How a Flash Sale or Strategic Product Drop Can Help You Increase Engagement & Boost Sales
Updated: May 2021
Something I love about eCommerce is that it’s been such a disrupter to the traditional shopping seasons and really given merchants the ability to set their own rules - smaller shops especially! Merchants are shaking things up and spreading promotions throughout the year instead of focusing on just a few traditional sales seasons. This trend signifies that we’re really moving into a different era of eCommerce where there will be less reliance on things like holiday sales to create buzz and profits. There are so many popular brands that have already shown that things like flash sales or strategic product drops can be super successful any time of year. In this post, learn all about using product scarcity as a marketing method, all product drop strategy and why it works, and how to plan and promote a successful drop or flash sale.
The Psychology Behind Product Scarcity
When Skims sells out an entire new product drop in minutes, it doesn’t surprise my inner economist one bit. After all, we all know that low supply + high demand = major sales. And this isn’t a phenomenon that’s only cropped up as of late, as any of us who have parents who waited in long lines to score a Cabbage Patch Kid back in the day can attest to. The difference is that contemporary drop culture is less a result of true scarcity and more intentional, highly marketed, and hyped. This is a strategic scarcity that uses things like online flash sales or planned product drops to give shoppers that feeling of scoring a product with limited availability - no camping outside a big box store required. Turns out FOMO is a great marketing tactic!
Benefits to a Product Drop Strategy
Control your own timeline and message- planning a product drop with some strategic scarcity puts you in the driver’s seat. You don’t have to wait for traditional “sales holidays” like Black Friday (or Memorial Day weekend, or Back to School season, or whatever it is). The pressure to develop a sales strategy around arbitrary dates just because you feel like you have to is gone. This works on a couple of fronts. First, those dates just may not be ideal for your business - maybe you don’t have inventory ready or your production schedule requires something different. Second, having a sale on a traditional sales holiday just may not align well with your brand or messaging. So if you’d rather spend a popular holiday weekend holed up at an Airbnb having fun with your friends and family - you do it! You can have a sale whenever you want to!
Enjoy reduced competition - Trying to stand out during traditional or holiday selling windows can be tough for even the biggest of brands. If you’re a small to medium business, it’s a billion times harder to get noticed when everyone around you is also busy vying for attention. Planning a strategic product drop or flash sale can allow you to plan it so that you can be the #1 story.
Worry less about delays - If you’ve experienced longer lead times from suppliers or shipping delays that leave you with little inventory to sell anyways, transform “supply chain issues” into “marketing opportunities” and just make this part of the hype. Not only does this approach allow you to worry less, but it can also save you big bucks if you would have otherwise paid to expedite production or shipping. That’s taking lemons and making lemonade, friends. 🍋🍸
Boost social media engagement - As I said above, FOMO is a great motivator and there’s nothing better than getting people who love your brand to talk online with fellow fans about what's coming next. Word of warning: the one thing you don’t want to do is make people feel like you’re taking advantage of their excitement. So make sure that you’re doing everything you can to be transparent in your communications and that you’re offering the same value and experience regardless of the hype.
Ideas, Strategies & Tips for a Successful Product Drop or Flash Sale
After all of the benefits above, a product drop or flash sale may seem like the easy road to fast profits but a successful drop takes lots of preparation and work behind the scenes. Here are some tips!
Make sure you’re ready to ship.
After placing an online order, 66% of consumers expect things to arrive within 1-3 days and more than half are expecting overnight shipping. Blame Amazon for setting these high expectations if you want but the fact is that what happens after the sale is arguably more important than anything so make sure your shipping strategy is on point. For more on how to set up a profitable shipping strategy on Squarespace check out this post.
Plan out your social media & email marketing well in advance.
This includes mapping out all of your posts, emails, PR activities, and other content with your planned sale or drop in mind. Once things get going, the flurry of orders and customer service inquiries is going to keep you busy enough; you don’t want to be worrying about whether or not you posted an Instagram story that day on top of it all. My favorite tools for social media are Canva (for graphics) and Planoly (for planning and posting).
Train & prepare your customer service team.
Since product drops are engineered to sell out, you have to plan for what happens if some of your fans feel like they missed their moment. You can mitigate feelings of disappointment by being super clear and upfront well in advance that inventory is limited. This not only creates a sense of urgency that can motivate people to buy, but it also lets people know in advance that there’s a chance they won’t score.
You’re also bound to get more inquiries than normal leading up to and during a product drop so having some pre-scripted snippets that you can easily send to potential customers will make sure they get their questions answered quickly and get them back to their cart. Lastly, one of the best things you can do is add a live chat widget to your site to make sure shoppers have a quick and easy way to reach you. For more on this, check out my post 3 Live Chat Tips for Your eCommerce Website.
Schedule Product Publish Dates
Get all your products ready to go so you aren’t waiting up until 11:59pm on the day of your drop to flip the switch! This is just another thing you can prepare in advance so that you can focus on customer service. On Squarespace, you can set products to “Scheduled” status so they are only visible on the future date/time you choose. To schedule a product that you just added just hover over DONE and click SCHEDULE. Set the date and time that you’d like that product to become visible in your store and then click APPLY. On the product’s scheduled date, the status will change to VISIBLE.
Limited availability labels can reduce disappointment in the cart and create a sense of urgency.
Track Inventory and Show Stock Levels
One way to reduce disappointment (and also build a little hype!) is to display stock levels along with your product descriptions. Both Shopify and Squarespace have this capability but I think that Squarespace makes it easiest! You can customize the message that’s displayed and at what point you’d like to display it. For example, if you only want a limited availability label to show up when the stock drops below a certain level that’s totally possible! Letting people know right up front what’s available is great customer service. For more on Limited Availability Labels check out this Squarespace support article.
Plan Website Updates
I’m realizing that this list is basically boiling down to: “get everything organized in advance.” But I mean it! Just because a flash sale or product drop seems spontaneous to customers doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan out every little detail well in advance! You’ll most likely need to make a few small website updates to go along with your promo and things will go a lot smoother if you have them all mapped out in advance. Edits you may need to make are things like changes to your homepage or hero images, temporary changes in navigation, adding special landing pages for the event and scheduling changes to collections or categories. If you’re wanting to take some of the work out of updating prices for a sale, check out the Flash Sale plugin I highlight in this list of My Favorite Squarespace Plugins for eCommerce Sites.
Make It Exclusive
If you’re feeling like you may truly have way more demand than stock, consider offering promos to only certain groups of people, like past customers or VIPs who have already spent a certain amount in your shop. Making a flash sale or product drop exclusive can be a great way to treat repeat customers and build a community of loyal fans. I have a couple posts that might help you in your planning here. First, there’s one all about coupons, offers, discounts and promo codes and then be sure to also check out the one about building Customer Profiles on Squarespace. Together, you’ll be able to target very specific groups of customers with the perfect offer just for them!
Bottom Line
Changes in how people shop online mean you have an opportunity to break out of the traditional sales rut and plan a strategy that better suits your business and messaging. And this isn’t just good news if you’re staring down a holiday sales weekend without having already planned something 😱 because strategic product drops and flash sales are a great tactic that can help you control demand, increase engagement and boost sales!
