Whats up with webmail?

[IanF]

Hard Sell

I have learnt the hard way as soon as you get a phone call and they ask to speak to owner, I say either are you the owner of your business if not can I speak to the owner. Or if I am tired I just say he is not in can you send an email with what you want. Most of the time it is either webmail or easyinfo.

[IanF]

Webmail

Just had a call from webmail asking to speak to the MD. I just said we don't deal with webmail, when asked why I said get your MD to phone me and I will explain. How do you get off their calling list? Or do they just use the phone book?

[Novice]

Also had same problem. I kept telling them that they have already contacted me numerous times before... then the dead silence on the line.

Fortunatly they stopped.
Can't wait for the next time. Will give them a piece of my mind.

[murdock]

i heard one of my customers on the telephone to this webmail yesterday...he has spent 15k and has had no results...he sounded pretty peed off.

[Dave A]

Perhaps their real problem is their pricing?

I wonder if there is a zero return, or just a low return against the money spent.

[Jabu]

I do not know how everyone gets the newsletter but it looks very funny in webmail.

In webmail you get text only emails.

[Dave A]

Jabu - Please forward that email to me so that I can see for myself what the problem is.
You know my email address.

[Jabu]

Done.

[Dave A]

Hmm. I see what you mean. Even the css comes through.

I'm going to have to totally rethink the style of the newsletter so that it can handle text only mail clients.

[Shan]

Response from Webmail

Hello to you ALL. Congratulations on a great site you have running here Dave, allow me to introduce myself, my name is Shannon Cloete and I do Marketing for the entire Interface Media group.



I would have responded sooner but was only made aware of this forum a day or so ago, so my apologies for the belated response. I see that many of you have raised your concerns around Webmail's services and business models, however, if you continue to investigate, you will note that many large companies have complaints listed against them - such as Woolworths, Vodacom, Pick 'n Pay - honestly the list is endless and is not a true test to the excellent products and service they offer. We take our complaints seriously and address them, not with the world wide web but directly with our clients.



Seeing though you have made your concerns public here, I will gladly address
those:



~ We do not sell our database, by any means

~ As it says on our site and this is correct, we do not spam

~ Webmail is Internet based and experiencing problems with sending mail is
all dependent on your internet connectivity

~ We do supply stats on each of our campaigns that we run for our clients

~ We run a totally free email service that is purely opt in for people to use

~ If you took the time to meet with one of our sales consultants, you may well be surprised with the great packages we offer of which keywords are also an option.

~ Ann - Our minimum advertising contract is not R5000 a month and the period is not a minimum of 12 months either.

~ For those of you who are familiar with advertising, results are all dependent on the campaign that is running and results can also never be guaranteed. We provide stats as a VAS to our clients, so for anybody to say that their stats/results proved to be disappointing is not justifiable as there is no way to compare online marketing to any other forms of media who cannot provide stats.

~ Webmail remain no. 1 on the OPA, so this has to say something.



You will all be happy to know that we will be launching the new Webmail towards the end of May that will not only have some awesome new services but also some technology and functionality that will be a first to the world!



For now though, please will you all contact us directly on 011 628 9700.
Irene will be happy to assist with Easy Info queries and Lianda will assist with Webmail queries and from here we can work on these issues together.
Alternatively, if you would like to contact me directly you are more than welcome to send me an email.



Regards

Shannon

[Dave A]

Welcome, Shan

It's always good to hear the other side of the story.

For myself, the only information I have on your rates is what has been presented here so far. Do you have a link to a rate card or be able to give an indication of what your smallest package is - along with what an advertiser would get for that?

[IanF]

Shan
Great to hear from the horse's mouth. I am correct in saying that webmail can't handle reaonable sized files as attachments. My quotes are usually 100kb attachment and that gets bounced back. I tell my customers to get gmail accounts instead.
Are you going to change your cold calling tactics as I am not pleasant when someone phones and asks to speak to the MD, as I know it is either webmail or easyinfo.
Maybe to convince us/me you can give us some success stories.

[Shan]

Thanks for the welcome gentlemen.

Unfortunately the best thing I can do is to email you a copy of our latest rate card. Please confirm your email address Dave and i will forward this onto you.

As for the unpleasant calls you receive Ian, i will ensure that our entire telesales teams are notified that you are not interested and would not like to receive calls any longer. This is a true sign that your advertising is working somewhere as this is where they would get your contact details from.

Again, i will remind you that we will be launching the new Webmail that will be able to handle the quote size you are currently needing to use.

Regards
Shannon

[Dave A]

Unfortunately the best thing I can do is to email you a copy of our latest rate card. Please confirm your email address Dave and i will forward this onto you.

Thanks Shan. I got the rate card and it certainly is food for thought.

I think Ann must have been referring to the Top site Portal advertising option. I see there are other options.

[Shan]

Webmail

Im glad you got it. Please feel free to forward any other queries to me.