Matt O'Connor

So I realized Jason is talking about me here lol… I do not look at our daily media dash bc it’s either euphoria or panic. But it was nice to see the P&L the next day! Here’s some more about what went into a ~10k new customers day: - we’ve been selling to this customer for six years now, so we know them very well, and that is reflected at every single messaging point. (the counterpoint is that I’ve been working on another category for over a year now, and it’s still not cracked… understanding the customer just takes time.) - We’ve been working on this offer for like three years now. I wrote the initial VSL, and got the big idea right, but my brilliant CRO chief has been working on it literally every week. This is far from the first time we’ve hit high scores on this one. Fact is, a good offer (product/market fit, great big idea) is gonna be good for a long time, but you can’t CRO a bad offer into good one. - Notably, most the CRO efforts have been focused on Jason‘s traffic because of how much volume he can drive and how well our teams work together. So everything about our funnel, pricing, post purchase sequence, even something as unexpected as the close of the VSL… It’s all been optimized for Jason’s campaigns and pixel. Others have tried this offer and not had nearly the same success. - our products are actually great, our customer support is A+, and our fulfillment, processing and anti-fraud our battle-hardened. Days like this have ruined us in the past because of operational weakness. - Our back end is extremely robust. We have dedicated email/SMS teams, a dozen additional offers, and even phone sales team, full salesforce implementation, etc. We are competing in ad auctions with guys who will flat out lie, deep fake, and do other stuff that I won’t do for both legal and ethical reasons, so several years ago, we made the decision to invest heavily in profit drivers that are hard to build and difficult to copy. That all said, here’s where the “luck” happens (aka opportunity meeting preparedness) … What Jason is describing is what I call a “traffic honeyhole”. It’s when an offer, a buyer, a network and a specific type of ad all come together to make high scale magic. It can last for anywhere from 3 to 9 months, and most of the direct response game is spent at breakeven or loss, trying to find it. If you’re lucky and good, you get one of these a year. Really good or really lucky, you get two. The honeyhole can dry up as quick as you find it. Years ago, I was consistently spending 25k/day on YouTube with @bratinceptly and @cronag805 . It was a full 45+ minute VSL, instream as an ad. Every month, we’d shoot 8 new leads, and inevitably one of them would hit. Then we just cycled two winning offers behind them every few months. It was such a beautiful thing… then YouTube slapped like a 200% cpm penalty on any ads over 2 minutes, and our campaign died within a week! Much as I love those guys, we never made anything work together after that. Sometimes thats how it goes, but just like Rick and Ilsa will always have Paris, I’ll always have YouTube 2019 with Brat and Ian :) Here’s something else: I am not a great media buyer, and I’ve worked with many over the years - both individuals, and agencies. I feel extremely lucky to work with Jason (and to know him - everything you said back at you 100x homie). Our teams work incredibly well together, and he’s very good at running traffic for the offers we write. I’ve worked with a lot of other agencies and affiliates who have done major, major scale with others like me, and just haven’t been able to make it work. The mismatch could be anything from the teams not working well together, to them not really knowing our customer, to a simple timing mismatch - they’re focused on other stuff, and so are we, and the campaign just doesn’t get the attention it needs for scale. A huge part of this game is truly finding the right partnership between buyer and offer owner. But one thing about Jason and his team: they are obsessive. We’ve been through good times and bad with them, and whenever it’s bad, I still have confidence. I remember this talk I had with my team back in early Jan when everyone was down bad - “guys, if someone is going to figure this out, it’s Kutasi”. And hey, he did! I love these high scores too and they’re fun to celebrate, but to paraphrase Naval, we see ourselves playing long term games with long term people. And I think that mindset, as much as anything else, is what contributes to the big days.