How to Run Secret Sales on Shopify: A Practical Guide

With the Shopify app Locksmith, you can easily run secret sales exclusively for loyal customers or email subscribers on Shopify.

Secret sales are not just about running a discount — when designed thoughtfully, they can also be turned into a viral marketing initiative.

In this article, we'll walk you through how to run secret sales using the Shopify app Locksmith.

At StoreHero, we leverage our proprietary growth platform to support business growth through granular operations that manual management simply cannot achieve, as well as large-scale execution of marketing initiatives.
If you're struggling to increase sales on Shopify, feel free to reach out. =>Download our free service introduction guide here

The Benefits of Secret Sales

A secret sale is a selling method that allows loyal customers or members to purchase new products before they go on general sale — often at a discounted price. It's also commonly referred to as a presale.

In my view, what matters most is giving your highly loyal customers a special experience — not necessarily through discounts, but by letting them get their hands on products before everyone else, or by offering exclusive limited-edition items.

In terms of the Chasm Theory (a technology adoption model), highly loyal customers correspond to Innovators and Early Adopters.

These customers find joy not in getting a bargain, but in owning something others don't have or having access to exclusive experiences — even if it comes at a higher price.

Be careful not to fall into the simplistic mindset of "discounts make customers happy" — this kind of thinking can actually drive away your most loyal customers.

What Is Locksmith?

The go-to app for running secret sales on Shopify is Locksmith.

With Locksmith, you can restrict access to specific product pages, collection pages, and more.

The website of Lightward Inc., the company behind Locksmith, is incredibly cool. Their philosophy around company culture and software development is inspiring, and the photography used throughout the site is top-notch.

Isaac from Lightward has helped us with support inquiries on several occasions — always responding quickly and resolving issues accurately. We're very grateful for that.

How to Set Up Locksmith

First, select the product you want to restrict access to. You can apply access restrictions not only to products, but also to collections, blog posts, and static pages.

Next, configure the conditions under which access is granted. A common setup is something like "only customers with the tag [XXX] can access this page."

Then, set up the message displayed to visitors who don't meet the access conditions.

You can also configure detailed options like whether to hide the product from site search and collection pages, and whether to exclude it from the sitemap. The level of attention to detail is impressive.

That's all there is to the setup.

When I tried accessing the page without logging in, the following screen was displayed. If you clearly communicate the benefits of signing up on this page, it can also serve as a great tool for growing your email list.

The Viral Effect of Secret Sales

While secret sales are primarily powerful for delivering exclusive experiences to your most loyal customers, they also have the potential to generate a viral effect.

Customers who've had a special experience are more likely to share it on social media. After all, when you get to experience something exclusive, you naturally want to tell people about it.

Going back to the Chasm Theory — the Majority tends to be more cautious than Innovators and Early Adopters, so they prefer to buy products that already have strong word-of-mouth. Secret sales are a great way to generate that positive buzz in bulk before your general launch.

Don't let your secret sale end there — make sure to incorporate social media posting as part of your strategy to boost the subsequent general sale.

For tips on how to generate and leverage UGC (User-Generated Content), check out the articles we've introduced below.

Executing Offer Campaigns with StoreHero

At StoreHero, we help merchants on Shopify who are looking to grow their revenue by thoroughly executing growth initiatives.

For in-store offer management, we leverage our growth platform StoreHero to utilize performance and inventory data at the product and SKU level — enabling automated optimization of cross-sell and upsell products and offers both in CRM and on-site. This allows us to support continuous growth through granular operations and large-scale initiative execution that would be impossible to achieve manually.

We are currently offering free store diagnostics. If you have challenges with offer strategies or growth initiatives in general, please don't hesitate to contact us. Learn more about our free store diagnostic here

Summary

We introduced how to run secret sales on Shopify using Locksmith. With Locksmith, setting up a secret sale is straightforward and easy.

As discussed in this article, when you make smart use of secret sales, you can also leverage them to drive viral-style selling.

We hope this article helps you make the most of secret sales in your Shopify store.