Comments on: Using your CRM for bulk emails, be careful.

By: rwcra

rwcra — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:08:46 +0000

I believe THGG’s Robert Gruen was a car guy, no?

By: DeCoder74

DeCoder74 — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 00:31:31 +0000

LOL. A debate? No. Just looking for full disclosure which you provided and I appreciate.

I wish you nothing but good luck.

Take care.

By: Jake Wirth

Jake Wirth — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 21:27:57 +0000

DeCoder74,

Just so you dont have to speculate here are the facts:

I do work in Novato, CA for a company called iMagicLab (formerly iCarMagic). I did step out of the dealership, giving up my Internet Manager title. I did move my family across the country from a small dealer group in Indiana…

All for my belief in the products at iML. If you are looking for a debate I will happily meet you in any public forum to discuss software in the Automotive Retailing space, fyi.

By: DeCoder74

DeCoder74 — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 02:17:59 +0000

Jake, sounds like you work for a certain ILM/CRM based in Novato, CA…wait, perhaps you do. Transparency is pretty high, fyi.

By: Jake Wirth

Jake Wirth — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 05:29:27 +0000

Maybe its due to issues like this that Higher Gear has you sign a LONG term contract when using their solutions……

Come to think of it, I think there is an ILM tool out there that measures the likeliness of your email templates getting blacklisted when you create them.

Like I mentioned before, be sure to shop around. The most expensive solution surely cannot be the best, can it?

By: Jake Wirth

Jake Wirth — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 05:11:36 +0000

Don’t worry guys, there are alternatives to Higher Gear!

Be sure to shop around for an CRM or ILM tool that was actually developed by car guys for car guys!

By: Jeff Kershner

Jeff Kershner — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 03:45:08 +0000

They did fix the issue but I hardly doubt 2 months is considered quick for such an important issue and for something that eventually became detrimental to our email communication with our customers. The CRM would recognize a customer with the same email and it would merge the customer information BUT it would build another opportunity for that customer and double up on the follow-up and automated emails unless you manually delete each and every follow-up that was designated to happen for this customer. The way the system is set up..there is no alert to let you know that has happened. Again, I’m not here to slander Higher Gear too much. The CRM does many things right, but it was unfortunate to have the problems that we did.

By: Ryan Gerardi

Ryan Gerardi — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 20:19:24 +0000

Things like this are bound to occur with software. It does seem short-sighted that they would attach unknown.txt files in place of HTML in the message, but at least they fixed the issue quickly. Not being a user of automotive CRM, why does the system not recognize leads by email address? Are there security reasons for this?

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 18:24:27 +0000

Higher Gear did eventually fix the issue but it was too little too late. As for an ILM tool, unless it’s an upgrade, I was never made aware of it. And I don’t think having an email screen constitutes as a ILM tool. You can set up your desklog to view only Internet Leads and this works for your incoming new leads BUT you have to view your “ToDo” lists for incoming emails from existing customers. You will find yourself jumping from screen to screen to screen to accomplish anything. -Jeff

By: Farooq

Farooq — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:28:31 +0000

I wonder what happened to there Quality Assurance(QA) process. Next time choosing a vendor ask them about there QA process. From a programmer view mistakes like this do happen in development… but should have been caught before going into production.

You could catch on to these errors by making your email servers part of feedback loop from AOL, Hotmail and others. This way any message that is marked SPAM you get a report and can look after them pro-actively. Hotmail goes a step further and provides you with delivery stats for a given day. Another thing to ask any provider that offers email campaigns is what is there policy on the spam rate. For example we will suspend an account for 10 spam complaints for each 5000 emails sent.