Preview Of Upcoming Holiday Promotions

The sale is behind us now. It was VERY POORLY rolled out, as I have had MANY customers that did not see my posts Monday morning in time to take advantage of the sale.
Last year I begged Shapeways to get us the sale information early so we could advertise, and they did, a week before.. I sold almost 2000 parts on Cyber Monday last year. This year, it was less than 200.
Between the price increase earlier this year that has cut sales by 85+%, higher shipping costs, and an inept marketing department, its getting harder and harder to get excited about much in here anymore.
I hate to be a Debbie Downer all the time, but its VERY frustrating to see these things happenening. No wonder the stock holders are screaming.

Dare we hope that there will be a Cyber Monday sale this year? I know many of my customers are waiting to make any purchases until then.

Thanks for any answers. Even if the answer is "no," I can inform my customers.

Jean

It seems even if the DO have a sale,. they'll send the email late Sunday evening (what they have done in the past), so it will be impossible to alert the customers its coming. The last sale, I never even bothered promoting it as it as too late, and looked embarrassing to announce it the morning of the sale.. missing a few hours of the day.

has not been a priority for them the last few years - they don't really need the shop owners anymore

I remember the good old days when there'd be a big sale in October so designers could stock up for their sales in Nov/Dec. Sigh.

A promo code would be working for all SW models, not only for shop owners. But it seems they don't need it.
Which is weird since especially in this time where a lot of people need to stay at home this may be interesting ...

So no code we can share ...

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I loved the email I got today; my customers will be the happiest ones on Monday. And the graphics were striking,

Jean

Jean, unfortunately i did not receive one

I guess my store no longer rates, as I never received the email from Shapeways for the Cyber Monday promotion, and finding out about it the day of.. that's embarrassing to promote to my customers this late. Maybe next year, IF the stores are still around.

Maybe it is the inverse, the fewer sales the bigger bait. Got 7 emails about Cybermonday (different text each, one 28th, five 29th, one 30th... yep, late compared to many other places).
Or maybe random.

Edit: another one makes 8, announcing the end is near.
Edit2: and yet another, 9, extending it.

yeah not the good old days, was hoping they would make more money on their stock release, reinvest, but that's not doing well at the moment

The number of sales announcements is about what I am getting from other niche businesses such as Replacements, Ltd, and Lamson knives. I have to admit my customers seem to be happy. It's an excellent time to get the more expensive ticket items.

Of course, I have pushed out the announcement on our page on Facebook, the various fan pages for the games, our internal forums, and other forums on the topic. I'm sure that has helped our sales numbers.

11 emails so far. Wow.

Edit: Guess... right, one more, so 12.

Dear Sir/ Madam,
Re: Order #4427707
I am very disappointed because it appears that I have been deceived about the discount offers!
I firstly missed the Cyber Monday 20% discount.
As a university student I was advised that by creating a new account with my university email address, I would instead be entitled to at least a 15% discount. Your website stated "Students and faculty get 15% off". Furthermore, it states that: “15% discount will automatically be applied at the last step of check out” which of course means that I must commit to buy, before I see my discount. So, I completed all steps but of course did not receive any discount. This seems very deceptive to me, because I didn’t get a discount but had to commit to purchase the items.
Since I obviously had originally created this order before being advised to create a new student account, I can tell you that I was originally going to be charged US$364.61. I have photographic proof should you require it? Now that I have finished the same order, but with my university student email, I have been charged US$368.71. Slightly more, but definitely no 15% discount.
May I please prevail upon your staff’s kind assistance, with correcting this problem? I am very keen to purchase these items for my model but as I mentioned to your colleague earlier, I can't afford to get it without the discount.
Can you please help me?

thanks for sharing