How to Run A Successful 'Flash Sale' and Make Quick Cash This Season

Fact: 76% of all adult Shoppers are procrastinators, says International Journal of Shopping Centers. They love to put off decisions even if they are interested in an item.

One technique that works like a charm and makes them shed their inertia is a ‘Flash Sale.’

Limited hour Flash sales are insanely effective in driving revenue to a store. In fact, a study shows that flash sale emails convert 2X better into transactions than any other emails.

The study further shows:

• Three-hour flash sales have the best transaction to click rates i.e. 59% higher.
• Flash sales perform better during evening hours. Sales are 23% higher for evening flash sales compared to lunch time flash sales. And the revenue per email is 30% greater in the evening.

Here are three compelling case studies of small store owners like you that prove Flash Sales are pretty successful at injecting a super quick cash into the system:

• A Small Store owner called Euphoric Herbals clocked a conversion rate of 12.86% during a Flash Sale. They set up 25% off on all items in the shop, strictly for 48 hours.
• CaseMate (sells smartphone cases) launched a flash sale from 7 AM to 7 PM on a Monday. They offered a discount at flat 30% across the store because it was a sweet spot for them. It increased their revenue by 236%! And it was so hugely successful that they organized another flash sale just two weeks later and doubled their conversion rate, this time.
• The Musician’s Guide ran a flash sale for 100 hours flat with a prominent countdown timer on the site and increased sales by 332%! His case study was featured on ConversionXL.com.

You can use Flash sales for these purposes:

• Special occasions (Store Anniversary, key dates, festivals)
• Retiring old products
• Re-launching new products and want to clear inventory

Now that we know how Flash Sales can inject super quick cash into your system let’s move on and discuss how you can set up nifty campaigns like these on your WooCommerce Store.

Currently, in WooCommerce there’s no way you can start the sale at a certain hour of the day and end it at a set time. You only have the option of picking up the dates. So if you want to run a limited hour flash sale, it’s impossible.

But don’t worry, I am going to show you how you achieve all this and much more using Finale. Let’s get started.

Step #1: Set up a fixed campaign by selecting the start date/time and end date/time

Select One-Time for creating a campaign that starts on a specified date/time and expires on a certain date/time.

Step #2: Set up the discount on the products

Select the discount you’d like to offer on your products during the flash sale. If you have set the discount independently on product pages, you can check the box below so that this discount gets overridden.

Step #3: Configure the sticky header with countdown timer

Select Appearance from the sidebar >> Click on ‘Show’ for Sticky header

Configure all the settings such as headline, sub-headline, the background color of the sticky header. Make sure you put some compelling text here to draw visitors and onlookers in.

Scroll down further to select the sticky header skin, background color, and the font sizes. All these options are easy to configure via drop-downs and text boxes.

Step #4: Select ‘Always’ from the Rule Builder below to start a store-wide sale

To set up a Flash sale on all products across the store, scroll below to the Rule Builder section. Select ‘Always’ from here. Rule builder prevents the hassle of visiting individual product pages.

Step #5: Update this and see the final results on the front end

Sticky headers do an excellent job of intimating shoppers about the on-going campaign. They don’t interfere with the buying experience but add to it.

You’re most welcome to change the colors, customize the skins and write persuasive texts. You can also set up a sticky footer instead of a header and also you may begin the countdown on the product page itself. The choice it yours. All the options are at your disposal.

Play! Think WoW Wednesdays, Fantastic Fridays, special Weekend offers- all done and dusted!

Excited to see what else Finale can do for you? Why not! Head out to Finale and explore right away.

If you’re not ready yet, no worries- we’ve stacked up a lot more use cases. Keep exploring till you find out if you and Finale are the right fit for each other.

We’re playing the lovely hosts!