How I Mangled A ‘Flash Sale’

Some days I swear they should revoke my “marketing license.”

Maybe put me to work sorting beer cans at the recycling center or something.

Last week I had one of those days…

I’d been scurrying to put together a quick 2-day “flash sale” for one of our video courses at Simple Programmer.

These sales are about as braindead simple as you can get:

Three emails. One email announcing the sale, a second the following morning with more info about the product, and a short “last chance” email late in the second day.

You’d be shocked how many ways I’ve found to screw this up over the years.

Wrong dates, mangled URLs, embarrassing typos, coupon codes with misaligned expiration dates…

Every time I vow THIS WILL BE THE TIME when I really nail it—no glitches.

So I was super careful.

I checked and double checked all the links.

I reviewed the emails 2X each, and had my business partner John check ’em too for good measure.

I thought I had everything locked down real tight.

Until the morning of the sale.

John pings me:

Hey, I just got email #2, but I haven’t seen email #1 yet.

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

I jumped into Drip, and sure enough…

I’d screwed up the send dates.

Instead of scheduling email #2 for the second day like I meant to, I’d accidentally set it to go out 30 minutes BEFORE email #1 (where we actually announced the sale).

Which meant our subscribers got 2 sales emails within 30 minutes, out of sequence.

Good grief.

The sad part is, I HAVE a checklist for these kinds of campaigns to make sure I have all my T’s dotted and I’s crossed.

I was in a rush, though, so I decided to use my trusty “mental checklist” instead.

Lesson re-re-re-learned.

There are a lot of moving parts to even a simple online promotion like this—lots of small details to manage, and missing even one can throw a serious monkey wrench into the works.

And when you “don’t have time” for your checklist…

Well, that’s when you REALLY need that checklist.

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