** Work out the time zone. I am in Hawai'i, so I am behind most. My feature began at 9pm my time, but at 12am California time. I was able stick around for the first couple of hours as my feature went live.
** Remember, if you offer perks to VIP's, they will be able to buy and redeem vouchers a day earlier than non-paying Heartsy customers! I learned this the hard way!
** Be organized! I have another thread (search “Sharing my Heartsy spreadsheets with you”) that helped me stay organized. Convo me and I’ll be happy to send it to you.
** Stock up on materials, shipping supplies, etc.
** Stay close to your computer the day of your feature. You will be renewing tons! Also, expect to spend the day answering convos, emails, setting up reserved listings, etc.
** Don’t raise your prices for a feature and then change it back the next day. There is no rule to this (that I know of), but IMO that’s just bad taste. Instead, deactivate the stuff you cannot afford to sell for 50% off for your feature.
** Replace your Shop Announcement with a message to Heartsy Customers. Some of the things I included were how to checkout using “Other”, policies (one voucher per customer, etc), turnaround period (x amount of days to complete order), shipping info (I will contact you with tracking #’s), contact information (email, facebook page, etc.). Once my feature was over, I changed my announcement back, but kept a small portion of the above for Heartsy customers that had not redeemed their vouchers so they knew what to do, etc.
** Replace your message to buyers with a brief version of what I said above. Sometimes they don’t read the shop announcement, but they will read an email sent directly to them.
** If you can, send out invoices as soon as possible. Use the spreadsheet mentioned in #2 to mark off the invoices that were sent, the invoices that were not paid, etc.
STATS:
Submitted Application to Heartsy: April 10th
Offered Deal: May 2nd
Agreed Upon Deal: May 9th
Day of Feature: May 23rd
Deal: 25 vouchers at $15/$30 VIP Exclusive
Total number of votes needed: 60
Total number of votes received: 502
Everyone: 33% - 20% - 25%
Non-Buyers: 42% - 22% - 26%
Buyers: 27% - 17% - 24%
Total # of views received: 7608
Total # of vouchers sold: 25
Total # of vouchers redeemed to date: 13
Total # of customers that went over amount: All 13!!
Total # of repeat customers since feature: 4
Total # of non-Heartsy sales the day of my feature: 7 (not sure if applicable – but I’d like to think the advertising helped!!)
*Would I do it again? You bet!! But not for another month or two :)
