When Big Launches or Big Specials Go Very, Very Wrong

by tpw
8 replies
What can go wrong on a product launch in which you have invested months of preparation?

Let me count the ways for you...

* Just the other day, I was recounting the story of the lady who invested a ton of money writing and distributing 100's of articles on the premise of ranking well for mesothelioma, because she had seen that people were paying as much as $20 per click for that keyword. While this isn't a launch per se, in the natural sense, it shows very succinctly how launches could go wrong.

The problem was in this case that the website launch was doomed before it began, because her keyword research was flawed.

People were bidding up to $20 per click -- well, one person was bidding $20 per click!!! One attorney was involved in a mesothelioma class action lawsuit, and he was paying up to $20 per click, but he was only spending $40 a day.

In her case, the marketer spent tens of thousands of dollars to rank for a keyword phrase, so that she could monetize on Adsesne. But the attorney in question was only spending $1200 per month on Google Adwords, and Google was keeping half of that.

With only Google Adsense as her monetization plan, she was doomed because she built her business model on a weak foundation.

It took her almost a year to realize that her plan had gone wrong, and she finally disappeared from the article marketing landscape after having spent tens of thousands of dollars.


* In 2008, an iPhone launch was crippled by a server crash (Server Crash Caused Glitch In iPhone Launch - News Story - KIRO Seattle). For roughly the first 24 hours after the launch, customers were unable to activate their new iPhones.


* Also in 2008, Frank Kern launched his Mass Control program. While the server withstood the onslaught of orders, his membership site was unable to withstand the "mass" of people logging into the site simultaneously.


* On the heels of Kern's product launch, Jeff Walker launched Product Launch Formula 2.0. His server crashed on launch as well -- or did it?

Edit: I do not for a moment doubt that Jeff Walker suffered technical problems with his launch. Many people questioned it as a marketing trick, but along with others including Paul Myers, I know that it is easy for a website to get caught in technical traps.

For example, all of my websites were offline for 16 days in May of 2009. That was when I got my first gray hairs.

My web hosting company moved my server from one machine to another, which predicated a name server IP change. I knew in advance and made the changes on my Domain Registrar's website -- I thought.

When the day of the server change came, ALL of my sites went offline and my email broke.

My Domain Registrar was in lock-down, by order of ICAAN.

I could not make any changes at all to my account at the Domain Registrar, until ICAAN completed the transfer to another Domain Registrar.

There was nothing I could do. I was stuck in Purgatory for 16 days.
Marketers were a bit leery of Walker's server crash, because they had come to expect that Kern's Syndicate should have learned its lessons from Mass Control, making arrangements to prevent another post-launch server crash.

Many suggested that it was a case of a "scarcity tactic" to drive up interest and sales, but that would be a dangerous game when 100's of thousands of dollars in sales are at stake.


Fast forward to Black Friday, 2010...

* Host Gator apparently ran a Black Friday special this morning that went horribly wrong.

Someone skyped me about it this morning, very upset with as she called it, "HostGator's bait and switch tactics"!!

For details on the offer, see here: (http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ull-years.html)

The sale was supposed to run for 4 hours, from 5am to 9am CST. And the Black Friday sale offered hosting for as much as 80% off of many packages.

I heard the complaint at 9:30 am CST.

She said their 4-hour sale lasted 8 minutes!!!

And Host Gators' servers apparently crashed during their Black Friday Sale.

As someone said in Skype, "Yeah, if their servers can't handle the traffic for their own sale, how the Hell are they gonna handle our traffic?"

The only saving grace offered to Host Gator was a note that several people had received several emails about Host Gators' Black Friday Sale, so it is assumed that it maybe had received the same level of promotion as a Syndicate Launch usually gets.

The lady who originally brought it up was still sitting in the Host Gator customer service queue at 10am, with 111 people in front of her!!



With all of the things that can go wrong during a big launch or a big sale, the ones that can be most easily managed are usually the ones that are often the culprit leading to disaster.

If you tried to buy from the Host Gator Black Friday Sale this morning, would you mind sharing your experience with us too?

Did you get in on the deal?

Or did you miss out on the Black Friday deals?
#big #black friday #host gator #launches #server crashes #specials #wrong
  • Profile picture of the author VanessaB
    I did not attempt to buy from HG today, and I try to avoid going out at all today, as I would probably end up with a nice pair of steel bracelets if I did.

    Since I'm the one who said "Yeah, if their servers can't handle the traffic for their own sale, how the Hell are they gonna handle our traffic?"
    I'll pipe in.

    That remark was semi tongue in cheek. Since I doubt I would be using HG if I were expecting that abundance of traffic on a launch, it was more my sarcastic nature talking.

    BUT...

    As for scarcity tactics, most people use them incorrectly.

    To 'fake' it, will inevitably result in some seriously pissed off people who may never trust you again.

    I use scarcity to push a loss leader. I want eyeballs to upsells.

    HG's fatal flaw in their 2010 Black Friday marketing campaign was offering EVERYTHING at 80% off and then not being able to meet the demand.

    The pathetic attempt to save face with the 50% off option was too quick to be implemented if it hadn't already been planned, which makes the deal look even more 'orchstrated' and contributes, severely, to the loss of confidence consumers will now feel toward the reptilian named hosting company.

    HG got the positioning wrong on this one.

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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
    Bill,
    His server crashed on launch as well -- or did it?
    Yes. The technical problems were quite real.

    There are a lot of things that can go wrong with a server or other set-up that can cause a "crash." (Loose translation: resources unavailable due to technical issues.) Learning how to avoid one of those doesn't begin to provide real assurance that others won't pop up at a later time.

    Some of them are related to the hardware. Basically, how studly is the server, and how big is the pipe? Those are pretty straightforward most of the time, and not often related to launch problems any more. The configuration issues are a whole other matter. There are not a lot of technical folks who think in terms of the kind of burst load a modern launch can create when they set up systems, especially as they relate to database handling. The complexity of the problem is something very few marketers really understand.

    Naturally, they look for answers to the question, "How could these 'gurus' let this happen?" The only explanations they can come up with relate to the one thing they think they have a good grasp of - marketing.

    Doesn't work. You don't get useful answers that way.


    Paul
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    • Profile picture of the author tpw
      Originally Posted by Paul Myers View Post

      Bill,Yes. The technical problems were quite real.

      There are a lot of things that can go wrong with a server or other set-up that can cause a "crash." (Loose translation: resources unavailable due to technical issues.) Learning how to avoid one of those doesn't begin to provide real assurance that others won't pop up at a later time.

      Some of them are related to the hardware. Basically, how studly is the server, and how big is the pipe? Those are pretty straightforward most of the time, and not often related to launch problems any more. The configuration issues are a whole other matter. There are not a lot of technical folks who think in terms of the kind of burst load a modern launch can create when they set up systems, especially as they relate to database handling. The complexity of the problem is something very few marketers really understand.

      Naturally, they look for answers to the question, "How could these 'gurus' let this happen?" The only explanations they can come up with relate to the one thing they think they have a good grasp of - marketing.

      Doesn't work. You don't get useful answers that way.


      Paul

      Paul: For the record, I never doubted for a minute that there really were technical issues. I phrased as I did, because I saw a lot of posts online, where Jeff Walkers' integrity was being questioned by those who thought it was a marketing trick.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulie888
      Originally Posted by Paul Myers View Post

      Bill,Yes. The technical problems were quite real.

      There are a lot of things that can go wrong with a server or other set-up that can cause a "crash." (Loose translation: resources unavailable due to technical issues.) Learning how to avoid one of those doesn't begin to provide real assurance that others won't pop up at a later time.

      Some of them are related to the hardware. Basically, how studly is the server, and how big is the pipe? Those are pretty straightforward most of the time, and not often related to launch problems any more. The configuration issues are a whole other matter. There are not a lot of technical folks who think in terms of the kind of burst load a modern launch can create when they set up systems, especially as they relate to database handling. The complexity of the problem is something very few marketers really understand.

      Naturally, they look for answers to the question, "How could these 'gurus' let this happen?" The only explanations they can come up with relate to the one thing they think they have a good grasp of - marketing.

      Doesn't work. You don't get useful answers that way.


      Paul
      Yes, it's very easy for the marketers who don't know any better to blame everything on crafty and devious marketing strategies on the part of the seller. With everything that the internet can do, some people tend to mistakenly assume that the internet is "unlimited" in nature, which is obviously completely false.

      The pipe leading to the server is obviously finite and can only handle a certain number of connections at one time, and when you literally have millions of people trying to connect to Hostgator (such as what happened during the Black Friday sale), something is bound to break.

      It would be extremely cost prohibitive to design the pipe to handle this kind of load, especially since such an extreme scenario will typically only happen once or twice a year. It isn't hostgator's fault at all and they were not intentionally causing the servers to crash, so people who blame them are just ignorant about the technical side of things.

      Of course, hostgator could seriously overengineer their servers and pipes to handle this kind of load, but as I mentioned earlier the cost would be prohibitive, and would have to passed on to the customer in terms of dramatically increased hosting fees.

      This would of course provoke another outburst of indignant anger from our average Joe who can never be satisfied, and will always find something to whine and complain about.

      Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
    Bill,

    That's why I posted what I did. Your phrasing - "or did it?" - is bound to provoke more of that kind of thinking among the less technically experienced.

    I've seen hosting companies screw this stuff up in big ways. An example is Verio. When they first released their Linux VPS system, it was completely screwed up. I ordered one and discovered that it fell down under the weight of my inbound email alone.

    The problem was that the VPS allowed a maximum of 75 concurrent processes. 38 of those were running all the time, and the amount of attempted inbound email connections was sufficient to chew up more than the remaining processes.

    One of the hazards of a 13 year old email address...

    The system bugs have been ironed out, but the example stands as a good one. Verio is a super company, and have a lot of years in the business. Still, even they screwed up badly on something you'd think they would have gotten right the first time. If they can do it in a standard production environment, it's not hard to see someone failing to anticipate all the odd requirements of a mega-launch.

    I suspect that's the same sort of thing that happened, technically, with the Hostgator sale.


    Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author GrinningFool
    I will Chime in and say I was on the details page of my order for 80% off when the system went into its lock up phase. That was at 6:03. At 6:18, after many page refreshes, I finally got a message saying that the 80% off coupon wasn't valid.

    Very Frustrating and an eye opening thing about hostgator's servers.
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
      Very Frustrating and an eye opening thing about hostgator's servers.
      Oxley said that "The amount of traffic we saw was 5x greater then an above average slashdot affect." Slashdot doesn't push the traffic they once did, but a popular mention there can still bring many sites to their knees.

      You don't program for that when you're running a service. It's not likely to ever happen to most sites, and only rarely (once every few years) to the few that experience it. If it happened once a year for the full 4 hours, that's still only .00045 of the time.

      Of course, once you get to the slow-down stage, an offer like this creates its own problems. The same people keep refreshing the page, which exaggerates the impact on the target site. The people who have to wait get more and more aggravated, and hit refresh more, etc. And then they go out into the forums and say all manner of nasty things without basis.

      Too much success indeed.


      Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author JennSpencerIM
    Lowe's had a Facebook deal going on a few weeks ago....I think it went terribly wrong too since they only allowed 100 (or so) coupon codes at 90% off but their site couldn't handle the traffic so most people didn't even get a chance to load the site.

    I'd prefer NOT to piss off 1000s and only please 100. I ran a successful Black Friday sale and figured out a solid number of coupons to offer, so as to limit it, but not a ridiculously small number so no one past the first 30 seconds could take advantage of it. Hopefully more companies will think about the number of people they are upsetting with silly promos that less than 1% of the interested parties can even get access to.
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