The 12-week product launch calendar
A product launch is a supply-chain deadline wearing a marketing costume. This is the week-by-week timeline DTC teams use to get creative, inventory, and channels to land on the same day — and how launches should sit alongside your promotional calendar.
Lock the launch date
Confirm production, inbound freight, and photography. The date is only real once inventory has a landed ETA.
Positioning and pricing
One-sentence claim, hero benefit, price and any launch offer. Decide whether the SKU is excluded from upcoming promotions.
Creative production
Product photography, lifestyle, UGC briefs, and the PDP copy. Longest-lead item — start here.
Waitlist and teasers
Collect emails on a coming-soon page. Waitlist size is your best pre-launch demand signal.
Channel build
Email and SMS flows, paid creative uploaded, landing page staged, affiliates and press briefed.
QA everything
Checkout, variants, inventory sync, shipping rates, support macros, and analytics events.
Sequenced send
Waitlist first, then full list, then paid. Stagger by hours so you can read each source.
Read and iterate
Sell-through rate, AOV impact, return-to-site rate, and PDP conversion. Adjust creative before spending more.
Decide the SKU's fate
Scale, reposition, bundle, or discontinue. Only now should the product enter normal promotional rotation.
Launches and promotions on one calendar
The most common self-inflicted launch wound is a sitewide sale landing three days after a new product goes live. Keep a minimum 10–14 day buffer on both sides, exclude the new SKU from the first promotion it would qualify for, and make both campaign types visible on the same timeline so the conflict is obvious while it is still cheap to fix.
Pair this with the eCommerce marketing calendar guide and the free template.
Turn this into your team's plan
DTC Calendar turns these moments into one shared promotional and product-launch calendar across brand, agency, and paid teams — with owners, statuses, reminders, and competitor tracking. Sign up free and import the 1970 calendar in one click.
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