My experience with Campaigner

[Charmlady]

Although I have had my site up and running for 8 years, I am new to the whole Email Marketing thing, so after talking to Pam at the last boot camp, she convinced me Campaigner was the way to go. I had previously looked at both Campaigner and Constant Contact and found the entire process of getting my list of thousands of email addresses into the system a bit daunting.

This is where the nightmare started. Pam was gracious to help me learn how to create my campaign (many thanks Pam), then I entered all my credit card information in Campaigner to set to send to my contact list. First shot, it gave me an error message - ok maybe I did something wrong (after all it was 10pm my time and my eyes could of been blurred by this time). So I try it a few more times, each with different error messages.

Fast forward to 730am (central time)the next day, so I email Campaigner for help - get the automated email stating someone would get back with me in 24 hours (I had set my campaign to run at 9am this morning). Noticed on their site, their operating hours are 8am - 7pm eastern time, so I think great, I will call them - (830 their time), go through all the voice response system and get an answering machine thanking me for calling OUTSIDE of their normal business hours and leave a message. I left a message. Then realized they had live chat, so I figure, ok maybe I can get assistance this way. By now its 845am eastern time and the chat window says they are not available, hours of operation are 8am -7pm. By this time I so completely frustrated because I can't get a live human being to assist me.

FINALLY after numerous attempts to call back, I finally get a live person on the phone. She asks me what error message I got - so I tell her and she tells me I didn't enter my card correctly, and to hang up and try it again. I do - get a different error message this time. I call her back (same agent, they must only have one employee!!!). Now keep in mind this is a DEBIT card, and I KNOW there is money in the account. I call back and get her again, she tells me its the fault of my bank because my card is bad. Very frustrated I tell her, no thats not possible, as I just used this card at another online merchant within 24 hrs with no issues at all. She is rude to me, tells me to call my bank and she is ending the call.

So I think, ok lets give them the benefit of the doubt, I call my bank and the bank says because they attempted to charge so many times the bank thought it was fraud! They clear everything up, assure me my card is fine, the account # is correct and they will authorize the charge.

I call Campaigner back, and just my luck I get the same agent again... She tells me there is still a problem with my card and the charge won't go through and I need to call my bank. Extremely frustrated at this point I tell her I already did this and finally ask to speak to a manager. Her manager gets on the phone and I explain whats going on, he tells me if I don't like their service I should use another company for Email marketing! I could not believe it! Instead of trying to help me solve the problem they just wanted to get off the phone as quick as they could and just trying to tell me it was all my fault and they were doing me a favor by "helping" me, which of course they didn't have to. I couldn't believe my ears!

Then the manager proceeds to tell me to try it again and it would go through, but I should change my pay plan to "pay as you go" (more expensive) than the monthly rate, and it would be fine. He assures me they won't charge me the full rate, but at this point I don't believe a word out of his mouth. I do this, and of course the screen tells me its about to charge my card $1729 !! I quickly escape and call back again, only to get the very same agent who seemed to feel I was bothering her by asking for help.

They say, "Just wait 24-48 hrs and surely your credit card situation will reverse itself." Even though I had seen from online banking they already charged my card the nite before!!! I tried to explain to them (although I shouldn't have to) about best days/times to send campaigns and so they said, "all you have to do is go in and schedule it, we don't know why you have such an attitude about it all".

Talk about frustrations.....My experience tells me Email Marketing is a great way to keep in touch with your customers, (have already gotten orders from this mornings campaign) HOWEVER I would NOT recommend Campaigner, unless you are one of the few that do not need customer service, as this company (management included) does not know the meaning of the word.

All in all, my account is finally set up, but now that I have additional questions about the reports, I am wondering if I made a wise choice in choosing them, because clearly they do not care if you use their service and they do not offer the assistance they claim to (with Live Chat, phone support and emails). Currently I received 3 emails confirming someone would get back with me, and of course no one did until I hunted them down to get it taken care of this morning.

Does anyone use CONSTANT CONTACT? Is this a better company to use? How is their support?

[Kaleidoscope Karl]

Liz

Wow what a story. I have needed to add email marketing as well but i think i will try another other than campaigner.

Karl

[candypam]

Karl -
I've been using campaigner for years and have never had a problem.
What Liz went through though was rediculous and I never experienced anything close to what she did ever from them.
To me campaigner is as easy as it gets, and I don't like complicated things. I'm hoping Liz sadly just got a very poor employee, because I haven't used their support in a long time, but if I would have encountered that nightmare, I'd be out the door and making a ton of noise behind me..
but.... where would I go? I need easy, fill in the blanks and Ive read that with icontact and constant contact you have to start your lists all over, they won't let you copy them over.
I have over 50 thousand names, Karl you must have a ton too?
Can anyone chime in here with who they use and their experience of transfering names to them.
Thanks
Pam

[vselin]

hey -

been using campaigner too for years....really have never had a problem.....never have check anyone else out cause campaigner was integrated with yahoo.......but them seem to be fine. i have dealt with their customer service several times, but each time they have been nice.....so that just seems to be odd that you had a bad experience.

[Charmlady]

Ok so I had an awful experience with Campaigner (lets chalk it up to a few bad employees) but since I posted this, someone from their customer relations department contacted me after reading my post and made it her "mission in life" to change my mind about campaigner and fix my issues that were still pending.

She was very professional about fixing the issues and apologizing about the previous employees I had dealt with. She wasted no time in fixing the pending issues and made me re-think continuing to use Campaigner.

As a side note, what we can ALL learn from this experience is this -- make it easy for your customers to contact you. This was a major cause of frustration because although I had issues, I either couldn't get a hold of anyone, or the people I did reach were far less than helpful. In this day and age of competitiveness in business, we all need to assure that customers can reach us AND we are giving the best possible service to make sure our customers keep coming back.

The rep that contacted me re-instilled my faith in Campaigner -- so I will continue to use them for our email marketing, especially when I get a rep like the one who contacted me, who clearly cared whether I used their service or not.

Email Marketing is an awesome way to keep you in your customer's faces - remind them to spend money with you!!! I have already seen, that after only one campaign, it brought some of my customers back to spend more!!

[cactus_donnat]

Liz,

Thanks for sharing your story about Campaigner, as well as following up with how your issue was resolved. Good balance there! It's a shame that you chose that company based on a word-of-mouth referral- which is the best way to gain business- and then one employee almost ruined it. Word of mouth is also a good way to lose business. I guess it says a lot about Campaigner that they paid attention to your complaint and are rectifying it and want to make you happy.

I just think it's important to note from your experience, as you noted in your reply, that we can learn from this by making ourselves accessible and also making sure that our customer service reps are friendly, knowledgable and willing to help. I know at SC Call Center, we thrive on that. But, one bad experience can cause a whirlwind of trouble in this day of networking!

Thanks again for sharing! These are great conversations and observations.

Donna

[sgusa]

Originally Posted by candypam

Karl -
I've been using campaigner for years and have never had a problem.
What Liz went through though was rediculous and I never experienced anything close to what she did ever from them.
To me campaigner is as easy as it gets, and I don't like complicated things. I'm hoping Liz sadly just got a very poor employee, because I haven't used their support in a long time, but if I would have encountered that nightmare, I'd be out the door and making a ton of noise behind me..
but.... where would I go? I need easy, fill in the blanks and Ive read that with icontact and constant contact you have to start your lists all over, they won't let you copy them over.
I have over 50 thousand names, Karl you must have a ton too?
Can anyone chime in here with who they use and their experience of transfering names to them.
Thanks
Pam

I currently use Constant Contact, but was looking at Campaigner because it integrates with checkout. However their fees are crazy! I send around 150-200k of emails per month and that would cost me over 2k a month! How do you afford it?