I have been experiencing problems with my email marketing provider GetResponse for around two months. I do not want to bore you with the details of their terrible service again, so if you want more information on why my weekly newsletter was not delivered for seven or eight weeks, please read my articles “My OnGoing Issues with GetResponse” and “Searching for the Perfect RSS to Email Marketing Solution“.
Those of you who read my last article may be disappointed to hear that I have not moved away from GetResponse as yet. I was leaning towards moving to MailChimp, though I was a bit concerned that their contact page does not offer online chat or telephone support. They still appear to be the best alternative to GetResponse, though I am concerned that I cannot pick up the phone and speak to someone. Therefore, I am going to look at some more email marketing solutions.
Since I have not migrated my email list away from GetResponse yet, I decided to test the RSS to Email tool on GetResponse further. To my surprise, it appears that they have fixed the issues that were plaguing my newsletter previously. I therefore decided to send out a newsletter yesterday.
Doing this has presented me with an opportunity to compare my open rates before and after GetResponses service started to fail me.
The newsletter sent on 14 July shows that my newsletter was sent to 2,023 people. The income report I published five days before this newsletter was sent shows that on 8 July, I had 2,154 newsletter subscribers. Therefore, the number of emails sent appears to be around 150 subscribers less than the total number of people in my email list.
My open rate for the email was 27.48%. I had 556 opens and 73 clicks.
Yesterday, my total number of newsletter subscribers was 2,345. Only 2,171 people had my newsletter sent to them. I am not sure why less people are actually emailed (it’s not bounce rate).
My open rate for the newsletter sent yesterday was only 6.83%. I had 143 opens and 44 clicks.
Although the click through rate was much higher yesterday, it is concerning that my open rate has dropped to a quarter of its former rate. Hopefully, that is not the case.
My suspicion is that after receiving so many blank newsletter emails, many subscribers have marked my newsletter as spam.
I sent out an email blast today. So far it has been opened by 8.71% of subscribers. It should be a little higher by the end of the day, but I expect the open rate of this email blast to be significantly lower than previous email blasts.
I have only sent one successful newsletter since GetResponse fixed the error with their RSS to Email tool. However, historically my open rate varies between 21% and 28%. Therefore, there is something clearly wrong if my open rate has dropped by such a huge factor.
During the last two months I have spent a lot of time and a lot of energy trying to get GetResponse to get off their asses and make their service usable. Today, the damage that GetResponse has done to my list really hit home.
It is now up to me to review my email marketing solution, undo the damage GetResponse have done, and make my email list more responsive again.
Wish me luck :)
Kevin
2017 – Getresponse is a worst support ever. Bunhc of monkeys in support, know nothing, asking stupid questions again and again, even though I’ve answered before.
Phone support: a bit better, but do you know you cannot add role base emails?!? So forget sending email campaigns to your partners!
I’m definitely moving on to other solution, To hell with them, lazy suckers.
Hey Reginald,
Thanks for commenting.
What do you mean that you are concerned that affiliate marketers are using GetResponse?
Kevin
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for sharing the experience. I read it while was looking for alternatives from GR.
For starters, GR is good and I recommend them to anyone. My biggest concern, however, is actually that so many affiliate marketers using it. So, I am just afraid that down the road, it will affect many of us. Okay, call me nuts!
For this, I think MailChimp paid version nis much better due to autoresponder feature. Pricing is slightly more expensive compared to GR. The $30 referral earning is awesome. Haha.
Funny as I see so many replies that GR has no problem. Early this year, there was a time where majority of email services are down due to DDoS and surprised many people didn’t take that into account. Just saying by the way.
Nonetheless, yes GR messed up from time to time but they are okay in solving the problem. I think they are cool and not bad at all. Pretty decent email service provider :)
~Reginald
Maybe if you had taken the time to read my article, you would have seen that my problems are with the RSS to Email newsletter tool; not the general email blast.
Brian. I wouldn’t be too concerned about this. This is someone who publishes comments with a different name and email address every time. They’re just trolling. :)
Have you actually read Kevin’s interaction with Get Response on this issue? http://kevin-muldoon.b.wetopi.com/getresponse-ongoing-issues/ Lol, their support is the worst I have ever seen.
This isn’t Kevin’s opinion has some have stated, the truth is in the facts.
As someone who owns roughly 2 dozens of Affiliate sites and uses a massive newsletter with GR i have to say I never encountered any problem or issues with them before and their service was always great..
P.S
Your post is definitely derogatory, and borderline slanderous.
The word “derogatory” implies that I am being insulting or disrespectful. That is not the case. I am simply stating facts. This is nothing personal. I am simply sharing the poor service I have received from them.
I don’t have this experience with GetResponse at all. I’v used them from around 2011 when I first started Internet Marketing and had good experience ever since..
GetResponse is a great EM solution at least for me and I would continue using them although your derogatory remarks
Will definitely keep readers updated.
Sorry to hear that you are having problems too. They seem unwilling to resolve issues like this and just say “that’s just how our system works”. It’s like they refuse to acknowledge bugs and errors.
I checked the figures and it does not appear to be bounces. Well, the bounce rate figure they display does not seem to match the figures I had.
Kevin
Hi Kevin,
I’m in a similar position with Get Response but for a different problem. The Short Codes have stopped working and now my subscribers are addressed as [[firstname]]. They told me I was using the system wrongly and to use [[name]] which I duly did, only to find that didn’t work either.
Please let me know what you move to, as I’m now looking for a new provider.
As for deliverability, I know GR stop emailing to email addresses that are hard bounces, could this be why some are not getting through? If you look through your contacts section, you’ll see the “dead” email addresses and you can remove these. I believe this is done to stop the system being tagged as a spamming system as a the blue pill peddlers will tell you; a spammer doesn’t have a cleansed list, but one that has a lot of hard bounces.
Cool. I’d still love to be able to speak on the phone; however online chat will be sufficient 99% of the time. I’ve emailed them. Hopefully they respond within the next 24 hours.
Ah your right… It only appears if you are logged in.
See my screenshot: https://jumpshare.com/v/t9vnmfIKDRsYLIani99E?b=EAuEd7JmDBXJDxfgTnEo
Thanks Brian. I cannot see any chat support. Perhaps you only see it if you are logged in.
I’m sending them an email just now and explaining my situation.
Wow sorry to hear that Kevin. Sounds like it is time to finally move.
Also, sidenote: Mailchimp does offer chat support. http://kb.mailchimp.com/help I have used it once before. And yes I said once, in the last 4 years lol. That is how many problems I have had. Mailchimp just works, the web developers on the MailChimp side I’m sure could run circles around those guys over at GetResponse.