How To Run an E-commerce Flash Sale

Make sure you have enough Inventory. 
Do you have enough product to satisfy the increased demand?
Are you looking to push for a specific holiday? If you are, align the sale with the shipping cut off.

Have your Customer Service strategy on lock.
Make sure your customer service reps are aware of the timeline and any restrictions so they can handle the influx of questions. 

Get your creative strategy together.
Have a single design on hand that can easily be cropped or resized to be used across every channel. 
Use an evergreen ad, or, have a template that can be easily adjusted for timely messaging. 

Get your website working for you.
Add a sale banner to the top of the website header. Bonus points if you add a “countdown” timer.
Turn on an exit intent pop up that promotes the sale.

Manage your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) 
Turn on Flash Sale ad extensions and Dynamic Countdown ads. 

Implement Paid Social & Organic Social strategies
Paid: Set up Facebook promo ads and use retargeting.
Organic: Post on the social platforms where your customers shop. 

**The X WAY TIP: Do not post in your timeline, as these do not disappear and could cause customer service issues following the sale.

Email: Get in those inboxes
Have an evergreen Flash Sale template ready to send that you can pull out and make minor updates to throughout the year. Then, blast your list, segmenting out recent purchasers. Sent at least three campaigns, one to introduce the sale, one with a day left, and one with just hours left. 

Measure, Measure, Measure!
Set a revenue goal for your flash sale and pull channel reports to measure effectiveness of sale and record learnings for next activation.