Let’s play a game of “Hit the Bejako piñata”:
As you might already know about me, I am very prone to making technical mistakes, snafus, and cock-ups.
Earlier in my life, this manifested itself in all kinds of travel related mishaps: showing up to the airport many hours too early, too late, on the wrong day, without the right visa, without having bought a ticket but fully convinced I had one (yes, this really happened).
Over the decades, I’ve largely managed to eliminate my travel-related clunkers.
But since I now work online and even have a little business online, each day presents a fresh new opportunity to screw up something technical, all the way from the mildly embarrassing to the serious in terms of reputation and money.
For example, consider the events of the past few days:
All of past week, I’ve been telling people to get on the waiting list for my Influential Emails course.
On Wednesday, I opened up the course to people on the waiting list who had bought something from me before. On Thursday, I opened it up to people on the waiting list who had never bought anything from me.
By Friday morning, I’d reached the number of sales I had been hoping for. So I closed down the cart and wrote an email about it, which I scheduled to be sent out last night.
But then, starting yesterday morning and culminating after the email last night, I got replies like the following:
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I thought you should know that I never received any cart-open emails for Influential Emails despite having signed up for the waiting list.
Actually, I know I clicked on at least two of the waitlist links (in different emails) to be sure I was on the list because I was interested in purchasing.
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I would like to blame Octavia Campo aka ActiveCampaign for this. But really, it was Bejako the airheaded technician at work again.
Turns out I forgot to add the automation for adding people to the waiting list to at least two of the emails I sent out over the past week. As a result, some 100 people who expressed interest did not get added to the waitlist, and did not receive the email when the cart opened.
Yesterday and today, I’ve been doing damage control, replying to people who wrote me, and reopening the cart for them.
Like I said, it’s time to get out the sticks, and start working on the Bejako piñata.
In short, thanks to my airheadedness, I’ve created a bunch of extra work for myself… I’ve confused and possibly offended long-time customers, who were wondering why they got snubbed in this launch… and I’ve put myself in a situation in which I look like one of those ecommerce brands that says, “Whoa, somebody didn’t get a chance to buy yesterday, so we’re extending the sale for another day!”
So I’m sending this email for two reasons:
One is to explain what exactly happened to anyone who did get impacted by my technological prowess.
Reason two I’ll explain tomorrow, in case you’re curious.
Meanwhile, the Influential Emails cart remains closed except for the people I am ferreting out as having expressed interest earlier, and not having had a chance to buy.
So the only thing i have to offer you today is my 10 Commandments book. You might want to get it for its own inherent value, or for the reasons I talked about yesterday, and that I will talk more about tomorrow. If you’re interested, here’s the link: