A Campaign Once Magic

Marketing Lessons from a Collaborative Campaign

Apr 15, 2025

The campaign for A Land Once Magic has come to an end, funding over 300% and reaching a grand total of $19,272. There is a lot about this campaign that was deeply meaningful to me as a creative—getting to help a beloved designer bring his game to print, collaborating with a friend, and leveling up moreblueberries as a publishing company. I love talking about my feelings, but the numbers behind this campaign have some lessons I feel it important to share.

Reading the Data

Let’s first take a look at the full breakdown.

We can then break these down into 3 categories, each with some key lessons from each.

Platform-based - driven by BackerKit platform tools including organic traffic and email campaigns

Organic - driven by our marketing efforts outside of BackerKit

Unclear - unable to identify a clear referrer, (meaning the tracked referrer was simply “www.backerkit.com” which seems to be the catch all for untracked pledges)

1 - Platform

Platform Matters?

I think platform choice is a difficult question for lots of folks when they set out to crowdfund a game. While I cannot say that BackerKit is the “best” option (nor do I think there is such a thing), these last two campaigns have shown me that there are many powerful tools at your disposal when you work with them.

Use EVERYTHING

Our pledges from BackerKit accounted for 47.5% of money raised. That seems like a lot to come from one thing but within that 47.5% are 28 individual referral codes from across BackerKit’s various tools for reaching supporters. The lesson is to make use of every little thing your platform of choice offers you. Send the email campaigns, write updates, participate in events like Pocketopia. Familiarize yourself with what the platform has to offer and take full advantage of it.

2 - Organic

Combined Audiences

One of the biggest learnings from this project is the power of combining audiences in a collaborative project. Within what I am calling “organic” referrers are two segments that highlight mine and Viditya’s key (and more importantly, different) competencies in building an audience. Itch.io led to 6.4% of our funding, coming entirely from an audience of people that have fallen in love with Viditya’s games over the years he has been doing digital-only releases. 5.1% came from media, a world that I am steeped in through my work with Many Sided Media and the connections I have made across shows, newsletters, and press.

Bluesky

I began publishing games at the beginning of the end of Twitter. Many designers and publishers who I learned from have talked about the era where Twitter was a significant source of traffic to a campaign. In my first couple of campaigns, this path to pledges had largely died. Cut to A Land Once Magic and Bluesky was our second largest single referrer at 92 pledges and 13% of our overall funding. This lesson is simple: post on Bluesky.

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3 - Unclear

It might seem odd to pull a lesson from the uncategorizable category, but at 17% and over $3000, it’s worth taking a look.

1000 Little Things

There’s an adage in marketing that people need to see a message 7 times before they act on it. The “Unclear” category to me is the “I saw 7 of the various things you did in the other two categories and then went to backerkit myself and backed.” Every little thing matters.

You’ll Never 100% Know

Related to the above, you will never be 100% sure what worked. You can pull lessons and valuable insights from the data, but sometimes there is an intangible combination of things that just meant your campaign took off. Experiment, do the fun idea that feels like a waste of time, and remember to have fun with what can be a very un-fun element of making games.

Putting it All Together

Be Everywhere

After witnessing the launch of Triangle Agency’s campaign a few years ago, I have held firm to a belief about successful crowdfunding: One of the keys to success is capturing that feeling of “being everywhere”—being the thing everyone is talking about, the game everyone wants to play, and the hot topic everyone is posting about on launch day.

Don’t Go It Alone

All of the above is a whole lot easier when you’re making something with a friend. Find someone whose work you love, who is good at things you are not, and who is a sicko in all the same ways you are and make something beautiful.

Good luck!

Elliot

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