Frosthaven $13,000,000: The most funded Kickstarter campaign in 2020

As we’re coming to the end of this crazy year I’ve decided to analyze an interesting case study: the most funded Kickstarter's crowdfunding campaign of 2020!

Just try to think, what’s the best invention to overcome a pandemic during a ''stay-at-home'' period? Exactly...a board game! We’re talking about ‘’Frosthaven’’, a board game that raised almost $13 million on Kickstarter.

And guess what, we’re referring to one of the three most funded campaigns on Kickstarter, furthermore these guys just smashed every record in their industry, collecting more than 84 thousand backers throughout the world.

3 SUCCESS FACTORS

The craziest thing is that they’ve reached this incredible result during a global pandemic. It looks that this didn’t stop the campaign's success, even if it generated a little delay. In fact, originally the campaign was supposed to be launched one week earlier than the actual schedule, but the creator Isaac Childres decided to launch it anyway to allow people to have fun especially in this crucial moment.

And he was right! Because the results didn’t wait to come, the campaign raised $5 million just in the first 48 hours.

Now let's see the 3 key points that are behind this huge success, and in the video above we're going to analyze them deeply.

1. THE COMMUNITY

The community was crucial and fundamental to the success of this campaign. Especially because ‘’Frosthaven’’ is the sequel of other board games. Starting from 2015, the creator, Isaac Childres, launched 4 campaigns, each one proposing a new game, and surely, this is what led today's campaign to success.

The first one was called ''Forge war'' which raised around $100.000 at that time. The second launch was ''Gloomhaven'' in 2017, where he managed to raise around $400 thousand in the first edition and almost $4 million for the second edition, which was a ''Gloomhaven'' spin-off boardgame called ''Founders of Gloomhaven''.

And here's why the community is absolutely a success factor, most of all because it is composed of truly passionate people, interested in board games generally, but most importantly, interested in Isaac's board game.

The fact that there was an established and warm fanbase helped the project to reach its goal in a few weeks, but it comes without explanation that the creator managed to deliver each of his games with no complaint, and that helped raise the credibility in front of his backer's eyes, who became more motivated in backing his the last creation.

2. PR STRATEGY AND SOCIAL SUPPORT

If you try to google ‘’Frosthaven’’, you’ll find a massive number of articles from many magazines from all over the world, starting from the most generalist magazines to board games specialized ones. But it was not just that.

Social proof also was a crucial success factor that was coming from social influencers and youtube channels. In fact, they all talked about the project during and before the launch of the campaign, creating a huge buzz around the game. 

Starting from board games influencers who received the game earlier, the exclusive unboxing videos, to people explaining the rules of the game and YouTubers interviewing the creator about his new game release.

All of that contributes to the massive social proof around the game which leads to thinking: “influencers talk about that, probably this is the most epic game ever and I need to get it”.

3. THE PRICING

Maybe you would think that what led the campaign to success were cheap prices and discounts, but on the contrary, there weren’t many rewards and huge discounts.

According to researches made about Kickstarter campaigns, the average amount that people tend to back more over the platform is between $100 to $150.

The campaign, in fact, only has 3 main rewards regarding the board game: the basic reward for the game itself $100, and then 2 rewards for game upgrades with the price of $140 and $240. But there is more, the ultimate $285 prize was a big bundle including all the board games released so far. And that definitely motivated people that backed the past games to pledge once again the new creation.

The creator-focused his attention on the main subject of the campaign: choosing a price who consented to reach the goal in the fastest way possible. Once again, It’s not necessary giving huge discounts as motivation for people to buy. And if you warmed up the community properly they’re gonna be more inclined to pay a higher price for your products.

WRAP UP

Going into the conclusion of this article don't forget these simple key takeaways.

1. Nothing is gonna pay you back more than a warm and solid community of genuine people who follow you, and if they like what you’re doing, success is right around the corner.

2. Be consistent in offering your early-stage product to specific key influencers in order to gain social proof around communities and social media. Every single cent spent there will come back somehow.

3. Don’t offer too much discount over the campaign and focus the attention on the main reward. Setting a low price only means that you’ll need more people and more time to reach your funding goal.

Well, this was just a taste of this juicy content I made just for you, go check the video above for further answers and be sure to subscribe to my channel and smash the like button! 

If you’re starting now with your crowdfunding project and you don’t have a clue from where to start I suggest you download the FREE ebook that I’ve created especially for you by clicking here.

That is my pre-launch blueprint manual, which allowed my startup Solenica to raise more than 650K on Indiegogo!

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