It’s been a big year for the crowdfunding space and a big year for BackerKit! Our dedicated team has now served over 7,100+ creators, 11.4 million backers, and raised over $178 million in funds via BackerKit since late 2012.
We are excited to share all the product updates we’ve made to the BackerKit pledge manager, but even more excited to share with you all the **NEW BackerKit products** we’ve made this year to help creators even before they launch their crowdfunding campaign.
One last thing—don’t call this a New Year’s resolution, but in 2020, expect monthly product release notes so you can easily stay up to date on what’s new. Now, let’s dive into what we’ve been working on for you this year!
Get insights and pledges with “BackerKit Launch”
We’ve created a completely new tool called “BackerKit Launch” that will help you with the success of your new campaign. It’s a self-serve email marketing and analytics toolkit — think Mailchimp, but specifically built for crowdfunding creators. It can do cool stuff like show you how many past backers have backed your new campaign, and segment messaging based on who has or hasn’t backed yet.
Whether you are using BackerKit Pledge Manager or not, any creator can use BackerKit Launch and get set up in just a few minutes. Go ahead, try BackerKit Launch at no cost, or attend our upcoming Launch webinar to learn more.
Charging taxes just got easier
You can now charge backers an additional tax amount based on their country and/or state. This new feature will help you collect the right amount and take the guesswork out for you and your backers — backers will see this as a separate line item on their order confirmation, and creators can see more tax breakdowns in the accounting export.
Local reward pickup option for backers
You can now offer your backers a local pickup option as one of the ways to receive rewards. Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to spend all that money and waste all that material to ship to a backer in the same location as you. If it’s convenient for you and your backer, offer local pickup at your office, conventions, or anywhere!
Facebook Ads performance improvements
Our Creator Marketing team has been hard at work making Facebook Ad performance updates for creators. Crowdfunding marketers know this all too well: Kickstarter does not allow Facebook pixels. In 2019, we built software that combined our proprietary dataset, a beta invite and a whole lot of programmatic sorcery that essentially enables us to “pixel” without actually using pixels. So now we can lean into Facebook’s machine learning to optimize for conversions, which immediately lead to 50%+ ROI improvement—and growing as we learn to use our new superpower. Stay tuned for some cool new updates in early 2020! Contact us to see if you qualify for our Creator Marketing services.
Set SKU availability limit (beta)
Do you only have a certain number of a specific item? No worries because you can now set a maximum number amount for each SKU (stock keeping unit)! When the maximum is reached, our system will prevent backers from ordering more of that SKU.
Shopify fulfillment integration
For creators who fulfill through Shopify, you can now push completed orders over to your Shopify store with a click of a button. No more uploading spreadsheets!
Easyship integration
BackerKit now integrates with Easyship, making it even easier for you to automatically generate orders if you are using this shipping platform. Exporting orders for your fulfillment partner has never been easier!
Patreon integration
Patreon is a membership platform that allows creators to develop a direct relationship with their biggest fans and generate predictable, recurring revenue from your creative work. Over the past year, BackerKit has been working with Patreon creators to make fulfilling merchandise easier. If you are interested in learning more about how BackerKit can help your Patreon, sign up here.
… and more improvements!
Project copier: You can now easily copy add-ons, pledge questions, and/or shipping profiles from one project to another from the Tools Dashboard — setup has never been this easy!
Pre-order abandoned cart conversions: For pre-order purchasers that did not complete the checkout process, you can now see the number of reminder emails that were sent to them and how effective it was.
Add-on region hiding: You can now hide add-ons from appearing to backers from a specific region, which is helpful for creators because certain regions have certain shipping limitations.
Global backer search: If a backer emails you a support question, you can easily search for that backer from your Projects Dashboard’s search bar to get a summary of the projects they have backed without having to search through each of your projects individually.
Backer Account recommended projects email: Backers who have created a Backer Account will now get a curated weekly email of “Trending for you” projects based on the types of projects they have backed—allowing them to discover cool new projects, like yours!
Lock orders with final notice: You can now choose to send backers a final notice before you lock their orders. Backers will be notified that they can make any changes to their order, including the option to add any last minute add-ons. After 48 hours, all orders will automatically be locked.
Bug Fixes: To see an updated list of bug fixes, check them out here.
Website redesign: Got a fresh new look that was long overdue (the last time we touched it was in 2015)! We’ve been serving both creators and backers since 2012, and overwhelmingly, our website traffic is heavily visited by backers. We wanted to continue giving backers an even greater experience, so we redesigned the website to make it easier and more welcoming for your backers to find their project survey or log into their BackerKit Backer Account.
Looking forward to 2020
BackerKit at CES
We’re excited to be returning to Las Vegas for CES 2020—the world’s largest convention dedicated to consumer technology. We’ll be boothing in Eureka Park (Hall G Booth #52950) ready to answer all your questions about bringing your next big idea to Kickstarter. Be sure to stop by and tell us what you’re making in 2020. And while you’re at it, pick up our exclusive pin and gain access to our free “Pre-Campaign Roadmap”.
Next BackerKit Webinar Series: BackerKit Launch
Want to learn more about how “BackerKit Launch” can give you insights and pledges for your new campaign? Join our first webinar of 2020 on Jan 16 by signing up here.
Tabletop Game Night at BackerKit
BackerKit’s Tabletop Game Night is back Feb 2020! We’re inviting ALL tabletop game players & game designers to our San Francisco office to come play games with us! Designing a game? Come prepared to teach and play your own game, and test other designer’s games! Stay updated by joining our BackerKit Meetup Page.
BackerKit Referrals
Refer a fellow crowdfunding creator, and we pledge a donation to a single live campaign of your choice. We love supporting creators and want to support those who also do too! See details and our updated announcement here.
