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Josiah Lau
Growth Marketer at YNC Agency
Beer practitioner. Twitter ninja. Gamer. Bacon scholar. Internet enthusiast. Food junkie. Tv fan.
Highlights
What eComm brands need to consider before doing pre-order launches:
𝙏𝙞𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙡𝙖𝙪𝙣𝙘𝙝:
Not all products are suited to do pre-orders early on. Customers are more patient with long lead times for certain categories (e.g. electronics, furniture, micro-mobility).
I've also noticed founder-led brands usually have stronger social capital, so their customers are more willing to pre-order ahead to reserve their items even if it means waiting for months. (See POPFLEX, EM Cosmetics, and IPSY)
You might only want to open up pre-orders when your products are on their way to the warehouse (e.g. ETA 2 weeks), and not when they're still in production (e.g. ETA 6 weeks).
...Unless you sell made-to-order items, which you may have a different use-case for pre-orders (e.g. trying to sell as many as possible to reduce material costs).
𝙎𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙧 𝙘𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙧 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨:
It's more than just adding some text to your product description or changing your CTA button text from "Add to Cart" to "Pre-order Now".
You should make sure customers are aware it's a pre-order by displaying the info throughout their purchase journey, in their Order Confirmation emails, and in your store policies. Reassure them they have the right to cancel or refund under certain conditions.
𝙃𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙢𝙞𝙭𝙚𝙙 𝙘𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙨:
If a customer buys an in-stock and a pre-order item in the same order, you can now use Shopify's new Split Shipping in Checkout feature and let customers decide if they want to pay for shipping twice to get the in-stock item earlier. Or they might request you to hold their fulfilment until the pre-order item arrives at the warehouse to ship altogether.
𝙆𝙚𝙚𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙞𝙣𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙚𝙙:
Most customers simply want to know the latest shipment status and would be happy to wait a while longer if you're transparent with them.
Let them know the ETA on the product page is the most recent date which your manufacturer has given you, and that you'll email them updates regularly.
You could also include the shipment update in your marketing emails or post it on socials to net some additional sales as well.
What else would you consider when planning pre-orders for an upcoming product launch?
#Shopify #eCommerce #Preorders
Sharing a few learnings from working on Early Bird: Pre-orders & Restock this week:
💰 Had two brands enquire about using our partial deposit feature to avoid BNPL fees. First inquiry of its kind. I've always come from a "capture customers' commitment to buy now" angle but not saving on commission fees angle, so I thought it was interesting.
💧 Starting to see some inbound app installs trickle in. I haven't been on LinkedIn as much, and have been spending most of my time in communities instead answering questions around pre-orders and partial pay. Most of the inbound installs are SMBs, so I'd attribute the source to our community engagement.
💡 It's the activity I've spent the most time on since early June, but we've learnt SO much about our category (pre-orders/partial pay/back-in-stock). Now when we're talking to new & potential merchants, we act like a consultant, not just a tech provider. (Being a marketer also helps.)
🎥 Started onboarding our 1st content creator and affiliate. They say expect it to be "hit-and-miss"; where 20% of them would bring in results to cover the other 80%. This is true from my past experience (B2C), but this is the first time we're doing B2B. Still, it'd be worth building up our YouTube SEO.
✍🏻 Lots of top of funnel content out there - e.g. What are the best pre-order apps, Why do pre-orders, How we made $99999 with pre-orders etc. But there's little bottom of funnel content and I'm not sure why. Pre-order CX, shipping policies, partial pay regulations. Maybe because it's super boring to research and write about. This is great for us to take on though.
I had two super supportive friends who reminded me what I think is boring content could actually be interesting to others (tbh it's been a daily grind on repeat) - like how I do enjoy reading what others are working on.
That... felt good to hear. Or maybe it was reassurance?
Either way I need to get consistent at posting (again).
#Shopify #eCommerce #Startups
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