Although this company presents themselves as an "email marketing and list management company with opt-in contacts database", peppering their emails with guarantees regarding the quality and accuracy of the data you are purchasing, our recent experience with them was extremely disappointing and nothing like what they promised.
We understand the economy is pressing all areas of business to do more with less, however, this company has taken it to the extreme by clearly not practicing what they offer in their guarantee and not putting the customer first.
When we initially engaged with them in early March 09, there were a few red flags. Their first proposal was for about 74K contacts ranging in price from $18K - $25K depending on the depth of contact info (email, phone, fax, mailing address, etc.).
We immediately pushed back to get a lower/sampling of data so that I could test the quality before investing in a larger-scale purchase. I told them I could invest $2500 to do sampling and test for quality. Alex Cooper, the AM and Business Development Manager, we worked with was extremely diligent and tenacious during the sales process to get an insertion order placed. We would receive emails and phonecalls daily for over a week from him.
Alex made it clear to us that they had a minimum order of $5K. We told him, sorry, but we're unable to invest that amount. He then came back with a today-only offer: "As a special case we can make it $3,500 for 10,000 contacts if you sign the order today."
Again, we re-read the guarantee on the contract:
"Guarantee on the dаta: We make sure that prior to delivery, we will verify all these records and we will give you everything in writing that you will be getting minimum 70% on emails and 90% on other data. If the records are not up to the minimum accuracy, we will replace with fresh records or pay you back for the inappropriate records that we deliver."
We then moved forward and met Alex halfway and placed an order for $3K for 12K contacts (Alex informed us that they "deliver 20% records free of cost").
From there, was when the next red flag went up high. Payment.in order to gain access to the list they required immediate payment by check or wire. Other list brokers and email companies we had worked with previously had more flexibility, and weren't so high pressure. However, we took this as a sign of the times and also that Alex was being a good salesperson in protecting his company as well and of course making sure we were legitimate.
We over-nighted a check to them and soon after we received the list.
After de-duping and ensuring we removed any previous unsubscribes from the list, we uploaded it into our email marketing system.
We sent the SixChannels email list we had purchased an offer that had been widely successful with similar contacts. Overall the results were as follows:
After de-duping and cleansing the main SixChannels list, there were 13,911 contacts.
After mailing, we received a total of 7,849 bounces.
That left the mailable total 6,062.
Thus, there was a 43% accuracy rate overall — nowhere near SixChannels' guaranteed a 70% overall accuracy rate on contacts delivered. SixChannels did not meet this guarantee.
Our professional email service has banned us from sending to any lists acquired by SixChannels/List Galaxy because the bounce rates are in excess of 55% (as they have seen from other customers who have used their lists).
Our email service has put us on notice that we must discontinue sending any emails (including replacements) to SixChannels/List Galaxy lists, as it's caused several SPAM complaints.
In addition, the list we purchased from SixChannels was peppered with SPAM address honeyspots.
All of this information was conveyed to SixChannels, and at first Alex came back with another offer: "We have an offer for you: Purchase Entire 359,000 IT executives emails at $15,000 this time."
Of course at this point, we asked Alex to escalate to his management. He pushed back and asked what we propose they do and that we would need to justify the resolution. Our response was: "Unfortunately, what we want, SixChannels cannot deliver. We want the exposure created by the use of the SixChannels list we purchased to go away. We want the SPAM complaints to stop and we do not want to be banned from our professional email service from sending further campaigns."
We then presented Alex with the bullets I listed above and told him, "I believe after reading the below points you and your organization will realize anything less than a full refund would simply not be acceptable. This situation has grown into a huge business issue for us."
From that point, Alex responded by accusing our company of not following CAN-SPAM regulations. We immediately researched with our team and also other third-party vendors and confirmed that we did indeed obey the law as our email offer provided:
Legitimate sender and sending domain
No false/misleading subject or forged header
Physical address (and phone)
Opt-out/unsubscribe link
We then asked Alex repeatedly to escalate our issue. No response.
We then found Steve Sujith's contact information and began emailing him and still including Alex in the email trail. No response.
We learned in our research about this company, SixChannels, that they also go by a number of aliases as well such as: Zaconta Inc., Sloan Marketing, List Orbit, Six Channels, Email appenders, Data Champions (Now Webdatachampions), List Galaxy, Optinbuilders, Esales crm, Optinlists (Now Optinlist), Sales Browser, Info Appenders, and SalesLists Online.
It's very disappointing to get poor results from a campaign, but even more disheartening to feel like a company you trusted to do business with clearly does not uphold its word and does not put the customer first.
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