Is there a way to give early access to my store for email subscribers?

[Minteror]

Hi there,

I am going to be launching my business on Friday, but wanted to give people that have subscribed early access to shop Thursday evening?

As a handmade business, my store will be open once a month for pre-orders. After I have a certain number of sales everything will be marked as sold out. 

I would like the ability to allow email subscribers to have access to shop before everyone else (going forward, most likely 15-30mins before it is open to everyone else)

Any suggestions are much appreciated.

[Luna]

Hey, @Minteror.

Thanks for posting this question. Congrats on your upcoming launch. I understand that you would like to make your shop available to subscribers before everyone else. That's a great idea! I'd be happy to provide you with a suggestion. 

Shopify allows you to add password protection to your store so that you can restrict customer access to your online store. You can create a password and give it to customers that you want to enter your store. When a customer arrives at your storefront, they will see a password landing page while this option is enabled. My suggestion is to enable this feature, send out an email to your subscribers on Thursday with the password, and then you can remove the password on Friday to allow everyone else in. It's really simple to enable/disable the password. To do so, you can follow these steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Preferences.

2. Scroll to the Password protection area, and check Enable password.

3. In Password, enter the password that you'll give to the customers who you want to be able to access your online store. Don't use the same password that you use to log into your admin.

4. In Message for your visitors, enter the message that you want to show on the password page. If you don't want to show a message, then leave this field blank.

5. Click Save.

When you're ready to open your store to everyone, you can disable the password by following these steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Preferences.

2. Go to the Password protection area.

3. Uncheck Enable password.

4. Click Save.

If you collect your subscriber list through Shopify, you can use Shopify Email to send a message to a specific group of customers (subscribers). To learn more about this, check out our help document: Email a specific group of customers. 

Let me know what you think of this idea! In the meantime, I'd love to hear more about your business. What type of products do you sell? 

[Luna · Accepted solution]

Hey, @Minteror.

Just checking in with you to make sure you got the help you needed. If you have any questions, let me know. I'm happy to continue to work on this together.

Best,

[Minteror]

Hi Luna,

Thank you so much. That was very helpful!

[Luna]

Hey, @Minteror.

So happy to hear that. All the best on your store launch - we're rooting for you!

Take care,

[Erynrosenbaum]

Hi! Do you know if there's any way to do this same idea with scheduled availability? Currently I schedule my one-of-a kind items for availability at a certain day and time, and they can sell out fast. I'd like to give email subscribers early access, and then later remove the restriction so everyone can access any remaining new products, without having to manually add/remove the password at the exact moment. Is there a way to schedule this?

[AnneGloetz]

Heyy, 

is it also possible to protect a specific product (not the whole page)? So that Newsletter Clients can shop one specific product with early access, but our shop will be still open for everyone?

Thanks

Anne