How to Run Successful eCommerce Product Drops on Shopify

The goal behind a product drop is to drive a ton of traffic to your website for a flash sale that hopefully sells out the entire stock of that item or items. Successful product drops generally have some type of scarcity in play, making them all the more attractive to shoppers. Scarcity can be achieved if there’s a limited quantity of the item or a limited amount of time that the product is available for purchase.

You can advertise eCommerce discounts on social media as a way to get traffic to your site. Having a good model and a quality product will get people talking about it, bringing in more traffic. Below are some guidelines that can help you build the type of brand capable of pulling off successful product drops.

Three Components of a Successful eCommerce Product Drop

Three main components are present in every brand that can pull off product drops: brand community, platform, and a story to tell. These are the most critical factors when developing the type of eCommerce brand that can pull off a successful product drop.

Learning How to Build a Brand with Brand Community 

Your brand community is the basis of your business. Prospective eCommerce merchants that are googling “how to build a brand” should understand that building a brand community is just about the most crucial aspect of building your eCommerce business.

Without the support of fans of your company and your products, you won’t be selling anything. Building a great brand community is one of the foundational components of what goes into pulling off a successful product drop, whether that’s on a platform like Shopify or your own website.

Working with Influencers

Forming relationships with influencers can be an excellent method for getting your brand out there in the world and increasing traffic to your website along with sales of your products. To find influencers to promote your brand through reviews, unboxing videos, or other types of content, you can use platforms like Grin.‌

Influencers come with their own set of followers, the ones you’re paying them to influence. Getting into influencer marketing can be a great way to save money on traditional marketing campaigns while ensuring your message will reach a specific demographic.

Making Sure Your Site Can Handle Heavy Traffic

There’s a handy app called Launchpad on the Shopify app page that can help push content and products up along with sales. Users can easily schedule and monitor sales, the timing of releases, and changes to content.

It’s essential you stress test your website for heavy traffic as well, or overwhelming amounts of visitors may cause it not to work correctly or crash, potentially compromising sales. 

Brand Examples of Who’s Doing it Right‌

Kith

Kith focused on branding for years before attempting to do a product drop, building a community around them. After that, they collaborated with industry giants like Nike, Asics, and numerous others, gaining popularity in the footwear and streetwear business.‌

Kith built its brand on social media, amassing millions of followers. They speak from the platform they’ve built for themselves, which now affords them the opportunity to run highly successful product drop campaigns.

Gymshark

Gymshark is a British clothing company that specializes in workout attire. They have highly anticipated product drops that everyone from the pros to the newest guy on the gym floor eagerly get in line to pick up. 

Gymshark’s high-quality clothing often has huge eCommerce discounts, too, helping bring in even more traffic and sell more items faster.

Andbox

Before releasing products for sale, Andbox built a name for itself in the gaming community. The gaming space already existed for them, pre-built; what they did was carve out a following for their team. Once they had a following, they released items like clothing and collaborations as product drops. 

Without the following they built, that wouldn’t have been possible. Their products are valuable to their community because they’re fans of Andbox sponsored teams.

The Yetee

No, not the metal cup company, though quirky coffee cups are one of the things you might see for sale on their website in one of the currently featured product collections. The Yetee’s model is pretty clever: They’ve made their products something users can submit original artwork for, which accomplishes several things.

The first: artwork, and lots of it, that’s been submitted by their community of fans and followers in the hopes of getting their artwork featured on t-shirts, coffee cups, and other basic gear.‌

The second is they have created themselves — branded themselves — as a cool community of indie artists that people want to be a part of. Their model of user-submitted artwork, where the artist gets a cut of sales and some other perks, not only brings them the artwork they need to create their products, but it also builds a community of artists that want to be featured and will constantly be clicking around the site.‌

For artists whose work is chosen to be featured on a product line, they’re almost guaranteed to promote it on all their social media accounts and tell everyone they know, “Hey, check out this cool product line my artwork is being featured on.” So, the collaborative model works out well for everyone involved, from the looks of it.

Another thing the people at the Yetee have done well is that they own the means of production. They aren’t sourcing their shirts from elsewhere; they’re printing them themselves. It ends up being cheaper and faster, while also ensuring their supply. Yetee product drops are for a limited time only, not a limited number of items, but the scarcity factor still works and entices consumers to purchase.  

Build Your Community and Drop Some Products

The support of a brand community behind your company is essential – most important, in fact, for pulling off a successful product drop. The other two factors that contribute to a product drop going off without a hitch are that you have a platform for reaching your community and a story to tell that gets people interested and keeps them coming back to your website. This way, they’ll participate in your product drops.‌

Several other factors go into a successful product drop, but with these tips you can start on the path to pulling it off. The first step is building that brand community.