Promotion Launch Protection Checklist
=====================================
A pre-launch checklist that scopes a Shopify discount, locks its rules, tests the checkout, and sets up the monitoring that catches a leak in its first week.

[ ] Write one sentence describing exactly who this promotion is for and which channel will deliver it.
[ ] Enter your baseline orders, margin, and planned discount into the Promo Break-Even Lift Calculator and confirm the lift you honestly expect clears break-even.
[ ] Decide whether the offer needs a code at all, or whether an automatic discount tied to a customer segment, tag, or logged-in state would reach the same people with less risk of spreading.
[ ] If a code is required, prefer unique single-use codes per recipient over one shared code whenever the channel can merge them into the message.
[ ] Set a per-customer use limit of one unless there is a documented reason to allow more.
[ ] Set a total use cap sized to the audience, even if you do not expect to hit it, so a leak has a natural ceiling.
[ ] Set an end date and record it in the campaign calendar; open-ended codes are the ones that live on aggregator sites for years.
[ ] Exclude clearance items, gift cards, low-margin bundles, and anything already discounted, and make those exclusions your default rather than something to remember each time.
[ ] List every other discount that will be active during the promo window, including automatic discounts, app-driven offers, loyalty rewards, and store credit that behaves like a discount.
[ ] For each active discount, decide explicitly whether the new offer may combine with product discounts, order discounts, and shipping discounts, and write the decision where the whole team can see it.
[ ] Test the checkout as a shopper would, trying the combinations you expect to fail, and fix any rule that only applied to one discount type.
[ ] Confirm that a declined code shows the shopper a plain message rather than failing silently.
[ ] Give customer support a short, kind script for shoppers whose code is refused, since some of them will be legitimate.
[ ] Decide in advance what happens if the code leaks: let it run under the cap, retire and reissue as unique codes, or replace it with a modest controlled public code.
[ ] Note the audience size next to the code so anyone can compare redemptions against it later.
[ ] Set a weekly check of redemptions against audience size, referring source of code orders, and average order value on the code for the life of the promotion.
[ ] Set a review of orders that share a shipping address, phone number, or payment fingerprint with an earlier redemption of a first-order offer.
[ ] Name the person who will look at flagged orders and confirm they can see why each order was flagged before deciding.
[ ] Schedule the retirement of the code on its end date and make sure the retirement actually removes it from checkout, not just from the marketing calendar.
[ ] After the promotion ends, calculate its true profit from gross margin, including discounts, returns, fees, and shipping subsidy, using the method at /blog/true-profit-of-a-promotion/.
[ ] Record what leaked, what stacked, and what was refused, and hand the findings to marketing and finance before the next campaign is planned.