How to boost your sales with rush shipping & Teespring promotions

We introduced rush shipping in 2016 to enable Teespring sellers to sell more products leading up to special events. From Q3 to Q4 2016 the amount of rush shipped orders increased by 4x and currently 20% of buyers select rush shipping at checkout.

Not only does rush shipping enable you to sell more products by extending the sales period for special events (e.g. giving you 10 extra days to sell before Christmas), it can also increase your number of repeat shoppers!

We know that when a buyer receives their order within 2 – 10 working days they are 60% more likely to become repeat shoppers within 30 days of their first purchase. We also know that buyers who receive their order within 10 – 20 working days in are 25% more likely to become repeat shoppers within 30 days of their initial purchase. So what does this mean for you? The more you encourage buyers to select rush shipping, the more repeat shoppers you can get!

Example how one seller maxed her sales with rush shipping

Cristina C. is a long-time Teespring sellers and active member of the community. She recently shared some very useful tips on how you can get extra sales by combing features such as rush shipping and Teespring Promotions.

Just wanted to pass along a little tip that has worked pretty well to squeeze out a few more sales from a campaign when you’re facing a shipping deadline.

Now that we have Rush Shipping you can get a few more days of purchases from procrastinators.

I set up a $3.99 discount promo (cost of rush shipping) and then created a retargeting campaign where I said something like this –

“Did you forget to order? You’ve got one LAST CHANCE!

Choose RUSH SHIPPING at checkout and I’ll pay the upcharge.

(Insert campaign/store link here with promo code attached)”

Resulted in about 50 more sales today.

*** And for those of you wondering, customers could link that promo code to any shirt they wanted and get the $3.99 discount, not just the items in that store. And they could also get the discount without choosing Rush Shipping. But none did.

Teespring Promotions

Cristina mentioned using Teespring Promotions (discount code) to encourage buyers to select rush shipping. Using discount codes can boost conversions by up to 60% and the “free shipping” discount is one of our top converting discount types. In Cristina’s example, she set a specific monetary discount ($3.99) to cover the cost of rush shipping for U.S. buyers. If you want to offer a similar discount for EU buyers you should note rush shipping is *usually* €7.00 for EU (European Union) and £3.99 for UK based buyers.

IMPORTANT: We do test shipping rates or adjust them based on rush stock supplies so it’s a good idea to check the price displayed on your campaign (at checkout) to make sure you’re offering the correct promo discount amount for “free shipping”.

Contacting buyers

In Cristina’s example, she mentioned setting up a retargeting ad campaign on Facebook. You can learn more about using the Facebook Pixel and creating niche-specific Custom Audiences in the Teespring Training Center.

If you’re not experienced with Facebook ads just yet, remember you can always use the Buyer Message Tool or buyer emails to share your promotion too. We’d recommend contacting past buyers if you’re promoting a similar design (not the same one they’ve already purchased).

Rush eligible products

In order to take advantage of rush shipping you’ll need to offer rush eligible products (i.e. products that can be rush shipped) in your campaigns. When a customer selects rush shipping at checkout we begin their order production within 24 hours, even before your campaign has ended. If the customer places their order over the weekend we’ll begin production on Monday, but keep in mind their order will still arrive within the specified time frame. You can learn more about shipping timelines and how buyers can select rush shipping at checkout here.