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Urgency & bookings

Eight empty tables tonight. Fill them by nine

“Flash sale — $10 off if you claim in the next two hours.”

A flash promotion is the answer to a specific, urgent problem: capacity you are about to lose. It expires on a clock you set, caps the number of claims, and stops accepting new ones the moment either limit is reached.

  • Quiet hours
  • Seasonal pushes
  • Inventory clearing
An hourglass with mint sand beside a small timer and a teal lightning bolt. Soft three-dimensional illustration in Promotedly's mint, teal and navy palette.

What the customer sees

From scan to reward, step by step

No app, no account, no download. The whole journey happens in a mobile browser on your branded page.

  1. Receives the flash offer by text or email, or sees it as a pop-up.

  2. Lands on a page with a live countdown and the remaining claim count.

  3. Claims in a few seconds — flash pages ask for the minimum information.

  4. Gets a code that expires with the window, not in thirty days.

How to set it up

Configured in the builder, live the same day

  1. Set the window

    Start and end timestamps. The promotion opens and closes itself; nobody has to remember to switch it off.

  2. Choose the offer

    Dollar off, percentage off or a free item, with the amount or percentage beside it.

  3. Cap the claims

    A hard claim limit — “first 20 people” — enforced on the server, so an over-claim is impossible.

  4. Pick a countdown

    Digits, a progress bar or none, depending on how much pressure suits your brand.

  5. Deploy

    Send it to your rewards list as a re-marketing blast, and put the pop-up on your site for the same window.

What you can configure

  • Start time
  • End time
  • Countdown style
  • Number of available redemptions
  • Discount type and amount
  • Customer eligibility
  • Minimum spend

Why it works

Scarcity and a deadline are the two oldest levers in retail, and a flash promotion is the only campaign type that uses both at once. It is also the cleanest way to monetise the list your other promotions have been building.

The outcome for this promotion is decided on our server before the customer sees it, so the prize cannot be forced from the browser.

Questions

Flash promotion questions

How short should the window be?
Short enough to create urgency, long enough for someone to act — two to four hours for a same-evening restaurant push, twenty-four to forty-eight hours for a retail or service offer. A week-long “flash” sale trains people to ignore the next one.
What happens when the claim limit is hit?
The page switches to a closed state and explains that the promotion is fully claimed. Claims are counted atomically on the server, so twenty-one people cannot claim twenty slots even if they all tap at the same second.
Can I run a flash promotion to my existing customers only?
Yes, and that is usually the best use of it. Send it as a re-marketing message to your opted-in rewards list and leave the pop-up off, so the offer feels like a members' perk rather than a public discount.

Get started

Run a flash promotion this week

Build it in the campaign builder, print the QR card, paste the pop-up snippet. The free plan covers your first hundred customers.