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Last week we announced a Tracking Number Importer. It’s going to solve the problem that arises, when you need to ship out a lot of orders, and don’t want to manually add the tracking numbers. The example we gave was when a preorder ships. Pre-orders are a stressful time, and we’re doing our best to make your lives easier. That’s what we’re going for with v3. Make your lives easier, by reducing the work you put into running your store. You might also see a pattern with our announcements. They all seem to be connected, in some way. For instance, we just mentioned how the new Tracking Number Importer, is going to work great for shipping preorders. And the feature we’re announcing this week, is actually called Pre-Order!

All a pre-order is, is a an order that doesn’t get immediately shipped out. The standard reason is the release date for the album hasn’t been reached yet, but you want to start selling the album now. Seems simple right? It is, but there's just one issue. When you take an order, that order goes into your Unshipped section. Whether it’s a preorder or not. Which means if you want to continue shipping out non pre-orders, you need to sift through the section like a gold panner. With the new Pre-Order feature, we’ve solved that problem. Here’s how:

Pre-Order

We said easier, right? All you need to do is check the box, and then any order containing that product, will get sent to a new area in your Sales Section called "Pre-Order".

Another really cool part of this feature, is how it's handled in the cart:

Any order containing a product on Pre-Order, will have "Pre-Order" written next to that product in the cart.

Now you might be asking, "Well what happens when the product is off pre-order, and you want to ship them out?" Well, that's easy too. Just go into the product, and uncheck the box. Then all those orders containing the product, will immediately move to the Unshipped section!

And the last part of this feature we'd like to tell you about is how it's retroactive. So when we launch v3 (hopefully in about a month), you can go into any product that you currently have on Pre-Order, and check the box. This will move all past orders into the Pre-Order section. And immediately clean up that Unshipped section. Whoa!

If you have any specific questions, please get in touch. Thanks Everyone.

Last week we announced Stamps.com integration, and this week we’re going to stick with the shipping theme and talk about tracking numbers.

Right now if you want to include a tracking number in the shipped email you send to your customer, you have to do it one at a time. That’s a rough process when shipping out 500 preorders. So for v3, we thought it was a good idea to solve this shipping stumbling block.

Tracking Number Import

What’s great about this importer is it’s so simple. All you need is the tracking numbers, and the order numbers. We’ll connect the dots after the import. Then just Ship them. Another cool thing about this importer, is when used in conjunction with Stamps or Endicia, they can export you the exact info you need.

Next week it’s time to break out some more heavy hitters.

If you have any specific questions, please get in touch. Thanks Everyone.

Our first two feature announcements have gone over real well with everyone. We're getting a lot of great feedback and even people asking to switch now! Hopefully v3 will be out at the end of February, beginning of March. That's what we're shooting for. Till then though, we're going to keep announcing more features.

This week that feature announcement is Stamps.com integration!

Stamps.com

We've had Endicia for a while, and a lot of people have asked us about Stamps.com. So we're super happy to have this available in v3.

If you don't know what either of these services are, we can explain. Both are postage on demand services, that allow you to bulk buy and print shipping labels for your packages. These services are great for shipping a lot of packages in one fell swoop. It's something that would make your life a million times easier, when shipping out a preorder.

The other really cool thing these services usually provide is a discount on shipping costs. They're sort of like a Mass Mailer, in a way. Since they're buying tons of postage from USPS, USPS gives them a discount, and then they pass part of that discount onto you. It might only be a couple percent, but that adds up when you're shipping a lot of packages.

If you have any specific questions about Stamps.com, head over to their help section or contact them here. If you have any questions about our integration please get in touch with us.

Thanks Everyone. See you next week!

Last week we announced a fully integrated newsletter system for LR v3. It’s going to completely change the way you think about, and execute, newsletter sending. This week, we want to talk about Campaign Tracking.

Right now there’s a very big hole in social media, ads, and newsletter. We have no idea how all this translates into sales. No one knows if their post on twitter is working better than their post on some old forum. Now you might say, “Who cares, I’m going to post on them all anyway.” Well there’s 2 things to think about here: One is, if you knew what post did better, then you’d know which community you should nurture more. And two, if you knew which post did worse, then you could tweak the way in which you posted it, the next time around. For instance, maybe posting day or night matters. Maybe you need to make it shorter/longer, or use more/less graphic language. Maybe you want to get someone else to post it under their username, and compare those results to yours. There’s a million ways to go about it. But the main issue surrounding all this is, without a way to track it to sales, you have no idea where to start.

Campaign Tracking

Introducing, the way to track it! With our Campaign Tracking app, you’ll be able to decipher exactly how all those posts and emails are affecting sales. And what’s great about it, is it works off the very simple UTM Parameters standard. Here’s a link to the Google UTM Builder. All you're going to do is create the link, with the link builder, post it as usual, and we do the rest. It's really that simple.

Another slick little trick in the Campaign Tracking app, is that blue sold number is clickable. And when you do click it, it takes you right to the sales area, and shows you all those sales.

And finally, we've made this incredibly easy to use with our Newsletter feature. in fact, you don’t even have to do anything but click a checkbox. That’s right. You click a checkbox, and we automatically create the UTM links for you. Then as soon as one registers in the Campaign Tracking App, we start tracking sales.

Google Ecommerce Tracking

Another way we’re letting stores track sales is with Google Ecommerce Tracking integration. This is a free Google product, that works alongside their Analytics product. Much like how our campaign app works, it lets you track sales, and how they worked with campaigns. This is going to allow stores to work more closely with marketing companies, who have a lot of experience with Google and their offerings. To read more about this product, head over here.

If you have any specific questions, please get in touch. Thanks Everyone. See you next week!

Last week we announced a brand new direction for Limited Run, and we promised that the features we’d be releasing would blow you away. And the first feature we want to blow you away with, might be the most important one we’ve ever released. That feature is Newsletter.

We spent nearly all of our free time in 2016 on a Newsletter system that’s so powerful, we’re going to change our entire branding to promote it. Here’s a small part of what it can do:

Subscriber Groups

Probably the most amazing part of our Newsletter system is Subscriber Groups. This will allow you to email nearly any combination of newsletter subscribers imaginable. For instance, let’s say you wanted to email everyone who bought something from the band Field Mouse, that’s also in a 100 mile radius of New York City. You can do that in a few clicks. This would be extremely helpful if a band that you signed to your label, had a 30 stop tour, and you wanted to setup 30 unique tour stop emails. You might say, "Hey why don't I just email everyone the entire list of tour stops?" Sure, you could do that, but bombarding people with info on a band, they might not be interested in, is a great way to lose subscribers. And emailing only people who bought a product related to that band, is a great way of targeting only the people who are interested.

You can create a group based on the most simplest condition, to the most complex. What if you launched a pre-order for the vinyl version of a new album. There's 2 colors, black and green. The black is coming to you from the plant on time, but they're having trouble with the green. Maybe you want to ship the black out on time, then email everyone who bought the green copy, tell them about the delay, and give them a 10% discount code as an apology. Whoa!

Let's combine the 2 above ideas, into one pinpoint accurate newsletter email. What if you wanted to email a 5% off discount to everyone who has ordered a product from the band X, but HASN'T pre-ordered their new album yet. That's not only possible, but extremely easy.

Fully Customizable Templates

You can use one of our great templates and customize it with our editor, or even tweak the source with html. And if you’re feeling lucky, you could build a template of your own from scratch.

Switching From Another Service?

No reason to worry about email addresses you've collected from your previous store or newsletter service. We'll let you import all of them, so you can manage everything from your Limited Run store.

MailChimp Template Import

Our system is compatible with MailChimp, so if you wanted to switch from them, to us, just choose "Import Mailchimp Template" when creating a new one.

What Are The Limits and Cost?

Now when we tell you this, I don't want you to lose your mind. It'll be impossible to use this system, if you have no mind. There are no limits on this feature. You can have as many subscribers as you want, and you can send as many emails as you want. And how much extra are you going to pay for it? Nothing. Zero. Nada. There are no feature restrictions with v3. If you're on it, you get unlimited EVERYTHING.

This is just a taste of what's possible with our fully integrated Newsletter system. You'll also be able to see stats, schedule emails, and much more. It's a complete replacement for whatever you're using now, and not only that, but it's most likely twice as good! If you have any specific questions, please get in touch. Thanks everyone.