I was lying in bed last night by the open window, enjoying the spring breeze, listening to the radio. Suddenly, the music on the radio stopped and an urgent news announcement came on—
Two tectonic plates had just shifted somewhere off the coast of Western Australia.
As a consequence, a tsunami, a massive wave hundreds of meters high, was headed towards my little beach barrio of Poblenou, Barcelona, Spain.
I immediately jumped out of bed, threw on my Tommy Bahama shirt, and rushed to find Hector Campana, the main civil engineer in Poblenou. ”I have to warn Hector,” I said breathlessly, “we have to somehow survive this massive wave.”
I stormed inside Hector’s offices in an old colonial building by the waterfront. But he wasn’t there. One of his unshaven and red-eyed employees looked up at me.
”Hector?” he scoffed. “Go check the bar.”
“It’s a matter of life and death!” I said, and I ran to the bar on the corner.
Sure enough, Hector was there, slumped on a bench against the back wall, eyes closed, five empty bottles on the table in front of him.
I yelled at him to get up and get to work. He didn’t respond.
I grabbed him by the shoulders and tried to shake him awake. But he just slumped over even more, all the way off the bench, and down to the floor.
I took a quick look around to make sure nobody was watching, and I gave Hector a healthy kick in the ribs. This finally seemed to wake the brute up.
He opened his eyes a little, grumbled, and said in a drunken drawl:
“Engineers have detected multiple services degraded. At this time, delays in processing and intermittent errors may continue to be experienced until full resolution is declared. Mar 06 2023, 14:21 CST.”
That’s pretty much exactly how it went down last night.
The full story is that Daniel Throssell, somewhere off or on the coast of Western Australia, sent out an email to his list. This email had my ad inside, which I had paid Daniel $1,000 for.
As a result, a traffic wave, many hundreds of visitors high, hit my little online barrio.
But Hector Campana — aka ActiveCampaign, my email service provider — was drinking on the job, completely unable to deal with the incoming wave.
For the better part of yesterday’s afternoon, evening, and night, ActiveCampaign was passed out and unresponsive.
Broadcast emails took hours to go out. Autoresponder emails weren’t working at all. Neither were automations — and I had set up an automation to actually deliver the promised lead magnet to people who responded to my ad.
I spent about three hours last night fixing what I could by hand, and sending emails to people who had taken me up on the paid offer on the Thank You page.
During the night, ActiveCampaign gradually sobered up and emails finally started going out. Even so, I still had an hour or two of cleanup this morning.
So all in all, it was a total disaster. Really, the only salvageable thing was this:
Even though ActiveCampaign was passed out last night, it was at least registering (most) people who opted in. So as of right now, a little more than 14 hours after Daniel’s email went out, I have some 410 new subscribers thanks to my ad.
More importantly, I’ve also made 37 sales of the $100 offer I was making on the optin Thank You page.
25 of those sales came from people who were already subscribed to my list, and who opted in again via the ad to get the free bonuses I promised.
But I’ve also made 12 sales of the same $100 offer to entirely new subscribers.
Which means that — twelve times one hundred, carry the four — my ad in Daniel’s newsletter has already paid for itself. In fact, it paid for itself in just 3 hours and 9 minutes — that’s how long it took for the 10th purchase from a new subscriber to come in.
So a total disaster looked at from one angle… or looked at from another angle, an unqualified success.
Meanwhile, back in Poblenou:
Later today, I will organize an emergency Town Hall meeting to discuss the firing and possible lynching of Hector Campana.
Also later today, at 3:31pm EST to be exact, I will take down the paid offer I am currently making on that Thank You page.
While I promised Daniel that my lead magnet would only be available through the ad in his newsletter, this paid offer on the Thank You page isn’t part of that promise.
So whether you just got onto my list, or whether you’ve been on my list for a while, you can take me up on this offer. But you do have to be on my list. To get on there, click here and fill out the form that appears.