Last Order Dates: Posting Your Christmas Cut-Offs Early
Your Christmas cut-off date has probably been in your head since September, which is exactly why customers keep messaging you on the 19th of December. Here's how to work the date out backwards and turn it into four honest posts, including the one most people skip that turns a late "no" into a sale.
Dave Smith
# Last Order Dates: Posting Your Christmas Cut-Offs Early
Picture the Saturday before Christmas. This year that's 19 December. It's gone four o'clock, you're in the workshop, and the bench is covered in parcels you've promised will leave on Monday. Let's say you make engraved oak signs to order, although it could just as easily be cakes, curtains or silver rings. You stopped taking Christmas orders a fortnight ago.
Your phone buzzes. A message through Facebook: "Hi, love your signs! Could I get one for my mum by Christmas?"
It's the fifth one this week. You feel bad for all five, and a little annoyed too, because surely everyone knows you can't make something by hand in three working days.
Except they don't know. How would they? Your cut-off has been in your head since September. It might also be on a page of your website, in the sort of paragraph nobody reads. It has never once appeared anywhere your customers actually look.
What that message really costs you
The awkward reply is the small part. You write something kind, the customer goes elsewhere, and you've lost five minutes.
The bigger cost is someone you'll never hear from. A person who saw your signs in early December, thought "lovely, I must order one of those", and assumed there was plenty of time. Nothing you posted suggested there was any hurry. By the time they came back it was too late, so they bought something else.
Then there's the third group: those who did order in time, and are now messaging to ask whether it'll definitely arrive. Each of those is another five minutes you don't have in the week before Christmas.
And if guilt makes you say yes to the fifth message, there's a fourth cost: your evenings.
Run the same December again, with one change
Now go back to today, in early November. Same workshop, same signs, a mug of tea and ten minutes.
Start from the 25th and work backwards. When is the last day your courier or Royal Mail will promise delivery before Christmas? They publish these dates each year, so check this year's rather than trusting your memory of last year's. Leave yourself a couple of days' grace, because December is when vans get full and things go missing. Then take off however long the work really takes, not how long it takes when nothing goes wrong.
Say that gets you to Friday 4 December. So you post this, today, with a photo of the bench:
*"Christmas orders: the last day for engraved signs is Friday 4 December. That gives me time to make them properly and get them on a van before the rush. After that I can't promise Christmas, however nicely you ask. You're welcome to try, but I'll only feel terrible about it."*
It took a minute to write. It answers a question people haven't got round to asking, and gives anyone vaguely meaning to order a reason to do it now.
Why this doesn't feel like selling
Plenty of small business owners hesitate here, because a deadline feels like a sales tactic. They've seen enough countdown clocks that reset every morning.
The difference is that yours is true. A made-up deadline exists to push people into buying. A real one exists because you'd rather they didn't end up disappointed on the 22nd, and customers can tell the difference. You're not saying "hurry, ending soon!" You're saying "here's the last date I can do this properly".
It also plays well against everything else in the feed. Over the Black Friday fortnight, your customers will be scrolling past dozens of fake deadlines. One plain, honest date stands out.
Four posts, not one
A single post in November will be seen by a fraction of your followers and forgotten by most of them. For the signs on our imaginary bench, try this:
1. The announcement, now. All your dates, plainly. Pin it to the top of your page if you can. 2. The reminder, Friday 20 November. Two weeks out. Make it a story this time: a sign halfway through being made, and how long that stage takes. The date goes at the end. 3. The final call, Wednesday 2 December. Short and specific: "Orders close Friday at 5pm." 4. The "what you can still do" post, Saturday 5 December. Christmas orders are closed, thank you, and here's what's left. A gift voucher. A printed card showing what's coming in January. Collection from the workshop, if you can manage it.
Most people skip that fourth post, but it turns a "no" into something a last-minute shopper can actually buy.
Put the same dates in your Google Business Profile, on your website's homepage and in your Facebook auto-reply, so all four places agree.
It isn't only for people who post parcels
The same logic holds whatever you do:
- Salons and barbers: the date the last Christmas appointments will be gone, and when to book by.
- Bakers and butchers: the last day for Christmas orders, and when to collect.
- Tradespeople: the last job you can start and finish before the break, and when you'll be taking new work again.
- Restaurants and pubs: when party bookings close, and when deposits are due.
- Anyone B2B: the last date for work to be signed off before your clients vanish for a fortnight.
Back to the bench
Same Saturday, same 19 December. Your phone buzzes, because some people don't read anything, and they never will. "Hi, love your signs! Could I get one by Christmas?"
This time, there's one message rather than five. You reply with the voucher link, and you've sold something.
Better still, your orders came in during November rather than in a panicked heap. Aunty Social can keep the rest of your feed ticking over whilst you're at the bench, but the dates can only come from you. It's the seventh of November, and you've got ten minutes and a mug of tea. Work them out today.