February 18, 2025
Setting up a Coming Soon pre-order campaign is more than just adding a form to capture email sign-ups and changing your "Add to Cart" button text to "Pre-order".
In this first part of our two-part series, we'll cover everything you need to consider and plan before launching your Coming Soon pre-order campaign - whether you have a Shopify store or not.
Then in part 2 we'll walk through how to set one up on Shopify without an app, and how an app like ours (Early Bird) can take it to the next level when you're ready.
You can watch our video version of this article, if you prefer:
First, it's important to decide what type of pre-order campaign suits your business best. Generally, there are three types of pre-orders:
Once you've decided that a Coming Soon campaign is what you need and you've chosen your platform (whether it be Shopify, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or maybe even WooCommerce), the next step is to decide when to start capturing pre-orders.
Here are the top 3 approaches we've helped different Shopify merchants implement:
This lets you increase your MOQ (minimum order quantity), which can lower your cost per unit and raw material costs
Besides gauging initial demand, this approach allows you to pack orders as stock arrives and avoid double handling - instead of shelving products only to take them off a few days later to ship.
This is the most common but riskiest method for a new brand, since you won't know the exact demand. If sales are lower than expected, you might end up sitting on dead stock or experience a much longer cash conversion cycle (i.e., the time it takes to turn your inventory into cash).
Whichever method you choose, pre-orders will help you secure cash flow earlier, so you can reinvest in areas like marketing and product photography sooner.
You need to look at your lead time - the total production and shipping time. You need to communicate this clearly to customers.
If you're not an established brand with high product demand, it's usually safer to avoid taking pre-order payments too early. Shipping delays are almost inevitable; it's a matter of when, not if.
And if customers wait too long, they may complain - or worse, cancel their orders.
That's why the third pre-order method (waiting until stock has almost arrived) is the most common. But it's a mix of:
A very underrated tactic is turning that waiting time into a marketing opportunity.
Instead of seeing long wait times for pre-orders or sold-out products as a challenge, turn them into a storytelling opportunity. Explain how you thoughtfully design your products, how they go through a very strict QA process, document the journey of your product from production to arrival, and use that content in your marketing.
Sharing a few screenshots of some founder-led brands that take this approach:
Here's a high-level example timeline:
You can, however, start capturing waitlist sign-ups at any time before then. When to start depends on how much time and effort you can invest in building hype so you don't miss your customers' buying window.
Because your customers are either ready to buy now, or they're not. If you miss that window and haven't captured either a commitment to buy or at least an expression of interest, they're much less likely to convert later.
By the time you're ready to launch, they may have already spent their money elsewhere with a competitor.
Depending on what you're launching and who you're selling to, your customers will have different shipping expectations and purchasing behaviors.
For example:
Because of these differences, you need to think about your pre-order offer and how it affects your profitability and cash flow.
(Quick ELI5: Profitability = What's left after all expenses; Cash flow = Available money to pay bills)
Most brands default to offering a monetary discount ($ or % off), but this can hurt your brand long-term. It cheapens your brand and your efforts. You're signalling to customers that even you don't think your product is worth the full price.
Instead, try to find out what your customers would also perceive as value:
Or at least, pair your monetary discounts with conditional incentives, where customers need to meet certain purchase conditions before they receive a reward. Examples:
If your product has strong demand, you might not need any discounts at all. Some of our merchants have successfully taken $0 deposit pre-orders, as reservations, simply letting customers reserve an upcoming product. No discounts required.
And that's because they have a product with strong demand, and a loyal customer base who appreciates the quality and customer service.
So my recommendation to you is: start learning about consumer behaviour - it's one of the most valuable things you can learn to grow your business!
Sharing a few screenshots of some book recommendations:
This is one of the biggest reasons brands hesitate to run pre-orders - despite not wanting to lose sales to competitors.
You need to ensure your customers know they've placed a pre-order, that they are reminded afterwards, and they are kept informed throughout the process.
You'd be surprised how being transparent can help you avoid a lot of customer complaints and order cancellations. Usually, it's not that customers aren't willing to wait, but it's because they skipped reading the product description, didn't realize it's a pre-order, or they know it's a pre-order but have no idea what's going on because you haven't given them a proper explanation.
Take a look across your entire customer purchase journey and see where it makes sense for you to display or mention the pre-order info so you can avoid complaints.
Here are a few other basic things you can do as a start:
We have a step-by-step guide on how to edit the text in our Help Center.
When you run pre-orders, your messaging is more important than you might think. Clarity is everything.
Instead of saying: "Pre-orders will ship in August," you can say: "Ships between Aug 15th - 25th. If anything changes, we'll update you by email!"
This sets clear expectations and gives customers reassurance.
Another example - instead of saying: "Pre-order deposit required," you can say: "Pay a 10% deposit to reserve your product today."
This makes it clear what the customer is paying for today and adds perceived value - giving them a reason to take action.
If you're using an app like Early Bird to capture $0 deposits - instead of saying: "Reserve with a $0 deposit," you can say: "Reserve today, pay nothing until we ship."
The language you use can make a big difference in how the offer is perceived, how your customer feels about their pre-order experience, which affects how many pre-orders you'll get.
Check out these articles:
The pre-order regulations and customer rights used to be mostly the same between US, EU, and AU. The key differences were mostly around the Return Policies and what's required for Customer Communication.
With the introduction of GPSR in Europe, selling there has become more complicated and costly. It's a complex issue, but to sum it up briefly: you now need to obtain documentation from your manufacturer showing proof of product safety standards.
You also must have a direct contact method for European customers, meaning an authorized representative located in the EU who is responsible for answering product safety-related questions.
If you're primarily selling in the US and AU, check out our article for a basic pre-order policy template: Your Shopify Pre-order Policy Templates for US, EU, and AU Markets.
This is something you need to plan ahead for and make sure your store is set up to handle it properly.
For example, what happens if a customer buys both an in-stock item and a pre-order item in the same transaction?
This is called a Mixed Cart.
You basically have two options:
By default, as the merchant, you'll have to pay for shipping twice, which eats into your profit margins.
There are two ways to handle this:
Whether you can enable this feature depends on how your store is set up. I've made an in-depth video on this before and have a few articles on the topic. If you're interested, you can find that video on my channel and those articles in our help center:
Another aspect to think about is how you'll distinguish pre-orders from orders that are ready to dispatch.
If you're just starting out and you're not expecting an overwhelming amount of pre-orders for your first "Coming Soon" campaign, you can manually tag each pre-order order as they come in. You can also add order notes if needed.
To make this easier to track, create a saved filter in your Shopify orders admin so you can quickly view all orders with the pre-order tag:
Before you run a Coming Soon campaign, you need to be aware of Shopify's pre-order requirements and limitations. There's actually a whole lot of them that I can't fit into this article, but the three most important ones you should know are:
Highly recommend you read Shopify's official FAQ on this so you don't get any surprises after you've launched your Coming Soon campaign.
Distribution is what makes or breaks your pre-orders. You need to get in front of your potential customers in the right place, with the right product, at the right price, with the right promotion. Marketers reading this will recognize these as the 4Ps.
You can have the most visually stunning pre-order product page, a professional photoshoot, and great apps that all work well together to support your workflow. But without traffic, no one will know about your pre-order campaign. No one even knows you exist.
Here are some recommended readings for anyone working for a brand or building your own:
Once you've understood the importance of distribution, you should think about the type of Coming Soon pre-order campaign you're running:
Earlier in this article, I briefly touched on conditional incentives for your discounts. You can have a think about time-sensitive discounts as well. Think about what adds perceived value or a sense of urgency to drive more pre-orders and build hype.
We've helped hundreds of Shopify merchants run their pre-orders (690 at the time of writing this), and I've spent nearly a year deep diving into understanding what's required to run a successful pre-order campaign.
Yes, this was a long article (you're probably just as exhausted as I am by now), but you're laying the foundations, sharpening the axe before you chop the tree, so that when you actually set up your campaign, it will be smooth and efficient!
In my next article (Part 2), let's walk through the actual setup of a Coming Soon pre-order campaign on Shopify - both with and without an app.
If you have any questions about managing Coming Soon pre-order campaigns for your Shopify store, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or email us at support@shopside.com.au to see how we can help!
