EMAIL MARKETING: WHY TOPICA SUCKS
January 30th, 2009 | by genesower |
As I’ve documented in previous blog posts about email marketing , not all email marketing software is created equal.
Recent case in point.
I’m a long time customer of Topica (nearly 10 years!), an email service I use based in California. I am constantly amazed at how a company that so despises their own customers remains in business. Topica offers no phone support and takes days, if ever, to get back to email requests for help. Try calling their San Francisco offices and all you get is a voice telling you what email addresses to write to.
That’s why when I started Samson Media and was looking to build new email marketing lists, the first thing I did was to phone up Topica competitors to see what the tech support experience would be, after suffering for so long as a Topica client.
Lo and behold, companies like Constant Contact and iContact, the company I now use for my own email marketing, all answered the phone with a human being who spoke English and was located right here in America! I was astonished! This was in stark contrast to the “Don’t call us, we’ll email you” approach that Topica embraces.
So it amazes me that with all the competition out there in this space, a company like Topica continues to keep their customers at arm’s length and will go out of their way to avoid providing support for what is generally considered a commodity product. It’s a helluva business model, especially in these tough economic times. If I could move my list without losing the opt-in value of all my thousands of subscribers, believe me—-I’d be soooo gone. But for now, I’m stuck.
2 Responses to “EMAIL MARKETING: WHY TOPICA SUCKS”
By genesower on Feb 3, 2009 | Reply
Well, Lo and behold! I went back to my old email files dating nearly 3 years ago and found an old correspondence to someone I had previously dealt with at Topica. I called the guy and left a long, sort of angry message and wouldn’t you know it…some guy named “Wallid” called me back! He was surprised and aplogetic that no one had gotten back to me blah, blah, blah. Anyway, to save others from having to deal with this, here’s Wallid’s direct phone number: 415.344.3897. I felt like I won the lottery!
By Si on Jan 19, 2010 | Reply
Topica sucks big time.
I got an email on the 27 August saying, your account charges are going up from $150/year to $500/year in 3 days time, please respond if you want to cancel.
Conveniently, this went into my SPAM folder (how ironic)
I picked it up on the 31 August, asked them to cancel, still no response to date.
Do not use Topica, Topica Review.