It’s almost here. Are you ready for your launch? Hopefully, you’re feeling confident and prepared – minus a few finishing touches, of course. And we’ll get to those today.
You might be getting stressed about little details here and there that don’t quite feel right just yet. I always say that I try my best not to ‘fall in love with the details,’ because then you find yourself falling down all kinds of rabbit holes and wasting all kinds of time.
We’re going to get it done today, then worry about falling in love with the details later.
Deal? Deal.
Today, we’re going to:
Finish implementing all the criticisms you started receiving a couple days ago
Set up the email notifying your giveaway winner(s) using a template we’ll give you
Set up the email announcing your store launch tomorrow using another template we’ll give you
Activate and customize your abandoned cart emails – a critical way to save lost sales from people who didn’t finish checking out
Learn how to create discount codes, if you’ll be using them
Run through our handy ‘Launch Day Checklist’ to make sure everything is ready
Hopefully, you’ve gotten feedback from everyone you asked. And hopefully, you can wrap those up today.
I’d like to remind you once again that the name of the game here is finished, not perfect. You’re aiming for a functional site. You have time after your launch to optimize and make things better, but you’ll never know what you can optimize until you see how you’re performing.
Set up your emails: contest winner & launch announcement
You spent all that time getting contacts through your giveaway. You gotta make the most of it.
Right after you go live tomorrow, you’ll want to send out an email letting people know about it. You can also use this as an opportunity to announce that a winner has been chosen, and that they didn’t win. Then offer them a ‘consolation prize’ in the form of your opening day launch sale.
You could also try making a special sale or discount for only the people who entered, just to give them that feeling of exclusivity.
Let’s go over how to get those contacts, choose the winner through KingSumo, and create two types of email:
To send to your winner(s) announcing that they won (and including your store launch)
Your launch announcement email that goes to everyone else
Download the entrants’ email addresses
Log into your KingSumo dashboard.
If you want, KingSumo will randomly choose the winners for you. Just click the ‘Ready to Award’ button under ‘Status’ and it will generate winners and show you their emails.
Copy and paste these so you can email them.
Now, download the others into a CSV spreadsheet. You’ll see that the number of ‘Contestants’, or people who entered your giveaway, is a green clickable link. Click that link.
Click the ‘Export CSV’ button.
[highlight]I’d like to make a note here that Amanda had quite a lot of entrants. She’s a professional marketer, after all. If your list isn’t quite as big, don’t be discouraged. (And if it’s bigger, awesome!) Regardless of your results, just keep on plugging away with these 21 days of advice and your list will grow. Promise.[/highlight]
Set up your winner notification email in Gmail
If you don’t have a store email, you can make an easy, free one in Gmail.
That’s how we can send your emails tomorrow (and however long, until you sign up for one through your domain down the road).
First, write up an email to send individually to each of your winners if you have more than one.
Here’s a quick template. Replace the bracket items with your own details.
Subject line
CONGRATS! You won our [Zoeva makeup set] giveaway!
Email body
Hi there,
This is [Amanda] from [Evooli].
I’m so happy to announce that you won our [Zoeva] giveaway! If you could please just respond to this email and tell me your name and address, I can have it shipped right over to you.
Also, can we give you a shoutout on our Instagram and Facebook pages? If so, please let me know your username so I can tag you in a post.
Important note: Please respond in 48 hours, or else I’ll unfortunately have to choose another winner.
Thanks so much, looking forward to hearing from you!
[Amanda]
P.S. – Our store just went live today, woohoo! Check it out. We’ve got a grand opening sale – [buy one blanket scarf, get one free].
Easy. It’s a good idea to give them a 48-hour window so you can move onto the next if they don’t respond. Ultimately, it will be nice for you to announce the winners on social media. People love that.
Save this as a draft so you can send it out when the store goes live.
Set up your launch announcement email
Amanda Asks
“How can I get people’s attention with my launch email?”
My answer: Since you just had your giveaway, and people are still anticipating the results, you’ll want to start by telling them they didn’t win. Then once you have their attention, you can offer a ‘consolation prize’ like a custom discount or mentioning your grand opening sale.
Here’s a template idea with a couple different short-and-sweet subject lines.
Subject line
Sorry to tell you this…
OR
We’re so excited. Celebrate with us!
Email body
Hi there,
This is [Amanda] from [Evooli].
You’re getting this email because you signed up for our [Zoeva makeup set + 3 scarves] giveaway. Thanks so much.
Unfortunately, you’re also getting this email because you didn’t win. 😭
But don’t worry! I can make it up to you.
To celebrate our GRAND OPENING – and as a special thank you – we’re offering a special deal: [buy one blanket scarf, get one free]!
Plus – shipping is always free. You can check it out here: [site link]
If you have any questions, you can reply directly to this email and I’ll get back to you ASAP.
Hope to see you around,
[Amanda]
It’s 100% necessary that you don’t put anyone’s email address in the regular ‘To’ field of the email. If you do this, everyone will see everyone else’s email, and that’s a massive privacy violation.
Instead, you should put your company’s own email address in the ‘To’ field, and put everyone else’s email address as a ‘Bcc’ (Bcc means ‘blind carbon copy,’ so it hides the addresses of anyone sent through it).
This way, everyone can stay anonymous.
[highlight]Pro tip: From your CSV file (in Excel), you can just copy and paste your entire list into the Bcc section in one go – no need to go back and forth for every person. Super fast. Just don’t forget to pull out the email addresses of your giveaway winners. You don’t want to double email them (especially when one email says they lost the giveaway… talk about mixed signals).[/highlight]
[highlight]Note: Gmail’s max is 500 recipients per email, and 500 emails sent per day.[/highlight] Just like the other one, save this as a draft so you can click ‘Send’ tomorrow, stress-free.
Create discount codes
It’s really easy to create discount codes in Shopify. In the sidebar, go to the ‘Discounts’ section.
There are 2 types:
Codes: a customer must enter the code in the box at checkout, or they must click the discount’s link to begin their shopping session and it will be applied to their cart
Automatic: if the customer’s shopping cart meets the conditions, the discount will automatically apply without having to enter a code or use a link
Let’s go over how Amanda made her ‘buy one, get one free’ launch day promotion for blanket scarves. She created a discount code.
Fill in the code that you want. Make it something easy if you want customers to type it in manually.
Then select the type. Amanda chose ‘Buy X Get Y,’ but other options include a percentage off, a dollar amount off, and free shipping if you’re a store that charges shipping normally.
Select the conditions. Amanda chose:
Customer buys: 1 item from the collection ‘Blanket scarf’
Customer gets: 1 item from the collection ‘Blanket scarf’
At a discounted value: Free
Max number of uses per order: 1
And then you can set a start and end date, but Amanda opted to do this manually when she’s ready for the offer to be over. So she left this part blank.
You can also limit this to specific products, or make it a percentage offer instead of free. For example, ‘Buy any blanket scarf, get any ponytail beanie set for 50% off.’
You can get really creative with it. Experiment over time and see what your customers get the most excited about.
Customize abandoned cart emails
Abandoned cart emails are so important. In fact, studies show that these simple emails can win back up to one-third of the customers who put items in their cart but don’t check out.
The best part is: Shopify makes these super simple to set up and ship out.
You actually already set them up on Day 10, but today we’re going to customize them.
In your Shopify dashboard, go the bottom left corner. Click ‘Settings’ ➜ ‘Notifications.’
Under the top ‘Customers notifications’ section, click the ‘Customize’ button so we can add your branding.
You’ll see the default branding that Shopify has in place.
It’s a little bland, eh?
Add your logo and select your brand’s primary color for the buttons and link accents.
Amanda’s looked like this when she was done:
Click save, and now all of your automated transactional emails will have this look.
Now, I’ll show you how to edit the text of your abandoned cart email.
Go back to the ‘Notifications’ screen and click ‘Abandoned checkout’ (under the first section ‘Orders’).
Click the ‘Preview’ button to see what your email looks like now.
You can edit the body of the email if you like, but I recommend just changing the subject line to something catchier.
Amanda changed hers to ‘Forgetting something, babe?’ to fit with Evooli’s friendly branding.
Over time, you can keep track of how these are performing and make changes accordingly.
Okay, let’s get to the final checklist!
Launch day checklist
Make sure you’ve got all of these covered before you hit that glorious ‘Disable password’ button tomorrow.
Orders & payment
Do a test order to test checkout and payment process
Ensure taxes settings are correct
Ensure shipping settings are correct
Set up Shopify Payments & PayPal to ensure you can get paid
Have automatic email notifications for order confirmations and updates
Create appropriate discount (automatic or manual/clickable code) for grand opening offers
Store front-end
Click every single link/page to ensure it works properly – no broken links or blank pages
Store is responsive on both desktop & mobile
Have an easy way for customers to contact you – and that you’ve tested it
Have an email signup popup (preferably with exit intent)
Ensure policy pages & GDPR notices are easily-accessible
Prominent links to your social media accounts
Marketing
Set up automated abandoned cart emails
Prepared launch-day email for contact list
Set up Google Analytics for data tracking
Arrange launch-day promotions with influencers (if applicable)
✓ Finished making store edits based on the trusty feedback you got from others ✓ Customized your automated notifications, including abandoned cart emails ✓ Created discount codes for your opening day promotion ✓ Went through every item of the pre-launch checklist to make sure you won’t encounter any maniacal hair-pulling tomorrow
Look how far you’ve made it! You’ve done an awesome job up to this point.
Be proud of everything you’ve accomplished and get pumped for tomorrow. But not too pumped… or else you won’t be able to sleep.
