Campaigner is an Ottawa-based email marketing service.
In their web app, you go through 6 steps to send your email to your clients. The process is straight forward, but on step 4 they include this towards the bottom of the page:
Now…I am not against that sort of “viral” marketing, but here are three MAJOR problems with the way Campaigner does it:
1) By default they ASSUME you want their marketing in your email. WRONG.
2) This check box is below the fold so it is easy to overlook. WRONG.
3) They don’t show you what the campaigner footer looks like, so you don’t know what you are getting. POOR.
4) EVERY time you go to this step/page, they reset the check box to “on”. WORSE THAN WRONG.
When you are putting the finishing touches on an email campaign, you may make many last minute edits.
If by chance you don’t look below the fold and notice they have rechecked the box WITHOUT asking you or prompting you, your email will include their logo and marketing message. Very poor form. Do not do this to your users.
Here is the right way to go:
1) Default it to “off”.
2) Show your users an example of what it will look like.
3) Remember your user’s preference (i.e. “on” or “off”).
This is just respecting your users and their interests, and that is always the right thing to do…plus it keeps people from writing posts like this…another upside 
Copyright © 2000-2007
2:51 pm
I’ve had this problem with Campaigner also Mike. It’s really deceiving.
Got Marketing gives another great example of how NOT to build software - don’t make any improvements! This app hasn’t changed (for better or worse) since the day I started using it 3-4 years ago.
Add appalling customer service and the fact that they are way overpriced (http://www.1024media.com/231/) and you quickly rule them out as a email service provider.
Personally I’m liking http://www.campaignmonitor.com/ these days.
3:55 pm
Word Brandon.
We’ve used CampaignMonitor as well and love it - great guys behind that service, and it is a delight to use.
8:28 pm
Boourns for super sneaky marketing!
The offense is that they think users are stupid and will take advantage of the uninformed.
For shame!
4:20 pm
The program is awful! The support is even worse! Anything from GOT Corporation sucks!
gotcorp.com
campaigner.comGOT Corporation
Montreal
685 Cathcart Street
Suite 300
Montreal, Quebec
H3B 1M7
ALl garbage!
10:59 pm
Campaigner was great for a while — but for the last year, there are constant login problems, their “live chat support” isn’t, they stopped supporting Safari-Mac (guess no designers use Macs, right?) and they look like a company going under. I’m getting all my client lists the heck off of there - the landscape’s changed and there are a lot more suppliers for this stuff nowadays.
8:50 am
Now only does the “add campaign footer” suck, but often the site times-out. It just sites there loading…
I bugged them about it. Response: it must be my BROWSER. That’s right, both IE and Firefox strangely seem to have the same problem — on two different machines!
Remember, the best response for tech support: BLAME THE CUSTOMER.
5:05 pm
Hi,
I am the new Director of Customer Management and Services for GOT Corporation.
I have been reading these blogs and am surprised about the service you have gotten at GOT. I would like to help and fix this.
If you got unresponsive Customer Service Reps I understand but sometimes, its just a matter of asking. The footer can be removed from your account.
Blame the customer is NEVER an acceptable solution for me nor should/will it be for my staff.
Contact me directly - I would be happy to help: mm@campaigner.com
7:35 pm
I’ve been using oemPro from Octeh.com - awesome!
Excellent support!
4:48 pm
RE: Technical problems. I completely agree with everyone’s assessment of their tech and customer support. It’s terrible! Plus, there are lots of little bugs that I’m surprised they haven’t worked out yet. For example, when uploading a picture file, if it’s not successful, there’s no error message. It’s up to you to figure out why your file wasn’t accepted — e.g., format, size, naming, whatever.
RE: Customer service. I just spoke with the poster from Got Corp, MM. (I’d rather not name her, as she would have probably just listed her name if she really wanted it out there.)
Though MM claims never to blame the customer, she sure did spend a good part of our conversation blaming me for not reading the fine print. GotCorp charged me for services I never used, and then blamed me for not reading the terms and agreements. Of course, the fine print is completely contrary to what customer service says! And besides which, assuming you’re not on a contract, since when is someone allowed to charge you for services they did not render?
Buyer beware. Got Marketing is extremely shady and their program is buggy.
11:14 pm
We moved to this POS in a pinch. The timeouts thing is a joke - always the browser. Funny that it happens on netscape, ie, and firefox. it happened for months on end to us.
customer support is just about the worst you could ever expect - and i can confirm that the chat is unattended. i”ve tried several times and it just hangs. and responses to emails go 1/2 answered. don’t ever ask a follow-up question and expect a reply.
but the most damning thing is the way lists are managed. you can send a promotion to your lists and have no issues. the following week, send another promotion to the same exact lists, and 1/2 your lists are locked for spam reports! it doesn’t matter that you have opt-in customers, and that the lists are fresh.
we’re moving in the next 30 days. i threatened before to do this, but why suffer through working with a company that can’t get it together and makes every campaign a struggle. there are plenty of providers, with better features (rss) and lower pricing. just make sense.
12:55 pm
has anyone had a problem with text coming out a different color than they assigned. I used a template that was already on the site and I used a blue background. I made my text white so readers could see the writing. When I sent out my campaign to gmail customers, the text was changed to blue on a blue background. So you can’t read the messages. I’m looking for answers to this problem if amyone knows???
5:46 pm
BEWARE - The Campaigner.com website is NOT ENCRYPTED!! I complained about this a while ago in an email to them and never heard anything back.
BEWARE that if you use this service there is a chance that any data (constituent emails/data, credit card #) may be transmitted across the internet unencrypted! I just updated my credit card on file and immediately afterward noticed that the connection was http and not https.
This is a major problem, especially considering their so called committment to security. http://www.campaigner.com/legal.php#security
9:51 am
That’s a really good point Charlie, I hadn’t noticed that before. What the heck is that all about?