
* We tested using Facebook Events in Facebook ads and we got a lot of people sign up to "virtually attend" our launch. Conversion rates were solid for notification, but the jury is still out on backer conversion numbers.
* We ended up using Facebook leads more than traditional sponsored posts/ads to drive notification signups, and it cut our conversion cost in half.
* Believe it or not, LinkedIn ads (targeting Groups) performed second best.
* Twitter was third.There was a ton of activity and it helped us reach influencers, but they didn't sign up to be notified about the launch at a high enough rate to justify much of an ad spend.
* Instagram ads did nothing for us.
* I know we were supposed to get PR lined up, but people kept telling us that no one will write about a book that hasn't been published yet.

Post Launch (We launched last week)

* It could be our target audience or the time of year, but our email campaigns didn't perform as well as I expected (2% conversion rate), so we launched some social ads. They've far outperforming email in terms of conversion. (I should note that about 80% of our email list comprises leads generated from Facebook.)
* I shouldn't have used the phrase "support our mission..." in the pre-launch marketing. It's my theory that people think they've already contributed to the mission simply by signing up for our Kickstarter launch notification.

I'm sure I'll have more to add as the project progresses,

~ Pam

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