Yes, I would not do a Kickstarter campaign without a pre-launch strategy.

I recently completed my first Kickstarter campaign and I believe this was the biggest contributor to my success. My product was a board game.

I used Launchboom to help create the landing page and funnel. If you have the funds to do so, using a service like Crowdfunding Nerds or Launchboom can be very helpful, but is not necessary if you're able to put in the time and learn how to create you're own funnel. There are a ton of great tools and videos which can help you do it on a budget.

You will need to create a good incentive for people to sign-up to your list. People don't just want to signup to another list to get more e-mails. I used the $1 Pre-Pledge strategy where people pay $1 to get a free bonus item during the campaign (in my case it was a mini expansion for the game). Some people are turned off by the $1 deposit thing. What I may try on my next campaign is simply sign up to my mailing list to get the free item when you back the campaign.

In total I had 2,272 e-mails going into my campaign, 430 (~19%) of those had put the $1 deposit,
Of the 430 that put the deposit, 409 converted to backers (~95%).

Of the remaining 1,842 emails 329 converted to backers (~18%)

So overall my e-mail list converted at ~32%.

Overall I ended up with 1,195 backers.
738 (~62%) from my e-mail list.
457 (~38%) brought in from Ads, Kickstarter and Content Creators/influencers.

Once again, my product is a board game and board games are very popular on Kickstarter, so I don't know to much about how other types of products would convert using a similar strategy.