With $102 average pledge per backer, FATMAGIC’s Kickstarter rewards deserve a closer look!

Kickstarter Rewards Analysis

Let’s really dig in and visualize exactly how these guys achieved such a high average pledge per backer. For starters, they hit 4 of the 5 Kickstarter Rewards No Band Should Launch Without.

The Big 5 Breakdown

1. $10 Digital Download (29 backers – $290)
2. $25 Physical CD + Download (24 backers – $600)
3. $55 Shirt + CD + Download (8 backers – $440)
4. $100 Album Credits + Shirt + CD + Download (9 backers – $900)
5. House Concert – This is the only one they left out but then again, they are an electronic dance band.

The total raised just from the big 4 is $2230. If they had been able to execute the house concert reward, they may have raised half of their goal just with the big 5.

So where did the remaining $8270 come from?

Rewards Over $100 (that received pledges)

• $120 – Pair of tickets to the CD Release Show (5 backers – $600)
• $180 – Tickets for any/all of the CD Release Shows (2 backers – $360)
• $200 – FATMAGIC MASK (2 backers – $400)
• $500 – FATMAGIC makes you dinner (4 backers – $2000)

The total from these four rewards is $3360. Where’s the remaining $4500+?

Typically when there’s a large amount in unaccounted for pledges, I get suspicious of a band or musician pledging to their own project in order to hit their goal.

Luckily, our friends over at (now defunct) CanHeKick.it provide us with amazing analytics which is great for sniffing out fowl play. After looking at the graph I’m pleased to say that FATMAGIC didn’t have any suspicious pledges.

It’s pretty clear that they have generous fans who overpledged at an average of $43 per backer. Wow, that’s just great. This is the true mark of having a strong personal connection with your fans!

The Takeaway

When analyzed this way, we can visualize how important rewards over $100 are.  If FATMAGIC was able to do a house concert, they would probably get two thirds of their pledges from rewards priced over $100.

This is quite telling as it shows very clearly where your brainpower needs to be spent when designing your rewards!

P.S. There’s a lot of math in this post. Let me know in the comments if I missed anything big. I realize I didn’t count the 3 $35 pledges or the 4 $3 pledges as they didn’t fall into the two categories I was analyzing.  Other than that, did you see any other big takeaways from this reward analysis?

BONUS: Our Interview with FATMAGIC

Levi – I love your rewards, if you had them to do over, what would you change and why? (margin, ease of fulfilling, what was’t popular that you thought would be etc)

FM – Our most popular rewards were either a digital download of our album or a physical copy of the album. During our campaign we reduced the price for our bigger rewards.

We were surprised that the “Dinner with the Austrians”-reward (basically a dinner with Max and Radina where we cook Austrian food) was so popular.

We were also surprised that the “FATMAGIC Mask”-reward (this is the mask that Max is wearing all the time and has been with the band since our beginning, plus our promo package) was less popular than we thought it would be. The mask is a signature of our band and every time we play live people want to put it on.

Levi – How many people are on your mailing list and how did you use it for your Kickstarter project?

FM –We have about 3000 people on our mailing list and around 4500 fans on Facebook but I think we got most of our backers from personal messages.

We reached out to a lot of people and since our campaing was running right during the Christmas season (we finished on Dec. 25th) we knew that people would have a lot of things on their mind so we needed to remind them of the campaing we were running.

A lot of our friends reached out to their friends and networkds which also helped us a lot and even though not everyone became a backer, we still feel that our fanbase grew just by everybody spreading the word and when you’re about to release a new record that’s exactly what you need.

Levi – What’s your plan for fulfilling your rewards? Is it overwhelming or do you have it under control?

FM –Once we have the album in our hands we will start fulfilling our rewards. Since half of our backers are in Europe and half of them are in the USA, we will split the fulfillment. Our team in Austria is helping us with sending out all the rewards in Europe and Max and I will take care of the rewards in the USA so from our current point everything should be under control but we’ll tell you more about that in March 2013 when we start fulfilling the rewards!