Should you run Facebook ads for pre-orders?

Why don’t pre-orders and cold ads mix?

Because pre-ordering has a different energy from buying something in stock. Someone has to really want a product to wait for it. A cold audience that met you thirty seconds ago rarely clears that bar, especially in impulse-led categories like fashion.

Marketing a pre-order to cold audiences and announcing it to your database are two different jobs, and for me they don’t line up. Your list already knows you and trusts you to deliver. A stranger scrolling Instagram has no reason yet to pay for something they can’t have.

When you send paid traffic to pre-order products, people either buy something else that’s in stock or leave and buy elsewhere. It’s a pattern that shows up often when you dig into a store’s conversion rate: ads for one product end up selling a different, in-stock one, especially when the first things shoppers see are on pre-order.

What does advertising pre-orders do to your creative?

It burns it. Every ad wears out eventually. If you run the same creative through the pre-order window and into launch, it’s tired by the time the stock arrives, and the ads die before launch day. The “in stock now” switch, which should be your biggest moment, lands flat.

Let email and socials do the pre-order job. Preserve the creative for the release and push it harder then.

How do you run pre-orders through email instead?

This is the order I’d follow.

1. Tease the release on organic social, so people know it’s coming.
2. Make the pre-order available only through email and SMS. Frame it as a perk: secure your size first.
3. Use that perk to grow the list. It’s a reason to sign up that isn’t a discount, and it can run as an evergreen sign-up ad.
4. When the stock lands, or is just about to, switch the ads on and sell it as in stock now.

If the only way to pre-order is through email, you’re training people to look to the inbox more. And while the pre-order runs, catalogue retargeting and your Klaviyo flows still keep the product in front of people who’ve shown interest.

Should every drop have a pre-order?

No. Pre-ordering works against selling out. They’re different energies. Scarcity and limited numbers make people buy now. A pre-order tells them they can come back later.

So if your drops used to sell out and now they don’t, the pre-order itself may be part of the problem. Pick one model on purpose instead of defaulting to pre-orders.

Used on every release, the pre-order also loses its power, the same way constantly bringing products back does. Save it for something with real hype, or a returning product with proven demand. If there’s ever a chance to not use it, don’t. When stock is arriving within a week anyway, skip the pre-order and launch with “it’s here, and it won’t last”.

When are pre-order ads worth running?

For select, bigger releases you’re confident will perform. If a product has real pent-up demand, paying to put the pre-order in front of a wider audience can make sense. Make that call one release at a time. Your default stays email-only.