The holiday season is fast approaching and those with a projected “holiday 2018” delivery date should be shipping as soon as possible. Crowdfunding rewards can make for fun and unique gifts, but failing to deliver on time can be doubly disappointing for gift-givers negatively effecting the conclusion of your campaign. Things will get busy during the holidays and delays tend to cascade. Best practice is to plan ahead and ship early.
On the flip side, delivering goods on time can go a long way with your backers helping boost your reputation, especially for those hoping to run another campaign in the future. It’s always a good idea to send regular updates to your backers about shipping timelines including any potential delays you may encounter. Your backers will appreciate your transparency as long as you’re clear about any delays. And check out these other useful tips for supporting your backers to keep them positively engaged.
Assuming you’re still planning on shipping before the end of the year, we’ve complied some helpful resources and tips to help guide you this holiday season. Firstly, be sure to bookmark these useful 2018 shipping timetables based on carrier:
USPS 2018 Holiday Newsroom
FedEx 2018 Holiday Shipping Services
UPS 2018 Year-End Holiday Schedule
BackerKit Postage: Ship to anywhere, right from home
Realistically, a large majority of projects don’t reach their initial shipping deadline. Our resident shipping expert Thomas Sleeth has a few tips you may want to consider during this potentially hectic time:
- Expect things will take longer than you hope. The holiday season puts strain on every part of shipping infrastructure – if things take a little longer at one stage, those delays can cascade and change when backers get rewards. Do everything possible to build in some buffer time in order to account for delays.
- Don’t over promise. It can be really easy to commit to splitting up orders or offer something special to an individual backer. While these can be nice, they will also drastically increase the amount of work/complexity involved in getting things shipped.
- Consider getting faster shipping. If you are down to the wire, the extra day or two can make the difference in getting things in on time. Be aware this will raise the costs of shipping significantly.
- Get backers something for the holidays. Even if things are late, consider making an image/card that people can print up and gift in time for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, and other winter celebrations. This can help build anticipation and get people receiving the gift involved with the campaign’s progress!
- Don’t waste time packaging rewards. If you’re shipping things out from home, look into tools like BackerKit Postage that let you work with batches of orders at once. This will drastically reduce the amount of time and potential error that go into getting things shipped out.
Shipping your items early will make the entire crowdfunding experience much more enjoyable for you and your backers.
If you have a project that still needs fulfillment and/or shipping support, you can learn more about BackerKit Postage or contact our shipping department at [email protected]. We’d be happy to help make this part of the process smoother creating a nice bookend to your campaign.
And check out these helpful links to make sure you’re ready for the holidays:
Six Tips from BackerKit’s Creator Success Team