After a product is finally ready to launch, the next step is to kick off an online marketing strategy, starting with a campaign, for example. However, it should be more than that, creating product hype is as essential as the eCommerce strategy. The basic trick is to keep the mystery element while hinting at great things to come. Throughout the experience of being an e-commerce email marketing agency, we came up with these7 ways of creating this product hype.

• Take Pre-orders

Collecting money for pre-orders is a great way to build hype. Instead of waiting until your product officially drops to start making a profit, now customers are invested. They’ll also be tempted to tell their friends, family, and social media followers about your product.

Create a landing page with an option for customers to pre-order before your new product goes live. As this is a great way of showing users why your new product or service is worth their attention. Further, if you want to see more pre-orders, you might consider offering a special price to people who buy before it’s available to everyone else.

• Plan Your Campaigns

When sending campaigns to create product hype, you want to be thinking about conditioning the next action. If you’re not sure about what type of campaign to send, we go through each type and help you choose from the Types of Email Campaigns You Can Add to Your Content Strategy.

Definitely don’t only send one message at the time of the product drop. Here’s why:

• There will be a lot of people that aren’t expecting the drop
• They might be in the middle of something else
• They may have other priorities that day

This would be a huge wasted opportunity. Some brands might be concerned about overwhelming their customers with multiple messages, but as long as you are providing value in each piece of communication, it’s okay to send multiple messages in your pre-launch campaign.

Your campaign setup could look something like this:

• Pre-pre-launch (something big is coming)
• Pre-launch (here’s what’s coming)
• Launch (It’s finally here!)

One of the best ways to build hype is to be mysterious, so don’t give it all away in your first promotional campaign. Consider people’s natural curiosity; if you tell them everything they need to know right away, why would they come back to get more information? Using teaser promos will stimulate their curiosity.

• Segment Your Audience

Following on from our previous point, teasing your email marketing customer base is one of the best ways to get people excited about a new release. The key is to segment your email subscribers so you know that you’re sending this information to your most engaged audience.

As part of your pre-launch campaign strategy, you might want to encourage your VIP customers to sign up for early access to the product. Giving VIP customers early access is a great way to leverage your most engaged customers into generating hype.

Another option might be to offer an early bird bonus to those customers who act fast. For example, customers who order in the first 72 hours of the launch could receive a complimentary product or a percentage of their order.

You could even segment the audience that missed out on a product and send them a follow-up message saying, “Hey, we know you missed out. Here’s an exclusive offer to use on…” This way they still feel like part of the family and that they’ve been given a ‘runner-up’ prize.

• Hold a Social Media Giveaway

A good way to use social media to build hype around your product is by holding a giveaway. Similar to your email marketing strategy, you could send out a drip series of posts to get your followers curious about what you’re going to offer. Online giveaways can help you spread awareness, build your subscriber list and grow sales. You could set your campaign up to encourage followers to share your posts and sign up to your newsletter list for chances to win.

• Promote Scarcity and Exclusivity in Your Messaging

Creating that feeling of “you’re special” amongst your customers is a powerful way to create hype. Promoting scarcity of products or offers is one way to go about this, or you might offer products to those customers who ‘qualify.’ The result will consist of customers feeling privileged to acquire a limited offer. You want to maintain the exclusivity and scarcity of each drop to drive its success.

Some language choices might include:

• Limited edition
• Not available for long
• Until sold out
• First in, best dressed

Tip: You’ll want to ensure you communicate drop times effectively so people know exactly where to be at the right time. Using a countdown timer is a good way to heighten customers’ anticipation.

• Involve Your Customers Early On

Getting everyone to talk about their products months before they launch, is something Apple knows how to do best. In their case, no one is even talking about what the product does, they’re talking about what the product might do. One way you could get your audience engaged and talking about your product before launch is to encourage them to vote on potential products beforehand. So if you sell natural supplements products, for example, you might ask VIP customers to vote on what flavor they would prefer to see going forward.

• Timing is Important

The last thing you want to do is rush a launch, particularly if you’ve spent a lot of time building hype. Timing should depend on how you’re going to be able to deliver the best experience possible. You also want to avoid overwhelming your audience when sending campaigns and ensure you are providing value in each piece of communication you send.

Creating hype means planning. You need to think through your product launches and plan what information you’re going to release and when, who you want to talk about it, and how you can turn your product launch into something worth talking about.

Be aware that an increase in hype will hopefully lead to more orders but also more product returns. Please see the resource below for more information on how product returns affects your business.