In June of last year, a few months into the global pandemic, Boz Zou reached out for help with his UVMask's pre-launch campaign. The catch? We only had 2 weeks until the campaign would go live! I know what you are thinking… "$0 to $5M in 6 months?! That's hardly achievable by most startups!" And it wasn't an easy journey — but the milestones we hit along the way were exciting:

• $100,000 in 48 hours with a small list
• $3,000,000 within 50-day live Kickstarter campaign
• $5,500,000 (total) within 6 months of going live

In this in-depth case study of our UVMask campaign, we'll break down exactly what we did to hit each of those milestones and take you behind the scenes of the most successful mask campaign ever.

The launch came with a specific set of challenges.

With an average initial price of $79, we were going to need 1,265 backers… and at a conversion rate of 5%, that meant over 25,000 leads! But we only had 2 weeks to run a pre-launch campaign… so we had to think of something else.

Kickstarter would go on to close the campaign three times in a death-defying experience that words can't even begin to describe. Neither we nor any other mask was allowed to talk openly about viruses, or bacteria, let alone kill them in under 1 second!

Getting earned media coverage came with its own serious obstacles as well. When a journalist gets pitched a product that promises 99.99% protection against viruses and bacteria, they expect to see proof verifying the claims. The certification was in the process but was taking longer than expected, which wasn't helping.

UVMask uses a first-of-its-kind consumer-grade UV-C light — this form of LED tech has never seen practical implementation in face mask purification. However, journalists from top media can't share a story and encourage their readers to buy a mask with all these claims without testing it first! They will never risk their reputation, no matter how creative and groundbreaking the idea is. There were also no available samples to send.

As you can imagine, amid a global pandemic, the market was flooded with all sorts of masks! One reply from a journalist noted that after their first and only mask-related article, they got 18 pitches, all asking: "Would you be interested in covering our mask?" When you add no certification and no samples to the fierce competition, getting noticed by reporters becomes quite the challenge.

Creating a Marketing Brief & Running a Pre-Launch Campaign

The backbone of predicting a crowdfunding campaign's success is the marketing brief — a document that assists the whole marketing team in understanding the product and customer, and identifying their needs, wants, and fears — to eventually set the right tone for the whole campaign. Typically, we'd spend a week or two understanding our potential backer and putting together the relevant brief.

But we were running and gunning, as timing and being first-to-market were so critical to this campaign. So instead of launching the campaign with a full-blown marketing brief, our Ads, Copywriting, and Visual Departments got together to understand the product from all angles:

• We analyzed its Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
• We drilled down on the Ideal Target Customer
• We honed in on the key Reasons To Believe (RTBs)
• We developed a Powerful Insight

And while we were working and refining the brief, we decided to launch the campaign with the following initial position — UVMask inactivates 99.99% of all pathogens, viruses, and air pollutants. We quickly set up a simple landing page (a special page for collecting leads) that had the main differentiators clearly laid out:

• It's a UV-C mask that kills the virus in less than 1 second
• It has a fan that helps with breathability
• The tech is developed in Japan, designed in the US
• They had SGS-lab test results that added credibility
• It's more comfortable to wear than any traditional mask

We fired up Facebook ads and the results were instantly obvious:

• High CTR of over 5% — this is the rate of people who click your ad compared to those who see it
• High subscription rate of over 20% — the number of people who signed up on our website after landing on it
• High engagement rate of over 40% — this is the number of people who opened the welcome and follow-up emails

We knew we were onto something big so we stepped on the gas to collect as many leads as we could before going live as the launch date was now set in stone — June 25th. While we collected leads, we also ran a small email marketing campaign to warm them up. We sent 3 emails to each lead:

• The welcome email introduced the founder, his inspiration for creating the idea and a call to action in the form of a question and an invite to join our exclusive Facebook group
• The story email talked about the backstory, how they came up with the idea, the process they went through and an exclusive invite to be the first to get it at a discount
• The launch email introduced the offer and gave people reasons to act NOW and take advantage of the early bird discount, as we were going to raise the price in less than 72 hours

By launch day, we had just 2,000 leads… but we couldn't wait… So, we hit the button and launched our campaign!

Setting the Funding Goal

For UVMask, we went with a modest $20,000 that we reached within a few hours of going live. The strategy was to start low — as low as possible while still making it realistic. Setting too high a funding goal creates a psychological block: people see a high target, don't back it in fear the project won't get funded, which means funding stays low, and other visitors won't back it because it lacks social credibility — a very hard loop to break out of. You'll have a 10x higher chance of hitting $100,000 if you started out with a funding goal of $20,000 and reached it, than if you start off with $100,000 right out the gate.

Timing the Launch

One of the main reasons why UVMask was so successful was timing. UVMask launched amid a global pandemic where everyone on earth was in dire need of the best protection possible from the virus. We promised the ultimate solution. You must launch when your potential backer is thinking about the problem you are trying to solve. Not earlier, not later. When your shipping starts doesn't even remotely matter as much as the right timing.

Facebook Advertising Strategy

The other main factor that contributed significantly to the initial success of UVMask was Facebook advertising. With the help of the Sprint Crowdfunders' Fund, we spent over a quarter of a million dollars on Facebook ads! Thanks to our tight preparation, we had our first sale from ads just an hour after the launch and achieved an average of 9 ROAS (return on ad spend) during the second day of the campaign. All our ads had "just launched" badges or text mentioning that — it is essential to let people know about the early bird deal.

One unexpected win came from a typo — an ad that read UVMask had just "Lunched" instead of "Launched". Rather than turning it off, we noticed that a lot of people were eager to "correct" us. As comments are one of the highest forms of engagement, Facebook's algorithms showed it to more people, and we saw abnormally high conversion rates. So instead of turning it off, we joined the jokers in the comments and began making our own jokes too.

Another key to the advertising success was broad targeting. Dust, pathogens, viruses, and pollution are universal and realizing that gave us an idea to broaden our targeting for related interests/topics and those not that much related at first sight. We got a big help from Google Analytics — the Affinity and Other Interests categories helped discover directions we hadn't even considered. We sorted all sources by transactions and carefully checked which had the highest eCommerce conversion rate. The best performing interests were News, Business and Finance, Cooking, and Astronomy.

The last strategy we used that worked really well was answering comments. Every day, we received a considerable amount of questions and comments on all our ads. We divided that work amongst the team and managed to answer all of them. We created an internal FAQ file with all the answers that we could copy and paste. Reacting quickly to your community shows you are committed to providing excellent customer support, timely answers to urgent questions, and responding to concerns backers might have.

SEO Strategy

People were actively searching for UVMask on Google during the Kickstarter launch. To achieve high SEO rankings, we made sure to include the product's name in both the URL on Kickstarter and in the main headline on the campaign page. We used as many keywords as possible in the headline so that Google picks it up more easily and ranks it higher for certain words.

A cool trick we used to get Google to start ranking UV Mask higher was sending a press release containing the words "UV Mask" (written separately) in the headline. Since prnewswire.com generally receives a lot of traffic and has high domain authority, Google picks up the word combo and starts showing it higher and higher.

PR and Media Outreach

We conducted deep research into all of our competitors during the Kickstarter campaign and collected up to 20 popular masks performing well in the media. We then reached out to all the journalists who covered them. We focused on the product features, and we tried to show its uniqueness by mentioning the main problems that led to the creation of UVMask.

Our pitch structure included: getting straight to the point mentioning UVMask and that we think it will be a good fit for their audience; explaining the problem in one short sentence and why it was relevant at the time; presenting key features in a few bullet points; sharing the backstory; and providing links to both the Kickstarter campaign and to a Press Kit hosted on Google Drive with all materials.

To work around the lack of media samples, we used several tactics. Whenever journalists asked for review samples, we sent them replies asking about the possibility of publishing an article now and providing them with an exclusive sample unit when we started mass production. That strategy ultimately got us featured on Forbes. Once we got UVMask published there, we started to include the name "Forbes" as an example of reputable media who had agreed to these terms, making us more trustworthy.

The next successful strategy was just being honest with journalists. In the pitches, we mentioned that we only had a few samples available and that we couldn't send them as we used them to create promotional content. We instead suggested having video calls and showing them our product or sending them pictures directly from our office so journalists can be confident that we have an existing, working prototype. As a result, we didn't get any negative responses from the media about not having samples.

Post-Campaign Upselling via BackerKit and CrowdOx

Here are the key strategies we used to raise an additional $1.5M using two simple tools — BackerKit and CrowdOx (now owned by BackerKit) — that helped us manage what color, size, and add-ons people wanted. These tools allow raising an additional (up to) 25% of your total funding. After raising over $4.2M during the live campaigns, we raised an extra 25% ($1.5M) in our post-campaign efforts.

They allow backers to upgrade to higher product tiers (i.e., from 1x UVMask to 2x UVMask at a discount), buy other related products, purchase add-on accessories, and even leave tips while choosing their delivery address, mask size, and order details. In essence, you increase each customer's AOV (average order value) by (up to) 25%.

The AOV on BackerKit was higher as we ran a mini-launch of another product called UVMask Lite — a stripped-down version of UVMask without the batteries and UV-C light. That mini-launch alone brought in over $100K in a week while backers were waiting to get their hands on the original UVMask.

The next primary strategy contributing massively towards increased AOV was adding many Kickstarter add-ons — complimenting accessories and products that improved the overall experience: filters, silicone straps, premium straps, swappable front shells in different colors, UVMask Lite for lower-risk situations, and a hard case for carrying the mask. Everything started with UVMask and then morphed into an ecosystem of products.

Community Building and Cancellation Recovery

We already had a Facebook VIP group which we advertised heavily during the prelaunch campaign, in our Kickstarter updates, and on the campaign pages. To get more insights into our audience, we started posting different polls. Another tremendously important aspect to consider during your live campaign is cancellations. These people actually had a reason for why they canceled in the first place, and finding out that reason helps shape your message so that you get inside your customers' heads. After each cancellation, we sent a survey asking them for that reason and offering to win them back with a special discount if they decided to do so. We received constructive feedback that literally transformed how our page looked when we moved from Kickstarter to Indiegogo. Our conversion rate stayed the same and even increased on Indiegogo.

Moving to Indiegogo InDemand

Right after the live Kickstarter campaign ended, we had to find a way to keep taking pre-orders. We had built up all these traffic sources linking to the project, and we had to leverage the left-over traffic. To do that, we moved to Indiegogo InDemand — a pre-order platform that allows a no-deadline campaign. Think of it as a pre-order store with everything you need to keep sales rolling in. There, we raised an additional $1M.

Another great trick we used with Facebook ads was utilizing a tool that allows us to change the end destination URL of the ad. That way, all our successful Kickstarter ads were automatically transferred to Indiegogo without being stopped, which would have dramatically decreased their performance.