Getresponse - watch out for this...

Wow, that really sucks. I haven't tried building a list yet, but one of the things I don't like about any of the auto responder services is the fact that they have so much control over your contacts. I'm not sure how to get around that though. Hope you can resolve this! Or at least save that list!

Matt

What I would do is call getresponse directly and find out what the problem is and work it out that way. Aweber is easy to contact and talk to someone live. I would assume getresponse would be too. Maybe you can talk them out of shutting you down and pinpoint what the problem is with the emails. It couldn't hurt to try.

It sounds like something went out that was HIGHLY offensive.

Does GetResponse have a way for you to look at your "sent" broadcasts? Is it possible someone got access to your account and used it to send spam?

Did you suddenly have a huge influx of new subscribers via forms or emailing your a/r?
There are viruses that spoof the sender and send it your a/r address--meaning that in many cases those people get an auto response back from you they have never requested leading to complaints.

Bad new either way.

Wow, that sucks.

I use getresponse and now i am a little worried about continuing to build a list using it.

Would only take a single poorly worded email maybe to lose everything ... or somethign really out of the blue and odd like your situation.

It's strange because most of these guys queue your email, for checking, before they allow you to send it out. Do GetResponse not check it?

You could consider moving to a standalone application that runs on your own servers. That way you are in charge of your list and when it gets sent out.

One last thing, whilst complaining to them, make sure you backup/export your lists. You could end up going past their 48hour deadline and losing your lists.

Cheers

Max

Something I am missing is if it's a double optin list, then why complaints instead of unsubscribes. That's the whole purpose of having a service and doing double optin.

I would definitely call them and ask what the problem is.

Never been real fond of GR anyway.

Thanks,

John

I am going to ring getresponse today and see what happens. So far they have been less than helpful. I have not had an increase in subscribers - is it possible for someone to access info from a html form on my website? I have getresponse forms to collect email addresses of course on my website just wondering if some clever person could hack this and send emails as if from me....

Can't believe this...

struth, i hope you exported those emails so you can re-import them back into another A.R service???

Yes I have. The problem is I now have lost CONFIDENCE in list based email marketing because if the plug can be pulled without prior warning and without knowing why this happened then YIKES!

I have 18,000 people on lists and many await my mails - helpful self help advice.

What to do now? Another AR service, probably aweber but can I import the subscribers should I prune them...will I again risk complaints????

HELP!

I also saw that from 16,900 mails sent last time only 16 removed from the unsubscribe link (0.1%) so why so many complaints and not unsubscribes?

Anybody know if aol or the like have changed their spam policy this last week or so?

Anyone else got this problem or solved it?

You need to fight your corner with getresponce and
move your list with Aweber.Anyone who signed up to your list
has the option to opt out so why all of a sudden you get over 700 complaints?

Get your money back if you can and move your list with Aweber as
Getresponce are playing dirty here,thats my view and hope you
win your case

sounds like it's an error on GR's part to me... unless you can spot something in your email.

OR it could be that a lot of your email was getting blocked before, but now it's going through... but people don't remember getting on your list, so click the spam button.

Yeah I have a few buyer lists totaling about 25,000 people... same thing. I emailed them but after reading this I'm not very optimistic. I figured it was an error but I guess not. Must have been a recent change in their policy. Perhaps it's time to switch over to my own dedicated server.

This is going to be such a hassle. Beware of GetResponse!

Matt

You have to be able to talk to a supervisor or something.. although, its possible they'll tell you to get lost and might not be helpful.. but, it'd be worth it to dig a bit more I think

ImnicaMail is getting a lot of support from fellow WF members. They're using old GetResponse-style pricing. Aweber is king these days...seems everyone is using them. There are also private-label autoresponder services like ProFollow which use Aweber's old system.

Since email is so important I recommend you don' skimp. You have a large list and I'm certain you're earning several thousand per month. With those numbers, deliverability is everything and Aweber should be your #1 choice.

A 4% spam complaint rate is exceptionally bad...it could be an error.

Why don't you post the email and headline here that you used so we can take a look at it?

Feel free to remove any identifying website/product info.

It would be nice if someone from Getresponse would explain this problem.

Simon are you still a member here?

You need to get on the phone with GR, pronto, explain your case and certainly show them the last e-mail you sent out.

Clearly this is something beyond your control, it's not spam you're sending, your double opt in and the message is clearly not spam.

Yes, Aweber have in the past certainly just shut people down with warning. I don't know if that still goes on but their primary objective is to keep happy thousands of customers and that's done by being as clean as possible.

You get a 4% spam complaint on a single e-mail I doubt there's a single reputable service on the planet that wants to keep you as a customer.

By the way, you CAN import to Aweber without a double opt in. As long as they can verify your list was double opt in at GR, they won't force you to double opt in again, you need to speak to them about this on a case by case basis.

Clearly you're not doing anything nefarious of your own volition something screwed you behind the scenes here and it's bad business of GR to can you without even speaking to you first , baring in mind previously you had a perfect record etc.

I'm not sure hopping ship is going to help you here as 4% would get you canned from Aweber as well.

You need to find the root cause of the issue really.

Interesting you should say you got canned from GR today, yesterday a colleague of mine told me the same thing, he has hundreds of thousands of users on his list and they just closed him down - big account.

He's double opt in as well and simply doesn't spam.

Karl et al,

We have automated measures that flag accounts that
cross certain thresholds. Each case like that is carefully
reviewed by our Policy Enforcement department and it's
extremely unlikely that a mistake occurs. For privacy
reasons I cannot discuss your specific case and level
of your spam complaint ratios on an open forum.

I can confirm that we are currently issuing such warnings
to multiple GetResponse users that have run into situations
such as:
* unacceptable spam complaint ratio % (the ratio
acceptable by the email industry is 0.1%)
* unacceptable hard bounce ratio / "user unknown"
error.

Running into any of these issues means that the user
is almost certainly not meeting his subscribers'
expectations on some level. I wrote a blog post to
address some of the issues that marketers often
run into (permission, frequency, consistency).

Why are we doing this "crackdown"? To put it simple,
accounts that were causing unacceptable spam complaint
& hard bounce ratios were degrading deliverability of our
entire platform. GetResponse sends over 20 million emails
a day for our 110,000+ users from one "shared" platform
(except for our Enterprise customers that get dedicated IP
addresses and do not have any impact on our other users).
It's regrettable that we have to shut down some accounts
that have reached bad thresholds, but (unless these users
fix the problem) it's the right thing for us to do. At the
end of the day, we have to serve 110,000+ users with
top-notch deliverability and protect the quality of their
service. We can't allow users that have excellent standing
be negatively affected (in terms of deliverability) by users
that have issues with their email marketing and have
generated too many complaints / bounces as a result.

If you have received an email that says your account
will be shut down, you can appeal this with our Policy
Enforcement by replying to the email. We have granted
an extra 2-weeks "grace period" to some of customers
who have appealed. But it's notable that these appeals
will not make the problem go away. If you don't drop
your spam complaints / bounces below unacceptable
ratios, we will still regrettably shut down the account (as
a service to all other GR customers that expect top
deliverability).

Moving to a competitor won't make the problem go away
either. They'll shut you down too, as they have adopted
similar procedures. At the end of the day, every marketer
is directly responsible for their own campaigns and their
metrics.

Regards,

Simon Grabowski
CEO
GetResponse

Simon, I think he's pretty aware of all the above, nobody expects any mailing company to keep working with somebody who has 4% spam rate.

He has had a perfect record of around 0.1 until he sent his last email when it jumped to 4%. So from 5-6 complaints max per 15,000 to nearly 600 complaints from one e-mail.

The e-mail he sent out is congruent with what they signed up for and no different from any other he sends.

Something, somewhere is out of whack and he felt that instead of a "cya" e-mail he deserved better as a customer of good standing.

At least somebody to look at the circumstances as clearly it's a bit strange to put it mildly.

I get the feeling that most of Simon's response is a standard text.

I can't see that it addresses any of the issues that have been raised by the OP, who appears to have sent out nothing that would warrant such a level of SPAM response.

If it was a technical malfunction of some kind, it would appear to be a pretty harsh response to just close down the account like that, particularly when the OP has had a good record previously.
cheers,
Eric G.

Assuming all the info here is correct, I could probably TRY and not hit a 4% spam complaint. Something is seriously out of sorts here. Either info is being omitted or there is an error in the spam reporting.

I think Big Mike is right...with that size of a list you really should get your own dedicated server and build your own list that way there is never any worry about anything like that ever again!

Good luck!

karlp295,

Part of the problem is, people believe they are receiving emails too much, and are reporting what they believe to be spam a lot more than they did in prior years.

Dang! I didn't want to get into list building, but this week, finally, after a lot of thinking did a 180 and decided it was the thing to do. I signed up (with someone who contributed to this thread). I started doing the preliminaries. Then I read this thread and have to go back to square one again.

You see, I LIKE being controversial. Actually, I can't help myself some times. I like to point out inconsistencies and blind spots. Stuff like that.

What this thread and this experience with Getresponse is telling me is that my tendency to want to ruffle feathers will lead to a stunted commercial life. Getresponse etc wants to do business with people who make nice. Sorry, no can do. If someone who boils up 4% of controversy gets sent to Devil's Island without a fare thee well, I am not long for the list building world. Sheesh, just a lousy 4% controversy and the guy gets kicked out. No thanks. I can't be that nice.

So don't expect to join any list I create. I get the message.

For the record, there are a FEW autoresponders which do NOT force you to reconfirm -- iContact for example.

If your list is not double opt-in .... Do you think it's possible that people got signed up by someone else.

I don't know why or who would do this but if so, then those people who didn't really sign up would think you were spamming them ... maybe?

This is unbelievable. In the first place when you use aweber or getresponse the person is supposed to have double opted-in, so technically you can't speak about spam in the first place.
I often receive spam into my returned email box, because some bot picked up my email on the net and used it as a spoof, it even happened that I received modified emails from myself . You shouldn't be held responsible for what you didn't do.

It is good to have a clean list with happy readers, so I think unsubscribes from your list is not bad, problem is so many people are uneducated, and don't understand what the fact to mark someone as a "spammer" implies, and seems Aweber and GetResponse also don't For me it is not because someone unsubscribes and click on button "spam" is not enough signs to tell it is a spammer. You should get details "WHY" the unsubscriber finds it a "spam" since technically it isn't.
This is one of the reasons I don't use autoresponders but have a mailing list of more than 4,000 people I mail from time to time when I have something to say that is fresh and up to date :-). I always worked with a french company called splio . Very happy with it and it is free, no recurring costs here, but you can only mail, no autoresponders there. Works with lists up to 50,000 and you get some stats like open rate of the emails, html editor, etc.... Youcan open as many lists as you want. But you need to understand french to work with them (shouldn't be a problem with Google translate), but you can setup in English, check it out at free.splio.com

Your single-optin explains the situation.

With single optin, GetResponse can't "back you up" when they receive complaints from ISP's, hosts or users because there isn't an IP address and date stamp with approval. For all they know, you could have simply imported these leads from a purchased list or some other questionable manner. (I know you're not doing this)

Double optin should effectively end any problems in the future. It also gives you more leverage when you're moving your list to another provider since -by default- nearly every provider requires a double-optin list to import your leads. It also gives you a more valuable list as well.

I think "purging" your list by running a double-optin request is actually a good thing. In the email industry, emails have a shelf life. 1/3 tend to go bad within 1 year (source). Once this process is done, you'll get better open/click rates and effectively "clean up" your list.

Hey scumbag! (chimera28)

I posted this on page 1 of this thread. I looked through your post history and you're going through threads reposting other peoples posts...presumably to up your post count.

Enjoy your ban.

One thing which is being overlooked is the admission of a .2% rate by Karl. If the policy, and industry standard is .1%, then he is exceeding it, and the 4% anomaly for one week is not the culprit.

Dennis's question is very valid though. How long of a time period is this rate figured over, to be considered for expulsion from the system?

No. You can get spam complaints with the confirmed opt-in
process. It's not marketers' determination what counts as spam,
but it's the recipients that make the call by clicking "This is SPAM" /
"Mark as Junk" buttons. You may not agree, but this is how this
industry works. If you want to be able to deliver to 90%+ of mailboxes
you have to accept the fact that large ISPs like Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL,
Gmail look at your metrics and spam thresholds -- and they don't
ask you if a recipient clicking on "spam" button was valid or invalid.
It's all about statistics, numbers and ratios. And you can improve
those by maintaining permission, consistency and frequency.

It's normal that every marketer will, sooner or later, generate
*some* complaints. It's about keeping those ratios at bay (below 0.1%,
or 1 per 1,000 emails sent)

If you run your email marketing campaigns well and do not
abuse/overuse your subscribers' permission, these solitary
situations would not have an impact over your ratios over time.

I agree that it would be great if ISPs incorporated some additional
feedback loops to tell us (so that we can tell you) what was the
reason why the subscriber unsubscribed. However it's not currently
possible, and I doubt it will be incorporated any time soon (if ever).
The general stats (which may or may not be applicable to your
own mailings) are that over 70% subscribers who opt-out do
so due to lack of relevance or too frequent mailings. Reasons for
people clicking on "This is Spam" button are similar (plus 'lack
of permission'). Merkle PR | Merkle Releases 2009 "View From The Inbox"

At the end of the day, it all boils down to playing by the rules that the
industry has set over the last 6+ years. Keeping your spam complaint ratios
< 0.1% is one of them.

Big ISPs like Yahoo, Hotmail don't care about senders' definition of what is
spam and what isn't. All they care about is what their users (recipients) tell
them that spam is. You may not like it, but it's the status quo. Accept it,
because you can't change it. If you're a visitor at somebody's house you must
play by their rules, or don't go to their house. When you're emailing @yahoo.com,
@gmail.com etc. you're entering their house and you need to abide their rules.

Nothing's being overlooked. We won't discuss specific account's complaint ratios
on an open forum. Karl knows exactly what the problem is.

Sorry, can't disclose that for multiple reasons. As a rule of a thumb
you need to always keep your complaints down below 0.1%.
Crossing 0.1% level always creates a risk situation for senders.

= S

Simon writes: "Big ISPs like Yahoo, Hotmail don't care about senders' definition of what is spam and what isn't. All they care about is what their users (recipients) tell them that spam is... "

I recently had an incident with Google which says Google knows there are 'bad guys/gals' who can hijack accounts and make them spammy -- and while that happens Google shuts down the account even though the account owner is innocent.

In my case, my entire Blogger account (many websites) was shut down after something bad happened. Blogger sent me a nasty email accusing me of spamming. After much search I found a complaint process and asked for a review. After a few days Blogger reviewed, found I am innocent and reinstated. Nevertheless it is their continuing policy to shut down and accuse first, then fix things if the innocent blogger is lucky enough to find the correct complaint procedure.

In other words, there are holes in the system, bad guys/gals find these holes and innocent senders/recipients get smacked. The big dogs know it, you know it and we know it.

Given that everyone knows there are instances when bad guys/gals take advantage, it would make life on the net easier if procedures are in place at all times to 1) keep informed about precautions 2) warn of impendings 3) file appropriate grievances before something damaging happens.

I am not a lawyer and do not want to play one. But it seems to me that one day a class action lawyer will get your attention. You know there are bad guys/gals who make trouble. When trouble happens you smack down innocent parties. The innocent parties beg you to be reinstated. You sometimes reinstate ... after damage has been done to innocent parties.

Some day the innocent parties will get a class action lawyer. One way or the other, you will eventually change your procedures so you do not shut down innocent people first and ask questions later.

All (or a large fraction) of this grief can be avoided by more thoughtful informing, warning and grievance procedures in place.

Well I just joined the forum and I'm loving the information available. I set up a trial account with Aweber but I'm thinking now save a few bucks and go with GR or Icontact. I look forward to contributing to the forum.

I did not knew that, Simon.
But, if that's the case, an exception it is.
Just wanted to point my view on this one from a business-relationship side.

I would recommend one of the aweber white labels. I wish i could switch my list over from aweber to take advantage of their old pricing. I simply don't use many of the new features that I am paying for.

Steve, yes, it's true. You can even sign up to be notified
about the beta program.

http://blog.getresponse.com/new-getr...eta-tests.html