Hello dear folks,
I have an unfortunate situation on my hands.
In September, we had a preorder of a product that was set to ship in October. This was delayed until November, and will now be shipping right before the BFCM holiday (around the 20th). The customers have been nice and understanding of why the delay happened and not a single one has asked for a refund/ cancellation (around 400 orders), but naturally they are a bit irritated by the delay.
The problem is, we want to do a BFCM sale. This sale would bring the price of the products they purchased via preorder and waited 2 months for down by about 25%. As the shipping has been delayed, the preorders will ship just days before the sale goes live (24th), and the preorders will not have arrived before the sale starts.
This means that we would announce the sale just about the same day as we send out the last preorders.
I am forecasting that this will bring some disappointment and anger from the people who preordered, who waited long and paid full price and will not even have received their products many days before those who get the reduced price during BFCM.
We cannot afford to reimburse the difference to those who ask.
Should we just skip BFCM wholly to nurture our existing customers (many are returning customers) or go ahead with the sale?
Not too big of a dilemma. Don’t do the sale.
Many of these people are returning customers? Not knowing what you sell, but if there’s a chance they could return another time and buy, OR, every new customer is an opportunity for a returning customer one more time, you don’t want to squander that. Returning customers are very valuable.
You don’t need BFCM to do a great sale.
Because of the situation, I’d focus on getting them to return again for an additional purchase and give this batch of people the opportunity for the first discounted price after whatever life cycle the product has (hopefully it’s short) with some sort of direct discount coupon/code, then do a public sale that’s similar.