Designing Your Ecommerce Pre-Order Campaign: A Worksheet

Looking to launch a pre-order campaign to generate buzz? The concept of pre-ordering has been around for ages, but with the rise of ecommerce and online shopping, the process is now more accessible than ever. In fact, if you’ve ever backed a project on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, consider yourself a pre-order-er.

Pre-order campaigns are a super effective way to attract customers and encourage them to put down their hard-earned cash before an item is produced and ready for purchase. It’s perfect for capturing sales for a temporarily out-of-stock item. It’s also a great tactic if you’re trying to gauge shoppers’ interest in a new product line.

Pre-ordering can sound simple — just sell as usual, but replace the “buy now” button with a “pre-order” button, right? Nope. With shoppers expecting their orders to arrive on their doorsteps within two days or be available for curbside pickup within two hours, asking for payment upfront with no guaranteed delivery date can be a hard ask. That’s why pre-order campaigns require a ton of work involving getting shoppers to trust that you’ll be able to fulfill their orders in a reasonable amount of time. Then comes the next challenge: keeping them interested and excited about what’s to come. 

It’s clear there are many upsides of a pre-order campaign, as long as it’s well-designed, optimized, and considers customer needs — the last thing you want is to provide too few updates to shoppers, causing them to feel frustrated, or worse, have to convey delay after delay thanks to manufacturing hiccups. 

In any event, you’ve come to the right place: This handy worksheet will guide you through every step of designing a pre-order campaign. But first, don’t forget to check out this post on everything you need to know about pre-order strategies, from setting goals to planning your strategy.

You’re all set! Now it’s time to turn your focus to promoting your pre-order products and communicating with customers — add the AdRoll app to your Shopify store to get started in minutes. Not on Shopify? Check out the other ecommerce platforms we support here.

Last updated on February 10th, 2022.