{"id":19621,"date":"2020-12-17T16:06:53","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T00:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backerkit.com\/blog\/?p=19621"},"modified":"2020-12-17T19:27:21","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T03:27:21","slug":"backerkit-year-in-review-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backerkit.com\/blog\/backerkit-year-in-review-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"BackerKit Year in Review 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"

This has been a challenging year, to say the least. We\u2019ve experienced a worldwide pandemic, global protests calling for social change, a U.S. election, and of course the ripple effects that these major developments have had on all of us personally.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Through it all, crowdfunding creators have continued to launch projects. And whether these projects were in direct response to current events or were passion projects that were in the works since last year, they reflect the resilience, strength, and creativity of the crowdfunding community. We are inspired and motivated by you all.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

BackerKit has been able to accomplish a lot this year. We\u2019ve worked with 6,094,572 <\/span>backers and 2,243<\/span> creators, helping them raise a total of $162,545,608. We also received a <\/span>2020 Help Scout Customer Service Award<\/span><\/a>. But this wouldn\u2019t be possible without all of you. And so we want to thank our customers as we take a look back at 2020, and the year we\u2019ve had together.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tracking crowdfunding health<\/h2>\n

In the early months of the pandemic, we were all trying to understand how <\/span>this unprecedented public health crisis would affect our lives<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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In response to this, we started closely monitoring the health of the crowdfunding industry and checking in with our partners and friends in the community. We published <\/span>weekly crowdfunding health updates<\/span><\/a> to provide you all with a better understanding of the landscape and track pledges.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There was encouraging news: even in a pandemic creators were launching projects and backers were showing up. After a month, our data showed that overall <\/span>pledges were tracking above average<\/span><\/a>. This trend continued week after week.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The orange line in the graph shows the total number of pledges raised across all project categories since May of 2020. The dotted goal line is the average funds raised in 2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The successful campaigns we saw during the past several months have underscored the importance of pre-launch preparation and planning. Building your email list, communicating with your community, assessing your own bandwidth, and finding partners that can offer support at strategic moments throughout your crowdfunding journey will put you in a good position to achieve your funding goal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Check out the following resources to learn more about planning your campaign:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kickstarter Checklist: Create a Plan for Crowdfunding Success<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

How to Build Your Indiegogo or Kickstarter Email List in 10 Steps<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Building an Email List: How to Ensure Kickstarter and Indiegogo Success<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Designing an Effective Landing Page for Kickstarter Projects<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

BackerKit and Crowd Ox join forces<\/h2>\n

In November, we began an exciting new chapter in the BackerKit story: Crowd Ox, a pledge management platform for crowdfunding projects, <\/span>joined our team<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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We\u2019re all dedicated to helping creators solve problems and have spent years building tools to support that mission. Now that we\u2019ve joined forces, we can double our efforts and concentrate on delivering the best pledge management experience possible. We are also thrilled to have our new teammates onboard, and together we are already cooking up ways to make campaign management easier for creators in 2021 and beyond.<\/span><\/p>\n

2020 BackerKit product updates<\/h2>\n

BackerKit product development is customer-driven. We listen to our customers, we learn from our customers, and then we use what we\u2019ve discovered to build tools that simplify crowdfunding for creators and backers. We steadily make updates to BackerKit Launch, Pledge Manager, and Marketing, as well as global BackerKit account features throughout the year. Here are a few releases that we were especially excited about in 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

BackerKit Launch<\/a><\/h3>\n