Funny thing, He had to talk to compliance about every other move he made, but to axe a customer, he did that in 30 seconds!
Constant Contact has been part of my marketing services since 2/01/2006. I have enjoyed the product and consider it one of best products on the market for ease of use and appearance. I have always consider the ability to get open rates somewhat limited and their customer service department less than spectacular. They confirmed my opinion.
Now, I am pretty old fashioned. I like to try things before recommending to my customer. Several of my customers have requested e-zine assistance this year thinking that it is a cheaper answer over direct mail. I try to explain to them it is a companion to direct mail not an alternative. Anyway, my concern is that a sloppy list will be difficult to introduce and how can I recommend Constant Contact(I know they will not achieve 1 spam per thousand) as a service. I select a list for trial and send it out on in my account. I receive 25% bounces, 2.2% opt outs, 20% opens and 7% click through. More importantly, I received several positive calls and direct e-mails. In today’s world, get rid of the bounces and it is now a great e-mail list, ready to go but…I received 9 SPAM complaints.
I receive a message, a list review. I call and went through the list review. I explain the reason I received this business and will receive others: “I am not going to get business from people that have a great list and one that is managed well. I was actually quite pleased with the result except for the spam complaints. I talk to the list reviewer and volunteer to only continue on with the 20% opens and remove the rest of the list. We agree and I am told instructions will be sent on how to do this.”
I wait over the weekend as my open rate of course is increasing. I go to use the account and find out that it is frozen. I have to comply before I can use the account. Talk to a list reviewer and ask how I should introduce the list and spend over 30 minutes on the phone trying to find the Constant Contact way to introduce a new list. We turn to focusing on my account and how to remove the exact number I need to be “reinstated.” We are quite specific.
Now, several days later, I perform the function and call to get the account unfrozen. I am told that not only must I remove this list but all lists and only keep the contacts that have opened an e-mail of mine in the last 3-years to comply. I mention that in the previous phone calls that was never explained and that we have never talked about anything except the one list. He puts me on hold and talks to compliance for the 2nd time. He assured me that I was wrong. Let me think, I volunteered the punishment and the 2nd reviewer walked me thru what I was supposed to do and was in complete agreement with me on what action was required. He repeated he had talked to compliance and this is what I needed to do. 3-years worth of opens? I ask him if he could refund the balance in my account. He said, he would do that, though my account would be active, but frozen till February 22nd, since my account had been recharged with the higher amount of contacts.
What e-mail provider can help me?
Constant Contact, Ezines, E-mail, Spam
I understand your frustration with Constant Contact. I feel your pain … and yet …
Your post is a great case study of the importance of customer centric list management. Demonstrating why having a permission based list (opt in) list is essential to email marketing. Not just because you may get “frozen” by your email marketing service … but also the overall lack of positive response to your campaign.
In a year of campaigns to any one of my selected lists I haven’t had 9 opt outs. I rarely ever receive “spam” reports (maybe 5 in the past 9 years of email marketing — sending millions of emails.) I take every opt-out very personally (ask anyone who knows me, sometimes too personally.) And I make the time to learn why someone opts out, whenever possible. These are keys to opening in-boxes and ultimately to making conversions!
You didn’t say what kind of list or campaign this was … and stats do vary depending on the type of campaign, sort of relationship (b2b or b2c to name just one factor), frequency, etc. Your cited open and click rates don’t necessarily demonstrate to me an engaged audience, however without more information is really hard to tell. Email marketing has evolved into a sophisticated complex marketing tool that is one component of an overall marketing strategy (as you referenced early on in your article about direct mail.)
Just as an example often emails that are reported as “bounced” are not necessarily actual bounces. If you take the time to investigate, often a significant number (1/3+) of reported bounces are actually a false signal given off by corporate addresses to the provider … and the person the email was sent to, actually received it. I caught onto this through stringent list management and live communication with the clients on the list. I found that some of my bounces had actually clicked on links in the email, although they didn’t show up as opens. Which led me down a path of the technical intricacies of email analytics.
I think your offer to go forward with only the 20% opens was certainly fair, and whoever refused that must be asleep with their phone headset on. Sorry to read about Constant Contact dropping the ball with you this way!
I agree in every aspect with you and on certain list I have over 50% open rates. What I am referring to is when a client has had a mismanaged list and you need to mail to it to clean it up! You mention open rates, etc. and I can understand that these were not great numbers. However, they are average or above average to industry norms. The bounce rate is way to high but for a list that may not have been actively engaged nor cleaned up recently, it probably is expected.
My concern is, if I bring on a client, what is the best way to engage their e-mail list? What is the best practice to do that? Those are the questions and discussions I had with Constant Contact with little help and understanding.
Hi Business901 –
Sending to a list for the very first time can be a tricky process, especially if they have not very recently opted in to your email list. There are two things I would suggest, first don’t mail to a list that is older than a year, (less than that if you can help it) if it is possible organize by date of sign up and split your lists.
The second thing, if you haven’t talked to this group of people for a little while I would send your first email with a re-introductory message. Hi, I know you haven’t heard from me in a while, if you are no longer interested in what I have to say…
We just published a blog post about this discussion, it is on our blog for Salesforce users of our product but some really great ideas that could help you: http://blog.verticalresponse.com/appexchange/
Thanks for the input Jenna. You gave me more than your counterpart did. I knew the list was not perfect. But I had to try for the clients sake. Was there better ways, could I have cherry picked the list more, yes! But at some point in time, you have to plug it in and take what you get. I realized that. If I would have done everything correct, I may have reduce spam to 4 or 5 but I still would have received some.
I would not have been upset if I was told I exceeded the spam and to leave. The only consistency was CC changing their story. That is what I was upset about.
I do want to post that the head of compliance called me this afternoon from Constant Contact and discussed my post. I congratulate them for addressing my issues and taking the time to discuss them. Thank you, Dave.