Welcome to the world of the Rolex Daytona, Hermès Birkin bag, and the new Four Seasons luxury yacht.
What do they all have in common? You can’t just buy or book. If you want any of these things, you first have to join their waiting list.
This is a masterful use of the waitlist funnel by all three luxury companies. All their potential customers have the means to buy their items. They reinforce their exclusivity with a waitlist sales process which includes:
- Making other purchases to qualify for the waiting list
- Having no timeframe for actually getting the item
- Being somewhat opaque about how their waitlist process works
- There’s even a move to rename the ‘waiting list’ as a ‘wishlist’ – perhaps because there’s no guarantee the sale will ever happen
But you don’t have to be in the luxury industry to reap the rewards of a waitlist funnel. By choosing the best waitlist funnel techniques for your ideal customers, you can build super-engaged, segmented audiences that are primed to buy your product or service.
What is a waitlist funnel?
A waitlist funnel is a marketing strategy that helps you collect qualified leads while building audience excitement before launching your new product or service.
You create a dedicated sign-up process where participants benefit from an offer that’s immediately valuable to them and fuels their appetite for your upcoming product or service. You might allow early access to a new range or exclusive offers for early birds.
A waitlist funnel strategy is also your way to see inside the heads of your prospective customers. Carefully crafted waitlists are a tool to collect invaluable data insights about audience interest levels to validate your market and inform business-critical decisions.
Why do you need a waitlist funnel for your next launch?
A waitlist is good for both your customers and your business. By joining a waitlist, your prospects avoid the frustration of constantly looking to see when your amazing new thing will be available. And, of course, so they don’t miss out when it is released.
A waitlist funnel is good for your business because, by adding their names, your clients are signalling definite interest in your offer. This is more concrete than a like or share – they’re giving you their details because they’re interested in buying. Yes, your individualised lead magnets tempt them too. But people only want discounts for things they actually intend to buy. This is all about quality leads, not quantity.
Here are 5 specific reasons why you should use a waitlist funnel for your launch.
1. Build anticipation and hype it up!
You’re the announcer, the cheerleader, the promoter of your business. Think of a waitlist as your digital hype-woman.
You create an experience that first plants the seed of your new product or service idea – and gauges early interest so you can finely tune the perfect product-market fit before launch. Then, in a series of carefully crafted steps, you play on audience anticipation and generate increasing levels of excitement right up until launch day.
Not only does a drip-feed of teaser content keep your audience engaged, but people also tend to share their excitement. So their ‘Can’t wait for [your product or service] to drop on [date]!’ post starts promotion even before it enters the world. And this social proof means you can say ‘hello’ to some new, word-of-mouth waitlist members!
2. Collect qualified leads
Avoid wasting time and resources and getting annoyed by copious leads that don’t convert by using a waitlist funnel strategy as a filter. Signing up for your waitlist is a strong signal of real interest in your product or service. After all, they’re sharing their information and answering your questions.
By pre-qualifying your leads using a waitlist, you know they’re already nice and warm. You can use the process to build relationships with these prospects before launch by keeping them informed and enthusiastic.
3. Create a sense of exclusivity
Are you on the list? Do you have backstage passes? Can you get into the VIP area?
Why do we respond so well to the idea of exclusivity? It makes us feel like we belong, that we’re part of a particular crowd. It’s great to feel like you’re getting something extra, or something other people don’t have – like an early peek at a new product, or a special discount that won’t be available to everyone else.
As well as offers, leveraging the scarcity principle by limiting the number of people allowed on your waitlist drives more sign-ups and engagement.
We can learn from the luxury industry, that creates that sense of exclusivity so expertly, as Mackenzie Valk of MPH explains:
“One of the key elements that differentiate luxury consumers is their pursuit of exclusivity. This desire is not merely about owning something unique but about the feeling of belonging to an elite club. Brands catering to luxury consumers can leverage this in a few ways, such as by creating limited-edition products that are only produced in small quantities. They can also host exclusive members-only events or strategically open new product offerings to selective groups of customers to enhance their desirability…”
As you know, this level of psychological understanding is crucial for all businesses’ success – not just luxury brands. And you can use the insights from your waitlist strategy to more fully understand the ‘why’ of your audiences.
The idea of belonging to an exclusive group that’s getting a first look at your new product or service is a very powerful way of including your prospective customers in your business – even before they’ve parted with any hard-earned cash. There’s an emotional connection through the mutually shared journey to launch, that gathers momentum with every email.
4. Gather valuable audience insights
By asking carefully crafted questions pre-launch, you can get a good gauge of how interested your prospects are in your upcoming offering. Not only that, you get immediate feedback on the specifics of your product or service that they’re most excited about. It also shows you where there’s a less positive response.
All of this information is absolute gold dust that you can sprinkle all over your new offering and make final adjustments before it goes to market. Basically, it ensures the perfect product-market fit.
The data from your waitlist members gives you insight into their preferences and expectations which means you can tailor everything to meet their needs and solve their pain points. Not just about product or service, but how and where they communicate online, their values and beliefs, and their wider interconnections.
5. Smooth out the launch process
Practically speaking, having a waitlist helps you predict demand and prepare accordingly. You can use your waitlist members to test beta versions and use their feedback to make those final improvements before launching. This helps you avoid the expensive mistake of bringing something to market that no one wants to buy.
Streamlining your whole launch process starts with planning a waitlist funnel strategy. It encompasses the numbers and gives you the opportunity to fine-tune any issues before the official launch with people who have signalled their interest. So you bring the best possible version of your product or service to the market and avoid any supply issues.
How to create a waitlist funnel with ScoreApp
ScoreApp encompasses all the elements of your waitlist funnel, simplifying the creation process and giving you confidence in the fact that you have thought of everything. Here are 6 things you need to consider before you launch your waitlist:
1. Create a dedicated landing page
Your customers need a clear, professional landing page where they can immediately understand the benefits of your offer. What do they get from completing your waitlist quiz questions? Each waitlist landing page must be focused on one offer. No links, no menus, no pop-ups, no mentioning adjacent ‘things you might also like.’ One thing. One very clear thing, with one compelling CTA that gives visitors to your landing page one decision – they sign up or exit the page.
If you want waitlists for more than one product or service, each one becomes its own waitlist funnel, with its own unique landing page. Don’t worry about running out of creative juices with this, ScoreApp’s got 32 free templates for you to try! You also get the peace of mind that you won’t make any common landing page mistakes that stop you from getting maximum conversions.
2. Offer incentives
You can offer any kind of lead magnet you want, to sweeten the information exchange deal.
- Early access: Buy [your new product] before everyone else has a chance to see it
- Exclusive discounts: As a thank-you for joining our waitlist, here’s 20% off our [new service]
- Special bonuses: Only our waitlist members get this free [gift] with their [new product]
All that lovely waitlist data that’s got you into the heads and hearts of your audiences really comes into play here. Your understanding helps you deliver incentives that they genuinely love and are useful in their context. This might be as varied as a free pair of socks with a T-shirt purchase, or a free month’s subscription to your SaaS product. Whatever means something to your customers.
3. Promote the waitlist
Your landing page can’t do all the work! You need to use all your tools and network to promote your waitlist:
- Social media: Use whatever medium is best-received on the platforms where your audiences are and include the link to the waitlist landing page. For example, a video of part of the creative process for TikTok.
- Blog posts: Take the concept behind the waitlist and flesh it out. With the ‘find out if you’re…’ link to the waitlist landing page at the end.
- Online ads
- Email campaigns: Explaining why the offer and the new product or service is good for them.
- Partners, ambassadors, and influencers: Everyone needs to get out their megaphone!
That’s just a few ways to promote your waitlist quiz organically, you and your team will have many more!
4. Engage with waitlist members
The worst thing you can do is to create a brilliant landing page, get loads of excited people signed up to your waitlist, and then don’t speak to them again until launch day. You’ve piqued their interest with a valuable offer in exchange for their information and then, it seems, just forgotten about them.
You can easily integrate your email software with your ScoreApp waitlist, so you can build strong relationships with targeted email sequences. Your waitlist data helps you create segmented campaigns that really speak to your different brand personas with valuable content.
This doesn’t just maintain awareness and interest in your new product or service, but continues to generate excitement right up to the launch date. It’s not just ‘nurturing’ – it’s whooping up!
5. Collect and analyse data
Using the insights from waitlist market research questions helps you delve deeper into the thoughts and feelings of your customers – which makes you better able to communicate with them in a way they understand. This helps you:
- Refine your messaging for each audience segment
- Alter incentive offers to make them irresistible
- Discover new ideas from audience feedback
- Create original research demonstrating your industry expertise
- Avoid wasting money investing in the wrong areas
- Track the performance of each waitlist funnel strategy with real numbers from the metrics you set
All of this means your decisions are informed by current, reliable data analysis rather than guesswork.
6. Prepare for the launch
Launch preparations are far less stressful with a ScoreApp waitlist strategy because you know the predicted demand. It also involves planning your customers’ journey from landing page, all the way through to thank-you emails.
The smooth transition of waitlist members to paid customers is already defined, tested, and ready for launch. Your infrastructure is in place and team members understand what’s happening at every stage of the process.
By using a ScoreApp waitlist quiz you remove the risk of trying to sell the wrong thing to the wrong audience. Instead, you’re confident that your launch is reaching exactly the right customers – who’ve already signalled interest and engaged with your pre-launch excitement – at exactly the right time.
The launch will be an intuitive step for your customers and just the next step in the waitlist funnel process for you – sleepless nights not required. But brace yourself to sellout!
Instantly launch your waitlist with ScoreApp
Using ScoreApp’s customisable waitlist templates, you can design and launch your first waitlist in just a few minutes. Go beyond the traditional ‘name and email’ forms. With a ScoreApp waitlist funnel, you get invaluable insights that can truly transform your business – for free!
