In this article, we will talk about the difference between a draft pre-order campaign and a pre-order campaign and the unique advantages that each option offers. But first, it's important to know the goal you want to achieve based on the nature of your production and business flow so that you pick the right campaign option to meet your requirements.
There are two types of pre-order campaigns, one with an 'open' lifetime, and the other with a 'limited' lifetime. An open campaign stays open until your commits goal is reached, a limited campaign is a campaign that ends on a specific date and time you set when you create your campaign.
Please note that an 'Open' type campaign always includes the Commits phase. Click here to learn more about the Commits phase.
OPTION 1 (Pre-order with Commits Campaign):
When you select an open campaign, commits will be enabled by default, during the commits phase, emails of potential customers are collected, by committing with their email they reserve an early-bird deal price. A commit deal price can be less or equal to the pre-order deal price, in other words, people who commit to your product typically would get a better deal than those who come later during the pre-order phase.
When you hit your commits goal, the pre-order phase starts automatically -or manually-, all committers will be notified in an email that the pre-order phase has started, in the email notification they receive, they click on the action button which directs them to the campaign page, on the campaign page they enter the same email they committed with to confirm their early-bird deal price, hit the submit button, checkout and complete their payment.
This option enables you to accurately assess demand before you commit your order with your manufacturer or supplier. If you hit your commits goal, the probability of hitting your pre-order goal is equally high. During commits, no payments are collected, therefore if you don't hit your commits goal, it means that you probably won't reach your pre-order goal, and this means that you need to increase the traffic that you bring to your campaign, amplify your marketing efforts and engage more with your customers, and since the campaign is an open campaign, you will be able to gauge momentum to that campaign until you hit your goal.
OPTION 2 (Draft Pre-order Campaign)
When you select a limited campaign, you will be able to disable commits, when commits are disabled, you will then be able to disable the direct checkout function, this means you can skip the checkout process, and draft orders will be recorded instead. Please note that only the product or variant your customer selected and their email are recorded, billing, and shipping details will not be collected at this point.
This process allows you to get the full benefits of draft orders, like customizing drafts before you send them to your backers, you can for example;- Add a custom item, or add / remove items from your every draft pre-order. For example, you can:
- Add a pre-order discount per line item.
- Add a general draft order discount.
- Add free shipping or apply additional shipping charges.
- Charge or remove taxes.
- Edit customer details.
- Edit shipping & billing details.
- Email invoices with a custom message.
- Accept In-store pickups (Allow backers to collect their pre-orders from your store)
- Accept Cash-on-delivery (Allow backers to pay by cash in-store or on delivery)
To make things simple;
- If you want to fully manage your pre-order drafts individually and customize each draft before you send (email) them to your backers to complete their payment > Choose Option 2
- If you want to assess the demand first before you start collecting pre-order payments > Choose Option 1
What type of campaign and campaign options you want to go with depends on how your production lifecycle and business flow work. The goal here is to manage production risks, minimize or eliminate refunds, and assess the demand before you commit to your suppliers or manufacturer.
Fundlify understands the complexities and problems that may arise during your crowdfunding campaign. Other crowdfunding and pre-order solutions assume that stock is 100% guaranteed to be available in time, but what if you take pre-orders and collect payments from your backers, but your campaign does not reach its goal? What if you don't meet your MPO (Minimum Production Order) with your manufacturer or your MQO (Minimum Quantity Order) with your supplier? in this case, you're going to have to refund payments to your backers, and that's not going to be good for business, in fact, that's not how crowdfunding is supposed to be, and that's exactly why Fundlify offers you the flexibility that your crowdfunding campaigns need in alignment with your business model.
If you have any questions, email support@fundlify.com