The Power of the WF -- Stompernet magazine launch debacle answered by Andy J.

[Dan.Thies]

Sent you a PM.

We're ready to ship the January issue, just waiting on Infusionsoft to finish the last step of the data migration so we can do that.

[Dan.Thies]

Issue #4 (January) is shipping.

Rajsidhux you'll see #3 (December) and #4 (January) in the same shipment, which should go out on Monday. As we discussed in PM, the reshipment caused them to suspend billing. You won't be charged for the December issue.

[jaimeklein]

This is the first (hopefully of many) posts on this forum that I've made,

So hello to all the WR members, pleased to meet you

I'm a newbie marketer trying to soak up as much IM related info as possible, and STSE2 is a fantastic resource as is TNE.

I'm launching myself head first into the internet marketing arena this year, but that's another story for another time....

To Dan, I think you're doing a great job of answering everyone's questions, issues and problems. Well done and thank you.

To everyone else who had issues with their order, I feel your pain....

I am one of the people who didn't receive my package in an acceptable time frame,

and when it did finally arrive, CD cases were smashed etc. There were also some unanswered emails etc but I'm not going to make this a whinge post, I just have some questions for you regarding TNE.

Firstly, I'm in the UK at the moment and haven't seen any signs of TNE#3. Should this have been delivered already? (I'm in London)

Secondly, when are the issues usually shipped out? Beginning of the month? End? Middle? Or does it change each month?

Thirdly, I am moving to Australia end of January, (roughly) what is the time frame for TNE to hit Australian shores?

Lastly, to change my shipping address to from the UK to Australia, is there a Net Effect website with our billing address, shipping address etc that I can log in to or is it a matter of contacting the STSE2 helpdesk?

To everyone here on the forum, I hope you all make at least $1,000,000 more then you did last year, and if you're already making that much, then add some zeros
2009 is going to be a great year! Despite the current economic climate.

To Dan and Andy and the Stompernet team, the material that you put out is first class, top notch stuff, keep it up!

Thanks,

Jaime Klein

P.S Dan say hi to Ed next time you see him, he's my favorite SN member, being an Aussie and all!

[Dan.Thies]

Jaime,

We had a group of customers whose orders had to be reshipped. They typically received issues 1 and 2 in that shipment, or issue 2 in a second shipment in a few cases.

Because of the timing, some of those customers weren't rebilled in December and weren't shipped issue #3.

Assuming they didn't cancel, we're going to bill those folks for issue #4 and ship both issues (3 and 4) in the same package. We aren't "double billing," just "double shipping" to get things caught up.

That *should* happen Monday. Doing this involves a little bit of database kung-fu so we don't bill for two issues, so we may end up delayed by a day or two.

If you send me a PM and give me the email address you used when you ordered, I can look it up and see if you're in that group. Either way I can let you know what's up and get things straightened out.

Updates on some other stuff...
We will be reopening the "stomping the search engines 2 / net effect" offer in a few days for anyone who didn't get it the first time around. By the end of next week, we'll have a system set up for anyone who wants to reactivate their subscription - I slowed that down by a week because I wanted to make it easy to order back issues at the same time.

[jaimeklein]

Thanks for the quick reply Dan,

All the best

Jaime Klein

[ITOutsourcing]

You know what, I was kind of annoyed with the fact that that I couldn't reach anyone in awhile, but I also have to say the free product was a kick ass value. Andy clearly understands something that I don't understand, because that was some serious content for free.

Andy btw if you are this form I have one question. Every once in awhile I come back yours and brad site and I don't see a reciprocal link or article page and your products have no follow tag on them. I'm not referring to contact us page or TOS your actual products. Did something change since the videos?

[Joseph Ratliff]

Originally Posted by IMChick

Hi, Warriors,

I just opened my email to this from Andy Jenkins and the Stomper team. It's an apology with an analysis and review of what went wrong on their recent print launch.

Make no mistake, this email would not exist without the WF and the many Warrior's thousands of posts in the 'debacle' threads.

Here it is in case you missed it:

Hi, Andy Jenkins here.

I've never had to write an email like this before - and it's
one of the hardest things I've ever had to do at StomperNet.

Back in September, we launched our print journal, The Net
Effect, and offered you a chance to receive our top-of-theline
SEO training program, Stomping the Search Engines 2.0, for no
more than the cost of shipping. Nearly 18,000 of you took us up
on that offer, and although the vast majority of our customers
received the products they ordered without incident, some of
you did not. For that, I apologize.

At this point, we have reshipped thousands of products and every
problem that we are aware of has been resolved.

We've heard some folks out there on the forums are saying that
our customer service team didn't respond to them. While it's
possible that a few emails slipped through the cracks, our team
has responded to X thousand cases since September.

If you are still experiencing any problems at all, you can
reach our support team by email (escalate@stompernet.com) or
call our new 24x7 telephone support line at 404-348-4401. All
issues will be handled promptly.

1. The Short Story

At the end of this email, you'll find a download link for a PDF
file that contains the full story, in agonizing detail, of
everything we did wrong, everything we did right, and what
we've learned from this experience.

My hope is that by sharing this information, we can help some
of you avoid the kind of problems we experienced. In the
meantime, here's the short story. In August, before we made
our offer public, I placed advance orders for 5000 copies of
the Stomping the Search Engines 1 & 2 DVDs, and 5000
copies of Issue 1 of The Net Effect.

We hired what we thought was the best fulfillment house
available, based on recommendations from a lot of other folks
in the online marketing space. We tested the shopping cart. We
had inventory on hand. When we opened our doors for business on
September 5th, we honestly, sincerely believed that we were
ready.

2. How It's Supposed to Work

The process was supposed to be super simple. Our customers
would place orders, the fulfillment house would ship their
orders, and we'd produce additional inventory as needed if we
had underestimated the demand.

Our worst-case scenario was that it might take a couple weeks
to ship orders out, even if we sold out our original inventory
on the first day.

After giving our customers 35-40 days to evaluate The Net
Effect and cancel if they chose to do so, we would begin
shipping issue #2 to our subscribers in mid-October. (* Note:
Although our sales copy described it as a 30-day trial, we
allowed an additional 5 days for domestic and 10 days for
international shipping.)

3. How It Went Wrong

As I said, for the vast majority of our customers (well over
90%), everything did go more or less as it was supposed to.

But when you're dealing with 18,000 people, that's not nearly
good enough.

We could blame it all on the fulfillment house letting us down,
but that doesn't do a darned thing for our customers, and
besides - I'm the genius who hired them. When you do hire the
wrong fulfillment house, that bad decision gets magnified big
time.

You see, when you're shipping physical products, it takes about
3 weeks to even have the slightest inkling of a problem,
because for the first 2-3 weeks, your products are supposed to
be on their way to the customer. By the time you find out that
a whole lot of products were *not* shipped on time, or not
shipped at all... well, the damage is done.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

4. I'm Sorry

I could go on all day explaining everything that went wrong,
but that wouldn't be fair to those readers who just wanted to
hear me say "I'm sorry." I am. Profoundly so. But I'd like to
tell you the rest of the story - and I think I can make it
worth your while to listen.

So, here's what I've got for you: a 23-page report (PDF) with
the entire blow-by-blow story. Everything that went wrong. How
our team responded. What we learned. The steps we've taken to
make sure that this *never* happens to our customers again.
I'll explain how *you* can avoid making the same mistakes,
and a few things that just might help you do truly amazing
things for your customers.

There are some real gems in this report for anyone who does
business online - including an amazing solution to speed up
international shipments.

You can download that report here - no opt-in, no nothing,
just download it and read.

Thanks for your interest in StomperNet and The Net Effect!

Andy Jenkins
CEO, StomperNet

P.S. For anyone who thought we were going to just disappear...
Not a chance. Issue #3 is shipping now, and we'll be ready to
take on new subscribers in a couple days.

Yeah...good stuff IM Chick...the report you can download is actually a solid read in my opinion...and a good lesson for large scale launches like this.

Other than WF, other forums started the same type of thread...so this was pretty widespread it seems.

[Dan.Thies]

@ITOutsourcing, if you use any of the SEO browser plug-ins to look at nofollow links on MyWeddingFavors.com, it will appear that *all* of the links are nofollowed. That's part of a defensive strategy I put in place to deal with proxy hacking:
Google Proxy Hacking: How A Third Party Can Remove Your Site From Google SERPs
Because you are not a search engine spider, and can't fool the server into believing that you are, there's a robots meta tag added when you visit that says "noindex, nofollow" so it appears that all links are nofollowed.

Real spiders are permitted to crawl and index - it's the same content, the only thing that changes is index/follow permissions.

A lot has changed since "Stomping the Search Engines 1" - I'd recommend watching the new version.

[Charles E. White]

The only thing I have to say is from experience, I have known Andy for several years and have dealt with him several times without any problems at all.

I do think there were some mistakes made on his part but I also think Andy has learned from them and will correct them in the future, knowing Andy as I do from his online business and dealings.

I feel bad for the buyers who had problems but also feel bad for Andy that this has happened like it did. The only thing he can do is see that is doesn't happen ever again, which I personally think he will for sure.

[Dan.Thies]

Quick question - we're releasing FormulaFIVE on Monday, how does this sound? Most importantly - can anyone find any "cracks" a customer could fall through?

1) All shipments will be tracked - UPS 2-day domestic and International Express everywhere else. Domestic goes to ground shipping (still tracked) for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th shipments.
2) A script starts running on day 8, checking the 7-day-old shipments to verify delivery. Any shipments that aren't verified trigger a manual followup - contacting clients by email & phone.
3) Support team will have a 1-click "reship" process - they verify the address with the customer, click to reship. New package ships the next business day, with a 7-day trigger for manual follow up.

[jrsencio]

Originally Posted by Andy Jenkins

We are, and we will do a "Rescue Pissed Customers" campaign. InfusionSoft is just about ready to go - there's some further testing that needs to be done (again, not taking any chances this time), and we'll notify customers who canceled how they can pick up where they left off.

Apology First. Then we'll do some (cough) marketing.

Hey Andy can I get on the "rescue pissed customers" list too.

The net effect 2nd edition and net effect 3rd edition were supposed to have been sent november and december and I have spoken numerous times to people on your staff but well... still no Net Effect.

[jrsencio]

Originally Posted by Dan.Thies

Issue #4 (January) is shipping.

Rajsidhux you'll see #3 (December) and #4 (January) in the same shipment, which should go out on Monday. As we discussed in PM, the reshipment caused them to suspend billing. You won't be charged for the December issue.

So Dan, did these shipments actually go out?

I have been informed several times by our customer support guys that the 2nd and 3rd editions have been sent and are on the way, well that was two months ago.

[Dan.Thies]

Issue #4 is shipping - some went Friday, the rest Monday. The folks getting issue #3 and #4 together, will go on Monday or Tuesday.

@jrsencio, if you can PM me with the email address you used when you ordered, I'll get you a specific answer on your issue.

[Nathan Hangen]

I have been keeping up with F5 and I am super impressed with the Brand of Stompernet. I don't know anything about the magazine (wasn't fortunate enough to get in), but the brand is amazing. Have you seen those videos?

[dejableu]

I stupidly paid around $300 for the free stuff (fell for all the sales letters).

CANNOT GET A REFUND! Returned it all in November. NO ONE will even answer my emails! It's amazing.

I've just sent emails to the ones listed on here. Bet I still don't hear
back from them.

[Dan.Thies]

Dejableu,

November would likely have been past the evaluation period for that, but if you send me a PM here and tell me the email address you used when you ordered, I will look into it personally.