How Druid City Games Mastered Post-Campaign Fulfillment

Millions in funding with minimal headaches with PledgeManager

Kickstarter has served as a launchpad for hundreds of thousands of creative ideas that have profoundly impacted how we live, work, and play. Every project on Kickstarter has a dedicated creator or team behind it that not only generates innovative ideas but also works tirelessly to bring them to fruition. However, there are various complex stages that backers may not witness and, therefore, may not fully comprehend the level of intricacy involved in the post campaign management process.

What is pledge management? Do I need it?

Pledge management is a crucial stage in running a Kickstarter campaign. During this stage, creators collect backers' addresses and preferences for rewards, handle regional tax requirements and shipping logistics, and facilitate late pledges. Backers tend to prefer campaigns that offer a wide variety of rewards, while creators aim to make their projects accessible to backers from all over the world. Managing and delivering on all of these aspects is a complex process with many moving parts.

Meanwhile, as a Kickstarter campaign gains more momentum and success, it becomes even more complicated to oversee. This is precisely where the PledgeManager and Kickstarter partnership helps to simplify the process for creators by enabling efficient communicating with backers, offering pledge upgrades and add-ons, and managing shipping and fulfillment all in one place.

A streamlined backer experience

James Hudson, Founder of Druid City Games has achieved remarkable success on Kickstarter creating nine campaigns (and counting) in addition to backing more than a thousand others! Hudson has masterfully leveraged Kickstarter as a tool for his company and career growth, while simultaneously fostering a devoted community of supporters. As a result, he has gained a wealth of experience in expertly navigating the post-campaign phase and is highly adept at tackling any challenges that may arise.

"Kickstarter was our gateway to the board game design world," Hudson says. However, as he launched campaign after campaign, he realized that managing pledges, engaging backers, and fulfilling said pledges efficiently became increasingly difficult. 

So, when I heard that Kickstarter and PledgeManager had partnered, I was like, ‘Finally!’ This marriage will make creators’ lives so much easier and we'll all make more money.

Hudson says that PledgeManager offers a lifeline for creators grappling with the intricacies of post-campaign pledge fulfillment by streamlining everything from collecting late pledges to managing shipping logistics. He points to the importance of PledgeManager now being seamlessly integrated into the Kickstarter workflow via consistent branded messaging, which creates a unified experience for backers. This issue arises when backers have to switch between Kickstarter, where they initially backed a project, and any other separate pledge management solution where their communication, information, and custom requests are handled.

Empowering success with dedicated support

With multiple SKUs and international shipping considerations in play, PledgeManager has become essential to Hudson’s operation to ensure accurate and cost-effective fulfillment. "Our customers want lots and lots of bells and whistles,” he states. “They want all the tchotchkes that you can come up with. If you don't offer tchotchkes, they actually think you're just being lazy."

Hudson adds that an important aspect of PledgeManager is its flexibility, and shares an example of how the PledgeManager team came to his assistance when he began using a new fulfillment company with a different system for handling information. "I was able to take it to PledgeManager, and they said, 'Cool, it's a little different than other fulfillment companies, but we can make an adjustment on the backend and pump out this report for you that matches what they need.”

Give your campaign more legs

Hudson specifically calls out a PledgeManager feature that has been invaluable to his bottom line—the ability for creators to offer “late pledges” to backers through a web store-like interface after their Kickstarter campaign has ended. He says that this feature simplifies the process for backers to manage add-ons, and that the best part is that it requires minimal effort on his part to set up. 

'I'm a small business owner,' Hudson says. 'I've got a million plates spinning. I don't need more things to do.'

The results of using PledgeManager have been extraordinary. "My last campaign actually made twice as much,” Hudson says. “With the cycle of marketing for a consumer, they jump in at a lot of different places on the funnel and it can be confusing for them. They wonder if they can still pledge even though the Kickstarter campaign is over.” 

Hudson's journey with Druid City Games is a testament to how using PledgeManager can transform a creator’s experience of running a Kickstarter campaign. His advice to fellow creators is to take advantage of any tools at your disposal to amplify the success of your projects. 

'And at the end of the day, PledgeManager allows you to grow your campaign, whatever your campaign is,' he says.

As a Kickstarter creator, you can benefit greatly from taking advantage of the PledgeManager partnership by extending the lifecycle of your campaign, keeping your backers engaged throughout the process, and increasing sales even after your Kickstarter campaign has ended.