“We are official!”
I wrote that to a friend a few hours after Apply launched its 2020 campaign.
The idea was to reimagine the “I Voted” sticker for an election happening during a pandemic. Artists made new voting designs. Apply turned them into physical stickers and put them in the store. Profits from the campaign would go to the Voter Participation Center.
The public launch went live at 10 in the morning on October 8.
Getting there had not been tidy. A few days earlier, I still hoped we could launch on Monday. We were trying to understand whether the artists and other collaborators could tag the products in their own Instagram posts. That part was less settled than the launch plan made it sound. Monday passed. The campaign went live Thursday.
Then the work changed shape.
That evening I was testing email forwarding rules for the support, help, and feedback addresses. We planned to use Zendesk, but I wanted the founders to see the messages directly for the first few weeks. Every request would be copied to us. If someone had a problem, we would know about it before a support system made the operation feel larger or more distant than it was.
Shipping became one of the first questions. We did not want to charge customers for it, but we still wanted the package and delivery to feel good. Those two goals did not resolve themselves because the store was public.
The announcement was out. The artwork was finished. People could buy the stickers. We had a nonprofit partner and a clear reason for the campaign.
The phrase “we are official” felt good because it was true.
I spent the rest of the evening testing inbox rules. Shipping was the next problem.