Maybe you can give me your input and advice:
If you have an email list, either for your own business or for a client’s list you manage, what software do you use to actually send the emails?
I’m asking because I myself am using a service I am not happy with, and I’m looking to switch.
Long-time readers know that I used to use ActiveCampaign for many years.
I switched last year, because ActiveCampaign had jabbed me for a long time with technical glitches, and then delivered a knockout right hook when they started punishing me (via a new pricing scheme) for sending daily emails as opposed to just weekly.
So last year, I switched to Kit.
Kit wasn’t perfect, but at first blush it seemed adequate. There was just one problem:
I noticed that dedicated readers, ones who had been on my list for years, and some of whom had paid me hundreds or thousands of dollars over the course of those years, were getting bounced off my list.
I’m sure it’s possible some of these people died, or had been put in jail, or simply got out of business, and their email accounts no longer work.
But the number of people getting bounced off my list has been worryingly large (197 over the past year, since I’ve switched to Kit). What’s worse, a large fraction of these (larger than for my entire list) are people with custom domain email addresses. And like I said, many are previous customers or dedicated readers.
To make me even more suspicious that something is rotten with Kit and bounces, I myself have been bounced off multiple Kit lists, multiple times, even though my own email address is working just fine.
A couple days ago, after my homebrewed system notified me that Kit had silently bounced another batch of 5 subscribers off my list, I contacted their help department as a last-ditch measure.
After some back and forth, Kit’s support team offered me a solution to my problem:
Turn on double-optin on all my optin forms. Their reasoning is that since I don’t have double optin enabled, “there is a huge chance that you have spam subscribers on your list which can negatively impact your email deliverability.”
For the record, my email deliverability seems to be fine, outside of the subscribers I can no longer send emails to because Kit has bounced them off my list.
In other words, Kit’s solution to my problem is no solution at all, at least to my mind.
So, as much as I am not thrilled with the prospect of switching email software again, I will do so.
But before I do, I’d like to find something that will prove adequate for a better period of time. Something that works well for sending daily emails… that has good deliverability… that is likely to be around in 3 or 5 years’ time because it’s backed by a serious business.
Can you help?
If you own or manage an email list, either for your own business or for a client, would you share with me what you use, and how happy or unhappy you are with it?
I normally ask people to reply directly to my emails with just an email of their own. But this time I’ve prepared a form to help me make sense of the replies. If that doesn’t turn you off, and if you would like to help me by sharing your own experiences, either good or bad, the link is below. Thanks in advance: