I'm all for eliminating SPAM complaints to improve email deliverability, but have the following issues with Infusion's release this morning:

1) Infusion's statement that accounts can be canceled for any occurrences of SPAM. This is ridiculous. Even double-opt-in customers often use the now all too easy SPAM buttons to "unsubscribe". A certain amount of bad end-user behavior should be tolerated. And we should know exactly from Infusion what constitutes and unacceptable level of complaints.

2) The new email complaint report, which I was actually looking forward to, doesn't allow me to see WHICH emails or campaigns are generating the complaints. Knowing this would allow fine tuning to reduce those occurrences.

Infusion - help us help you. Rather then threatening your users, how about a carrot before the stick? A decent complaint report that gave us a shot at fixing issues that are causing complaints would be a great start.

Seriously? I must agree to have my account "shut down" and have no recourse for being "reported for spamming" or not use the software? A bit vague for such a harsh penalty.

Is that going to happen after one single report (warranted or otherwise) or repeated incidents and proved spamming? I'm curious would pay the high entry fee for this software then choose to use it in a manner that would obviously get them shut down.

Kathryn

Hi Sean and Kathryn,

Thanks for bringing this up... just to be clear, are you referring to this notification?



Thanks,
Joe

Yes. That is the one. I know your agreement has similar terms though of course they are not really mentioned in the sales process as I believe Infusion uses an after the fact click-through agreement. Certainly wouldn't have agreed to such an onerous policy in a negotiated deal.

That said, having spoken with Marc about this I'm hopeful that Infusionsoft will be more reasonable in practice.

Finally note I have no issue with the first 4 points. It is just completely unrealistic to think anyone will get no spam complaints. Infusionsoft spams the crap out of me, and I've been tempted to hit the spam button for your emails more than once despite the fact that I'm a customer (your system seems to still think I'm a prospect).

The last sentence would have been a lot more friendly if it had said something like "If I am repeatedly reported for spamming and fail to make changes necessary to reduce complaints my Infusionsoft account can be shut down without any refund".

More importantly, I formally request clarification on Infusion's policy as if it their policy to shut off accounts without reasonable warning I need to start looking for an alternate service immediately.

I haven't seen this yet but THANKFULLY I have a RSS feed to me home page and I have to say...this is insane!

You work in any type of sales capacity you KNOW that there are totally unreasonable people out there that DO NOT read before making a purchase nor do they pay attention to what they do online. They just click, click, click and then COMPLAIN to the high heavens that they are getting spammed...they don't even give you a chance!

We personally have our contact information all over our site and we have unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of every single email that goes out in addition to the default unsubscribe information included by Infusion.

We are very compliant about removing anyone from our database as soon as they contact us even if for some reason they cannot find the unsubscribe links all over the place. YET some ahole decides to be a smart ass and click the ...this is spam button..and presto chango Infusion shuts us down with no refund???

This is totally unreasonable and unfair!

If this is indeed the case, why even wait for the Infusion Gods to strike as they inherently will with this setup and JUST CANCEL SERVICE NOW??

Here is a more reasonable approach from a vendor on educating their users about SPAM and acceptable complaint levels:

http://www.aweber.com/faq/questions/390/What+Is+An+Acceptable+Complaint+Rate%3F

Note what they do with customers who exceed acceptable levels... "you may be contacted by our Customer Solutions team to discuss the rate, reasons why it may be elevated, and what needs to be done to get it back to the appropriate levels" NOT your "account could be shut down without any refund".

And especially note that they SHARE the complaint with their customers so that the customers can work to improve their practices and decrease complaints.

Turns out the Email Status Search report is actually fairly useful. Why the complaint report doesn't allow you to drill to the Email Status Search report is beyond me.

Using the Email Status Search report gave me ideas on one or two items I can improve. But it also showed me how ridiculous some users are. You'd see someone request a report, then a few minutes later double opt in, then after reading the report 5 minutes later they decide they don't want any further reports so they unsubscribe, then thanks to Infusion's solicitation report us as SPAM. Well by definition that is NOT spam. It was clearly solicited. If they don't like it they can unsubscribe, but it simply isn't SPAM.

Infusionsoft - A suggestion - If someone has double opted in, they shouldn't have the option to report as spam. You can still give them the option to provide feedback (obviously useful as we want our message to be well received), but it shouldn't count against us as sending SPAM (by definition SPAM is unsolicited email).

Also feedback on unsubscribes should not be included in a list of "complaints". That is good tool for helping us optimize but has nothing to do with SPAM.

Finally a question. What in the world does "Opted-out everything because of Bounce." mean???

Just to be clear, the warning says "shut down without any refund" not "without any notice". We generally abide by a "3 strikes" policy. We'll notify you at strikes 1 and 2. If you don't change your practices, then strike 3 will put you at risk of losing your account.

Another point of clarification: You don't get a strike for each individual spam complaint. Your strikes come from your spam complaint RATE. If you rate gets too high, you'll get a strike. The comment above about avoiding spam complaints completely is right now. If you're doing a fair amount of email marketing, you're likely to get some complaints, because some people are just complainers. That's why we look more at spam complaint RATE, than the number of complaints.

Does that help?

Hi Tyler,

Thanks for the response. What are unacceptable rates? Can a percentage be put on it? How does a customer get notified?

Thanks,

Joe

Joe, I can't remember off the top of my head. I can find out on Monday.

A customer will usually get notified via a phone call.