How to write a Kickstarter press release journalists open

Nobody is excited to announce anything.

That phrase, or something close to it, opens most of the press releases sent about Kickstarter campaigns, and it’s the reason so many of them go straight to the bin. It tells a journalist how the founder feels. It tells them nothing they could write about.

I’m an official Kickstarter Expert Partner, and press is the part of a launch founders most often outsource before they’ve tried it once themselves. It’s worth trying, because the version that works is short, and you can write it in an afternoon.

Why most Kickstarter press releases get deleted

A journalist opens your email with one question: is there a story here for my readers this week?

Your product is not automatically a story. “We made a nice thing and it’s on Kickstarter” is a thing that happens hundreds of times a week, and a writer who covers design or hardware sees a great many of them. What makes it a story is one of a small number of angles:

• The thing itself is genuinely new. Not better, not nicer. New in a way a reader hasn’t seen before.
• The problem is one their readers have complained about. You’re the fix for a known annoyance.
• You are the story. A background, a career change, a reason you of all people built this.
• The timing. Something in the news makes your product suddenly relevant.
• The category is having a moment, and you’re a good example to hang a piece on.

Pick one before you write a word. If you can’t find one, you don’t have a press problem, you have a positioning problem, and it will show up on your campaign page too. The same exercise makes the page itself easier to write.

Lead time beats everything

Send it weeks before you launch, not on the morning.

Online writers are usually working a few days out. A monthly magazine is working much further ahead than that, sometimes months. If your email lands on launch day, the earliest realistic coverage is well after your opening days, and the opening days are when a Kickstarter campaign’s fate is mostly decided. That’s the whole argument in what happens in the first 48 hours.

So the press email belongs in your pre-launch schedule, not your launch-day checklist. In a twelve week pre-launch I’d have the release written by about week six and going out from week eight.

Offering an embargo is standard and costs you nothing. You give a writer the full story now on the understanding they publish at your launch time. Some will take it, some will ignore it, none will be offended by the offer.

The 400-word structure

One screen. No attachments. Six parts.

1. The headline. What the product is and who it’s for, in plain words a stranger could repeat. Save the cleverness for your campaign page.

2. The first paragraph. The whole story compressed: what it is, what it does, what it costs, when it launches, where. If a journalist read only this and nothing else, they should have enough to write a short item.

3. The why now. Two or three sentences on the angle you picked above. This is the paragraph most releases skip, and it’s the one doing the persuading.

4. One quote, from you. Not “we are thrilled”. Say something a person would actually say out loud about why the thing exists. One quote is plenty. Two is a press release written by a committee.

5. The facts block. Price, launch date, funding goal, shipping estimate, where it ships to. Bullet points, no prose. You are saving the writer a research job, and a saved job is a favour they remember.

6. The links. Campaign URL, press kit folder, your contact details with a real name and a phone number.

Then stop. Nobody has ever complained that a press release was too short.

Want a second pair of eyes on yours before it goes out? A £60 strategy call is an hour on your actual campaign, and you leave with the three things to change.

The subject line does most of the work

Everything above only matters if the email gets opened, and the subject line is the entire opening decision.

Describe the product and the news, flatly. “Refillable deodorant launching on Kickstarter, 14 October” is a dull subject line that tells a writer exactly whether it’s for them. “You won’t believe what we’ve been building” tells them nothing and reads like marketing, which it is.

Put the release in the body of the email. Not as a PDF, not as a Word document. A writer skimming on a phone will not open an attachment from a stranger, and some newsroom filters strip them anyway.

Your press kit: link it, don’t attach it

Put everything in one folder that opens without a login, and link it:

• Product shots, high resolution, on a plain background and in use
• Your logo
• A founder headshot and a short bio
• The campaign video, as a file or a link
• A plain text fact sheet repeating the price, date, goal and shipping

Images are the most common reason a piece doesn’t run. A writer who wants to cover you but has nothing usable to put at the top of the article will quietly move on. If you’re commissioning photography for the campaign anyway, and you should be, ask for a press set at the same time. Good stills also make a better hero image.

Finding the right names

A release sent to a general inbox is a release sent nowhere. You want individual writers, by name, who have covered something like your product in the last year or so.

Find them by reading. Search the publication for your category, see who wrote those pieces, and look for a contact address on their profile or their social accounts. It’s slow, and it’s the part that actually works.

Fifteen well chosen names beat a purchased list of a thousand. Personalise the first line of each email with the specific piece of theirs you read and why your product fits the same beat. That one sentence is the difference between a pitch and a mailshot.

The same patient approach works for getting YouTubers to review your product, and the two lists often overlap.

Follow up once

One follow-up, about a week later, three lines long. Reply in the same thread so the original is underneath.

Then stop. A journalist who didn’t reply twice is not going to reply on the third email, and you have a campaign to run.

Anyone who does cover you goes on a short list, because they’re your first call for campaign two. Press relationships compound in the same way backer trust does.

Where founders get this wrong

• Sending on launch day. By far the most common, and the least fixable after the fact.
• Leading with the technology. Readers care what it does for them, not how it works inside.
• No price and no date. Two of the first things a writer needs, missing surprisingly often.
• Attachments. A 12MB PDF is a deleted email.
• Treating press as the plan. Coverage is a bonus on top of an audience you built yourself. If you have no list, press won’t rescue you, and launching with no audience is its own problem to solve first.

Key takeaways

• Pick your angle before you write. No angle means no story.
• Send weeks before launch, not on launch day. Offer an embargo.
• Around 400 words, in the email body, never as an attachment.
• Price, date, goal and shipping in a facts block, so the writer doesn’t have to dig.
• Link a press kit with usable high resolution images, or the piece won’t run.
• Fifteen named writers, personally emailed, beat a bought list. Follow up once.

Want a hand with yours?

Press is one of the last jobs in a pre-launch, and it only pays off if the campaign underneath it is ready. If you want someone to look at yours before you start emailing journalists, book a £60 strategy call. An hour, on Zoom, on your actual campaign.

If you’d like help from pre-launch through to fulfilment, the bigger options are on the home page.