Today’s modern customer chooses where to shop based on the overall experience you provide, especially during the holidays. Do you offer fast shipping options? Are you aligned with the customers’ values (i.e., offering sustainable and responsibly-sourced products)? Do you have an easy and flexible returns policy? The list goes on.
But the most important determining factor of whether a customer will purchase from your brand is if the delivery experience is timely, transparent, and tactical.
At Deliverr, we work especially hard during peak season to ensure our delivery experience exceeds you and your customers’ expectations. That’s why we’re here to communicate important order- and ship-by dates during the holiday season so you can properly prepare.
When do customers need to place orders by?
In order to guarantee delivery by the day your customers exchange gifts with loved ones, they must place their online order before 2pm EST on December 13. This gives our operations team enough time to pick and pack orders before carriers’ shipping cutoff dates (more on this later!).
Here are some tips for how to communicate this information with returning customers and those that land on your site for the first time:
- Returning customers: Send an email to your loyal customers informing them when they should place holiday orders by
- New customers: Enable fast shipping badges on your website that display ‘deliver by’ dates (e.g., order by 12/13 for promised delivery before Christmas)
Learn more and join the waitlist for Shop Promise badges
When should your company ship orders by?
An order arriving to its final destination in time for the holidays is heavily dependent on the cutoff dates implemented by shipping carriers.
Deliverr partners with several major carriers including USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL to ensure a wide range of delivery coverage based on inventory location.
To determine the optimal date for outbound shipments to depart a Deliverr warehouse and arrive on the customer’s doorstep on time, our transportation team conducted an analysis of carriers’ shipping cutoff dates for popular shipping windows. We then added a one-day buffer to each ‘last day to ship’ date to better align with last year’s average carrier delivery window of 12-15 days.
| Carrier shipping window | Last day to ship |
|---|---|
| 5+ days | Monday, December 12 |
| 3-5 days | Wednesday, December 14 |
| 2 days | Tuesday, December 20 |
For a breakdown of projected shipping cutoff dates by carrier, visit the following carrier resource pages:
If you have any questions about these dates and deadlines, please reach out to our Support team.
Stay up-to-date on important updates during peak season
Visit our BFCM Prep Hub to stay informed about important changes happening to Deliverr’s services before they go into effect. Get access to all recent topics published on our blog curated to help you have a successful season.
