Here’s how two high school sweethearts raised $105,965 in one day.
Meet Amy & Dustin – the co-founders of Dux Somnium Games and self-proclaimed “certified nerds”.
They turned their passion for tabletop games and flower farming into a new game called Botany.
Last year they realized that they were ready to launch on Kickstarter, but they didn’t have a marketing strategy.
So they decided to join LaunchBoom in December of 2022.
Six months later, they launched on Kickstarter.
I’m going to walk through the four key steps they took to have a successful launch.
Contents
1. Built a Reservation Funnel using LaunchKit
The LaunchBoom Reservation Funnel builds email lists of buyers. That’s because it not only collects email addresses, but also allows visitors to put down a $1 deposit to reserve the best launch deal.
We’ve found that those that reserve are 30 times more likely to buy.
So first, we built their Reservation Funnel using our software called LaunchKit. You can see an overview of their funnel (and the software) below.
2. Created a great VIP offer
Every Reservation Funnel needs a VIP offer – that’s what someone will get by putting down a $1 deposit.
Botany’s VIP offer was the “bonus mini expansion ‘Brilliant Blue Botanicals'” as seen below on their Reservation Bridge page.
This type of VIP offer is what we call an “exclusive add-on.” If someone puts down the $1 deposit, they will automatically have the exclusive add-on added to their order if they back the Kickstarter campaign.
3. Drove traffic to the Reservation Funnel with Facebook ads
Facebook ads are the main driver of traffic to the Reservation Funnel.
We showed Amy & Dustin how to target the right audience and create scroll-stopping ads. There were a number of ads, but the best performing one looked like this:
Over the next few months, Amy and Dustin scaled up their Facebook ad spend. Before they launched, their metrics looked like this:
- Ad spend: $12,511
- Leads: 8,734
- Cost per lead: $1.43
- $1 reservations: 2,641
- Cost per reservation: $4.74
4. Launched and got funded the first day
With an email list of buyers who couldn’t wait to get their hands on Botany, they pressed the launch button on Tuesday, May 2nd.
Within 16 minutes, they had passed their funding goal of $5,000.
By the end of the day, they had raised $105,965.
It’s been 7 days since they launched and now their campaign is at $273,927 on Kickstarter.
With only $12,511 in ad spend, they’re pretty happy with the return 🙂
One last thing…
I loved this message from Dustin in our LaunchBoom community.
They were funded faster than he was able to share the link!
You can watch Amy and Dusty’s Masters of Crowdfunding podcast interview here:
Want to chat about your launch?
If you’re looking to launch a game like Amy & Dusty, we’d love to chat. Simply click this link to chat with one of my team members. We’ll jump on a call and discuss how we can help you launch a successful campaign.
