Picking The Perfect Launch Date And Time

19-Picking-The-Perfect-Launch-Date-And-Time-64K-Final
Fri, 8/7 10:37AM • 17:33
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
launch, campaign, emails, project, backers, crowdfunding, people, talk, ready, checking, day, holidays, funding, picking, launch date, indiegogo, holiday season, market, crowdfunding campaigns, coming

This is the crush crowdfunding podcast, the number one place for people who want to launch on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. My name is Nalin and I invite you to join me for tips, hacks and insights to get you launched and fully funded.

Hey, everyone! Welcome to another episode of The Crush Crowdfunding podcast. Today I wanted to talk to you about something very important. It’s about picking your launch date.

The other day I was reading a book called ‘When.’ I'm not sure what the subtitle of the book is but it's about the importance of time and timing. Specifically, it was about how to pick what time you should do different things in your life and how to structure your life according to the 24 hour clock. Everybody has 24 hours but the effectiveness and efficiency that we, as humans, perform is really different from one person to another.

Something in particular that I learned from this book is that I'm actually kind of a morning person. I wake up every single day at about 6:45am to walk my dog around the neighborhood. I use this time to just walk around and breathe in the fresh air and think about what I will be doing the rest of the day. After I get back from the walk I am rejuvenated and ready for the day because I have all my goals, gratitudes, and to-do lists ready in my head. By the time I’m done with that it’s anywhere from 7:00 a.m. or 7:45 a.m. and I set off to do what I do best during the morning which is - writing!
I love writing and reading so the morning times are usually spent writing either these blog posts, different content pieces, new plans/ideas for different projects, courses, content, and resources, or just anything that comes to mind on my walk. It could be about anything that I saw in my dreams or topics from things that I talked about with you all that could help you with your crowdfunding launch.

So, what does this book have to do with your crowdfunding launch and picking your launch date? Let's talk about that a little bit more. Let’s talk about picking your launch date. I think that there are four things that you have to keep in mind to really determine how to get people to your campaign and when to get people to your campaign.
Determine What Days People Are Checking Their Email
The first thing that I think is really important is to determine what days people are actually checking their emails. If you're planning to launch on a Friday, unfortunately, that is the day people check out of their work. They check out of what they have to do and their responsibilities. They are well on their way into their weekend mindset of hanging out with friends, being with family, or working on their hobbies.

So, when you launch a campaign, you're looking for people to click on your email. We have talked about that in previous podcasts, on the blog and kind of everywhere else. The big thing for launch day is to not forget to get your fans, your audience, people who have expressed interest in your project to go to your Kickstarter campaign page on that launch day. When you launch a campaign you're looking for people to click on that email you send. It really is the biggest driver of day-one success and the culmination of your pre-launch efforts. Through your email your subscribers will see that you've launched and then click to your campaign to support you. It's so important to have that landing page and that email marketing set up way beforehand during the pre launch phase. However, that's another topic for a different day.

When we're talking about a launch date you really need to check what days people are checking emails via data from the internet. The best way to do this, honestly, is through rounds and rounds of testing with different projects and different categories.

Tuesdays are days with very high email open rates. Why? Well, the internet, experts, and people who track email marketing statistics think that it is because on Mondays people are just coming back to work and getting back into doing their daily routine. They're clearing out their inbox and checking all the work things first. That slows down on Tuesday. However, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday people start checking out pretty quickly from work and so their email inbox doesn't get as much attention as it should. Therefore, Tuesdays are kind of your prime days.

Not only that, but you also get the rest of the week to market your campaign, too. That’s the first thing you really need to keep in mind when you're picking your launch date - What days are people checking emails?

So, when you're picking your launch date - pick a Tuesday!
Know What Time People Are Checking Emails
The number two thing that you have to keep in mind when picking your launch date is - what time are people checking emails? As I mentioned earlier when I was talking about the book (‘When’) and about when people do things and how it dictates their day for how they arrange their days. I'd also recommend launching projects bright and early in the morning. Maybe around 6 a.m. Pacific time and 9 a.m. Eastern time.

Why? Firstly, we're talking about U.S. time zones because, at the end of the day, crowdfunding on Kickstarter and Indiegogo still has the U.S. market as the largest backing market for crowdfunding campaigns. The vast majority of backers live in the United States. So, working with the U.S. time zones will be helpful for your project. That’s true unless you have a really large local following or really large local push for your particular campaign and you don't do any marketing outside of your own local market. That's a caveat. But, for the majority of campaigns it's best bright and early in the morning. 6 a.m. Pacific time and 9 a.m. Eastern time.

Why do we think this is the case? As we talked about earlier, email lead generation is huge for day-one success. By launching early, you're sending emails to inboxes right when people are checking it. It also gives you the opportunity to email these people throughout the day as day-one unfolds.

Make sure that you have multiple emails planned for that first day because people check their emails at different times. If you start sending out emails bright and early you have 12 to 24 hours to continue sending out emails to celebrate your wins. Catching people at different times of the day can draw their attention to your campaign and to your project page better. Also, by launching really early in the day, you'll be launching early enough for the project to be live for most of the day while people are actually awake.
Know The Upcoming Holidays
The third thing that I want to talk about when picking your launch date is - are there holidays or events coming up? There's a lot of people who have different ideas about launching during Christmas or Black Friday or big holidays in the U.S. Personally, during holidays I think that people are off doing their own thing with friends and family so they're typically away from their computers.

Imagine Christmas. Christmas in the US, specifically. People who celebrate are off doing their own thing with their families rather than checking in on Kickstarter campaigns. They're with their extended family trying to wrap their presents and get things ready for the kids before they wake up on Christmas morning. They're just busy. They're busy getting together with people that they haven't seen in weeks, months, maybe even years. That being said, when it comes to holidays, I really think that you should avoid launching.

According to the data from Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and past years projects that have launched on crowdfunding, it seems that during the holiday season and the end of the year, the amount of backing/funding on Kickstarter and Indiegogo does take a dip. If you're thinking about launching during that time, I would recommend either launching before the holiday season or launching after that holiday season. Moreover, if you're launching and trying to get to the completion of your campaign so that you can actually ship during Christmas - definitely do not do that.

A lot of first-time creators make the mistake of trying to get their campaign out for Christmas. They market things like “Christmas delivery” or “get it by Christmas” or “get it for the holidays.” No, guys! Please, please, please don't do that! Especially as a first time creator! There's a lot of logistics that you have to really know when you're shipping out during the holiday season. There's a lot of things that get lost during the holiday season. There's a lot of packages that go out around the world. There's a lot of packages that go everywhere and the chances of your project not being able to deliver is very high.

What that means for the future for the company, brand, project is that people will not trust you. People won't trust the brand. They won’t trust the company. So you want to set yourself up for success and to do that it's best to not launch around the holiday season.
Are You REALLY Ready To Launch?!
Okay, so the last thing I want to talk about when it comes to picking your launch day is kind of the most important. An important thing to keep in mind is - are you ready to launch? This one might seem like a cop out but really - are you ready to launch? This one's a giant when you think about it. You should have really gone through months of preparation to put a plan in place.

For example, does your audience know you'll be launching on a certain date at a certain time? If not, it's time to tell them and hype them up to the launch. Do you have people ready to back you on the first day? Do you have people who are knocking at your door or sending you emails and messages saying- “I'm ready to back. When is it?” Do you have enough of those people that you will meet at least 30% of your funding goal within 24 hours? Do you have people ready to write about you? When you do launch - more people writing about you means more eyes on the page and more potential for people to convert into backers and into funding. Do you have methods to get the word out to people? Do you have promotional projects and promotional campaigns ready for the duration of the campaign?

Again, the more people who see your page, the more opportunity you have to convert them to backers. Do you have a means to encourage people to share? Do you have all of this ready at the beginning? A lot of the time people come to Kickstarter and Indiegogo and think, “Okay, if I just press the “Launch” button, things will just happen. People will just come to my page. They'll just come to my campaign. I have a great idea and if I just put it up on this platform things will happen.” However, that's kind of the fallacy here with crowdfunding. You see a lot of crowdfunding campaigns succeed and do really well, but the key part of this is that they do really well because they planned for months, some of them even years. Before you actually pick your launch date and press that “Launch” button, make sure to answer that question - are you ready to launch? You need to have people literally asking how they're going to give you money, asking where they can back you, asking when they can go and back you for your campaign. This is so that you will be set on the first day of your launch.

To recap, there are four different things that you should take into consideration when picking your launch date. One, what days are people checking email? The answer to that is Tuesdays. Tuesdays are your go-to days for launches in every category, niche, and type of product. You should definitely be marking down a Tuesday for your launch. Two, what time are people checking emails? When we think about the market, population, and the majority of where crowdfunders are it's the U.S. The earlier the better. With this tactic you are able to hit new cycles, and repeatedly email people throughout the day. So, early from 6 a.m. Pacific to 9 a.m. Eastern. Three, are there holidays or events coming up? Again, don't launch when it comes to the holiday season. Don't launch when you know there's a big holiday going on wherever you are or wherever your main demographic and market is. No one is going to be focused on your project or your launch. They're going to be focused on whatever it is that they're family, friends, and acquaintances are doing at the time for that particular holiday or that particular event. Four, are you ready to launch? This one is the biggest, biggest, biggest one and a lot of people forget to make sure they're ready before they do launch. So, are you ready to launch? Are people literally messaging you and asking where they can pay? Are people writing on your Facebook wall and saying- “Hey, I really want to get this project. How and when and where can I support it?” Are your friends, family, and acquaintances ready to back you right when you launch on your first day?

These four questions are really important when it comes to picking your launch date to getting yourself started off on a really strong foot. Day one is so important for your campaign and for the duration of your campaign that you really don't want to mess that first day up. You can look at different charts for crowdfunding campaign successes. For example, you can look at Biggercake.com or Kicktraq.com to see the trajectory of a successful campaign. What usually happens is that the first few days you see a spike in backers and funding. Then, the next few days, in the middle of the campaign, the number of backers and amount of funding goes down into a trough. I call this the “valley of death.” Then, towards the end of the campaign, you see a big spike again with more backers and more funding coming in.

This happens because campaigns that are successful are able to gather a crowd and rally them for that first day, day-one, launch. They're able to activate all these tactics like sending multiple emails throughout the day and catching people when they're actually opening their emails. All these different forums for launching a project on Kickstarter or Indiegogo is what helps you propel that first day. It helps propel your project on the first day to a really high funding goal, funding amount, and also backer count.

So the time and date in which you launch is really important because you have all these factors coming into play together so that you will be able to best channel people to your campaign for that big launch day to get the high backer count and high funding amounts. This way you're able to really activate the Indiegogo and Kickstarter algorithm so that you can have a really smooth start to your launch and your projects for the rest of the campaign.

Thank you for being with me here today. If you need a crowdfunding expert, feel free to get in touch. You can get started by heading to crushcrowdfunding.com. Lastly, I would be really grateful if you could leave a review for the podcast because it will help others who want to learn about crowdfunding more easily find out about the podcast. Thank you so much for being here with me, and for subscribing to the podcast and continuing to listen and be here with me to go on this journey to crowdfund your product and your idea.

I will see you guys in the next session.

Thanks for listening to the crush crowdfunding podcast at crushcrowdfunding.com. Tune in at the same time next week for more ways to crush your launch