“Congratulations, it is now your turn,” the computer told me. “You have 10 minutes to make your purchase.”
I rubbed my palms together. “Here we go,” I said.
As long-time readers of my newsletter know, I’m a tennis fan.
I used to play tennis when I was kid. I sucked at it. So for most of my life, I’ve instead gotten my kicks vicariously, by watching pro tennis on TV.
This year, I’ve decided I’ll go to see tennis for real.
There’s a big event in September, happening in London, called Laver Cup. It was started by tennis legend Roger Federer. It’s a kind of invite-only competition of the world’s best and most charismatic players, who compete in two teams: Europe vs. the world (aka colonizers vs. the colonized).
Tickets for the Laver Cup went on pre-sale yesterday at 11am my time. You had to be signed up to the waiting list via email, which I was.
At 10:55am, I was nervously waiting in the digital waiting room for the pre-sale to start, and for my turn in the digital queue to arrive.
At 11:04am, I got the go-ahead. I could now proceed to pay an obscene amount of money for uncomfortable seats to watch grown man clobber a little yellow ball of fuzz for three days straight.
Like I said, I rubbed my palms in excitement, and…
“Your spot in the queue has expired,” the computer told me before I had a chance to do anything. “Please rejoin the queue for another spot.”
What… How? When???
Long story short, the ticket-selling website that was supposed to take my money for Laver Cup tickets wasn’t working right, at least for me.
At first, it was telling me my spot in the queue had expired. It kept sending me back to the waiting room to rejoin the queue.
Then, as I kept flailing around in a panic that my tickets would get swept up by somebody else, the site started marking me as a bot, scammer, scalper, even though I was scrupulously following their instructions on how to buy tickets.
I spent the next hour trying again… refreshing the page… closing down tabs… switching browsers… switching from my laptop to my phone… switching wifi on and off… sending links to a friend to buy tickets in my stead… and waiting on hold with customer support, who, after hearing me out and being very understanding, told me to go to wait and try again in an hour.
Which I did.
All with no result other than frustration and agony.
I’m telling you this story mainly to vent, because I never did manage to buy the stupid tickets.
But, since I make a point of squeezing a marketing lesson out of everything, let me squeeze one out here as well.
In direct response land, where I tend to live, we are used to doing a lot of persuading, convincing, and pushing to get prospects to buy. And even then, typical conversion rates are 2% or lower.
It can warp your mental picture, and make you think that people are begrudging you the money they send you.
The fact is though, if you find a buyer in heat, the way I was yesterday, they will fight and strive to overcome all sorts of obstacles to give you money.
My most dramatic experience of that, as a seller, came during the last 15 or so minutes of the auction I ran in December.
Every few seconds, people were bidding thousands of dollars more on the offer I had put up on auction, and strategizing how they can be the ones to pay the most before the deadline (the winning bid came in at $31k).
Yesterday, I ran my second-ever auction.
The offer on auction was “behind the scenes” data of auctions I will be running in the coming months, weeks, and days (including a new one, tonight, for a partner).
I won’t tell you how my auction yesterday did, since that’s info that I’ve sold to people yesterday, as part of much more detailed “behind the scenes” data.
But I have gotten messages today about my auction yesterday, like the following:
“I couldn’t be there (4 kids bath and bed) but would love to learn from the metrics! Is there a way I can do that?”
I’m considering making some for of my “behind the scenes” data available, to a limited number of people, even outside the auction.
If this is interesting to you, then hit reply and tell me what are you most curious about in the “behind the scenes” auction data I’m offering to share.
If I do end up making this offer available, you will have to reply like this to be able to get it. In other words, a kind of waiting list of the eager, though I promise to be less maddeningly arbitrary and glitchy than the Laver Cup site.