Constant Contact - Do they really want to lose their customers?

I have been using Constant Contact for my email marketing since 2004, and in the past they were great.

This year has seen a big change, at least from my point of view. Over the years I have slowly and surely built my opt in subscriber list to nearly 10,000 subscribers.

All of a sudden this year, I now am seen as a spammer (to my opt in lists) and have had 2 list reviews where I was grilled like some kind of criminal sending out millions of spam emails.

At the end of it all, they were happy and I thought no more of it. This week I spent 2 days preparing my quarterly newsletter and as it is a Christmas edition, timed it carefully.

Experience has shown me that to my business list, Thursday afternoon will get the best open rate. Last night I took a look and saw that there was a message (watch the YouTube video) saying that they were staggering my mailing.



I was incenced, no one had told me, I pay a lot of money to use this service and then some plod decides that they will not send all my mail as instructed and paid for.

I phoned immediately and held on for ages while the person I was speaking to had words with other workers at Constant Contact. The result of all this was 'It is in our terms and conditions' (Don't you just hate that cop out) and there was nothing they would do. I asked them to compare all my names to those a year ago to see how many were the same which they were not prepared to do. I then asked to speak to the manager of the list review team and was told there is no manager, everyone just does their own thing and makes their own decisions.

In 30 years in business, I have never heard anything like it.

The upshot of it all was that they were not prepared to do anything about it, after all, I have only been a loyal customer for 5 years and recommended them to hundreds of companies in my technology talks and workshops.

For me, there is still no indication when the full list will be sent.

My open rate will dramatically decrease as most subscribers will receive it on the weekend and the CEOs and business people will not have the same priority on a Monday morning as on a Thursday afternoon to read the newsletter.

For all my clients in the Middle East, Friday is now the start of the weekend and once again the newsletter will hit them at the begining of the week, the worst time possible.

For me, there is only one solution, take my business elsewhere where they actually care....

I have been recommended to iContact a AWebber and if I find them to be good, I will recommend them in my talks and articles.

If you are a small business with a few hundred contacts, Constant Contact may work for you, but my experience has proven that if you are a big serious business with a large mailing, go to a professional company.

Please feel free to add your comments.