LBN #21 – How the Air Cruiser by Cinch raised $443,396 on Kickstarter

Learn how Jake used $99 deposits to have a huge Kickstarter launch

Mark Pecota | CEO at LaunchBoom

You’re reading edition #21 of the LaunchBoom Newsletter, which is sent every Tuesday to thousands of product creators.

Good morning! Here’s what’s on the menu today:

  1. Using a $99 deposit to raise $122K in 24 hours.
  2. Why you should try “ugly” ads.
  3. Avoid these words… I bet you use some… I did!

Enjoy.

1. Short story

Six days ago, this creator’s Kickstarter ended at $443,396 in pre-sale revenue.

This was his 5th crowdfunding campaign.

It was also his 2nd campaign with LaunchBoom.

Jake Jackson is the founder of Cinch – an outdoor gear company he started in 2009.

Like many companies, Cinch was started out of frustration. More specifically, Jake’s frustration dealing with clunky gear and spending far too many hours setting up tents.

So he decided to solve his own problem.

He created a tent that was incredibly easy to set up without sacrificing the quality and features he wanted.

With the first tent created, Cinch was born.

Since that day, Cinch has grown up a lot and crowdfunding has been a big part its life. Like I said before, Jake has launched five crowdfunding campaigns.

And his latest launch on Kickstarter was for the Air Cruiser.

As you can see above, he raised $443,396 during the 28 days he was live on Kickstarter.

What’s even crazier is that he raised $122K in the first 24 hours.

The post above was made by Jake in our LaunchBoom Accelerator community.

(Fun fact: every client gets access to this community which has 1,160 creators in it at the time of writing this!)

How in the world was Jake able to raise $122K in the first day?

Well, the 2nd part of the post I underlined gives you a clue.

Like he said, he had converted 35% of his VIP email list from a $99 deposit in the first day (more converted later on as well).

He built this email list by creating a Reservation Funnel.

You can see what the landing page looked like in his reservation funnel below:

After someone gave their email address, Jake presented a VIP offer to visitors – if someone put down a $99 deposit, they’d be upgraded to VIP and reserve the best launch discount of $1,000 off.

The beauty behind this strategy is that those who upgrade to VIP are 30 times more likely to buy than someone who only gives their email address.

This allowed Jake to optimize his advertising for a better metric than just cost per lead.

So when he launched, Jake had a hyper-qualified email list of people who couldn’t wait to buy his product.

This allowed him to raised $122K in one day.

Do you have a product idea and want results like Jake?

Talk to a LaunchBoom Expert and we’ll show you how we can make your product idea a reality.

You can watch Jake’s interview on the Masters of Crowdfunding podcast here:

2. Marketing tip

Try “ugly” ads.

The ad below got shared in our team Slack last week. I love it. It’s great execution on what I’d call an “ugly ad.”

Here’s why you should try ugly ads too:

  • They grab attention beautifully
  • You don’t need to be a design expert to make them
  • You can test many different versions quickly

3. Favorite content

Avoid these words.

My favorite newsletter is by Harry Dry and is called Marketing Examples. This week was full of little nuggets of wisdom.

My favorite tip was this:

Words thrown around by companies with bad positioning:

  • simple, easy
  • powerful, effective
  • fast, quick
  • flexible, modern
  • best, better

By the way, LaunchBoom is guilty of using some of these “bad” words in our positioning. Time to think of something better.

Learn to launch your product in 5 minutes per week.

Every Tuesday, I send a newsletter just like this one! You can expect to read about my biggest lessons and most-effective strategies to launch a successful crowdfunding campaign. Sign up using the form right below 👇

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