Vertical Response Feature

[jamiedolan]

Hello;

Will VB be using Vertical Response to send all out going messages, including subscription notifications or is this just to maintain a master list to e-mail your members with?

Thanks

[IBxAnders]

Vertical Response has nothing to do with existing mail features of the notification system; it's used solely as a newsletter manager - and only if you decide to use it; it does not affect default functionality of vBulletin.

[jamiedolan]

Vertical Response has nothing to do with existing mail features of the notification system; it's used solely as a newsletter manager - and only if you decide to use it; it does not affect default functionality of vBulletin.

So is the only time that Vertical Response directly interacts with the forum at sign-up when it captures the e-mail address and adds it to a mailing list?

[IBxAnders]

There is absolutely NO interaction between normal vBulletin functionality and Vertical Response.

[David Copeland]

Is the Vertical Response Webinar available to watch? I missed the invitation.

Also, I assume VBulletin simply uploaded our email addresses from the VB Control Panel to Vertical Response in order to send out a newsletter. I am looking at doing the same thing of our members too. (They are two separate sites).

I used a similar 3rd Party vendor last year (very much like Vertical Response) where they assure INBOX delivery of our emails instead of them going into our member's spam folder. We try to keep our monthly budget cost for this service down to $99. We use these types of mass email to invoice our members who have accounts with us, and the minimal cost of a little over a penny beats snail mail postage.

But I am interested in watching the VBulletin video again. Can you help?

VERTICAL RESPONSE: NEW EMAIL FEATURES

VerticalResponse and vBulletin have teamed up to offer award-winning email marketing in your vBulletin account. Join us for a free webinar and learn how you can take advantage of VerticalResponse's fast and simple solutions to automate mailing list creation, easily build rich email content, and send measurable campaigns to increase visitor traffic and forum engagement. Register now: http://www.vbulletin.com/go/vrwebinar

[IB Adrian]

David,
It will be made available - I will make an announcement when it is!
Adrian

[David Copeland]

David,
It will be made available - I will make an announcement when it is!
Adrian

Thanks!

Note: For Licensed VBulletin Owners, if you wish to see my other comments - please go to the following link:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...49#post2159749

[caracena]

I saw the webinar. I was actually very exited about this feature util I saw it today on that webinar. Do you guys really expect me to pay $250 a year for something and then add $150 ~ $250 a month so I could have a nice way to export my users list into another plattform with zero interaction at all? I mean, couldn't you just develop an "official" plugin (not free of course) that could send automated weekly newsletters from our forums? THAT is something I would pay for.

There are a couple of plugins out there that will do this... and they are free! Of course most of them are outdated or poorly maintained and usually they're just too hard to setup for some people, but I bet anyone that IB team can make one (directly integrated with vBulletin) in less than a month! I would pay $100 bucks for that.

This is not to offend you guys here at vB. It's just my way to tell VerticalResponse that they wasted a lot of money by investing in this marketing move.

[IBxAnders]

I saw the webinar. I was actually very exited about this feature util I saw it today on that webinar. Do you guys really expect me to pay $250 a year for something and then add $150 ~ $250 a month so I could have a nice way to export my users list into another plattform with zero interaction at all? I mean, couldn't you just develop an "official" plugin (not free of course) that could send automated weekly newsletters from our forums? THAT is something I would pay for.

There are a couple of plugins out there that will do this... and they are free! Of course most of them are outdated or poorly maintained and usually they're just too hard to setup for some people, but I bet anyone that IB team can make one (directly integrated with vBulletin) in less than a month! I would pay $100 bucks for that.

This is not to offend you guys here at vB. It's just my way to tell VerticalResponse that they wasted a lot of money by investing in this marketing move.

To be fair, I think you misunderstand why VR charges money for the service, why a third party is necessary and why this can't be a simple plugin that sends out emails from your server. The entire purpose of this integration is to off-load the functionality to an email-list service provider in order that the delivery can be managed. If you send frequent emails from your own server there is a high chance of being labeled as a spammer, as well as dealing with ISP due to complaints about your server sending unwanted emails.

[David Copeland]

I saw the webinar. I was actually very exited about this feature util I saw it today on that webinar. Do you guys really expect me to pay $250 a year for something and then add $150 ~ $250 a month so I could have a nice way to export my users list into another plattform with zero interaction at all? I mean, couldn't you just develop an "official" plugin (not free of course) that could send automated weekly newsletters from our forums? THAT is something I would pay for.

There are a couple of plugins out there that will do this... and they are free! Of course most of them are outdated or poorly maintained and usually they're just too hard to setup for some people, but I bet anyone that IB team can make one (directly integrated with vBulletin) in less than a month! I would pay $100 bucks for that.

This is not to offend you guys here at vB. It's just my way to tell VerticalResponse that they wasted a lot of money by investing in this marketing move.

caracena, please read the following link:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php/373345-vBulletin-4.1.2-Vertical-Response-Integration?p=2159749#post2159749

To be fair, I think you misunderstand why VR charges money for the service, why a third party is necessary and why this can't be a simple plugin that sends out emails from your server. The entire purpose of this integration is to off-load the functionality to an email-list service provider in order that the delivery can be managed. If you send frequent emails from your own server there is a high chance of being labeled as a spammer, as well as dealing with ISP due to complaints about your server sending unwanted emails.

Where is the order page for this?

We have monthly invoices and product announcements that are ending up in Spam folders, and from what I see from the costs - it would be a money saver for us.

David

[caracena]

David, I already did. Even before writing but you have to look at stats all over the web to see that vBulletin, not being prepared to be an e-commerce site at its fullest, maybe only 5% or less vBulletin powered sites make money out of it so this is an addon service that will serve (maybe) those guys. If that's your case well good for you but is not the case of the mayority.

For example, most sites with forums (vBulletin or whatever) are just informative or community sites where people share ideas and discuss on different matters and probably 90% of them earn some bucks every month using Google AdSense which, by the way, is forbidden to include in e-mails to per Google's TOC so 90% of forum sites don't earn nothing from campaing e-mails BUT, most of us would like to send a weekly or montly email with the latest hot threads, latest discussions and so on without even caring too much about the amount of receipients not getting those e-mails. Actually, if your users care about your newsletter, they will whiteflag them with their ISPs, mail server, mail software, etc. My users actually do!

To be realistic here, if people were really desperate for a "template maker" like the one being offered here, there would have been hundreds of those sites with custom plugins that would allow you to easily transfer all your users and groups but there are none untill now and this one doesn't even keep info synced so, there's not only work to be done by hand on editing the e-mail templates, adding the new content before sending each campaing and tracking, but you also need (like up until today) manually syncronize your databases. Yes, it's a little bit easier with Vertical Response but it's nothing that I wouldn't do to save some bucks every month.

Now, on the other hand, automatic mailing software plugins for vBulletin and other brands of BBs, have been downloaded and installed thousands of times. Why? Simple becouse people like to receive the newset content in their inbox every once in a while BUT administrator don't even like the idea of having to manually write those newsletters every single time (I know I don't) becouse you can't even go on a two weeks vacations without your users stop getting the newsletter!

So, again... if this works for you well then I'm very very glad but, as I stated on my post, is nothing like I expected and I think IB team could do A LOT better by themselves either by creating their own newsletter manager plugin or creating their own "bulk mail sending" company with huge discounts for current vBulletin Licence owners (what, you think they can't syncronize the two DBs?). Either idea could work and I can assure you they could get them up and running in 1 to 3 months top.

EDIT: I forgot to mention they talk about syncronizing the users list every 6 months and what that tells me is that they don't even know the mechanics of a forum like we administrators do, becouse even a slow site like mine, has 10 ~ 20 new members each day and that means that if one guy from Vertical Response was administering my site, there would be an average of over 10000 e-mails not sent to new users in 6 monthly campains. Is like buying a brand new car from a cammel vendor... they just don't know what they're doing and you can notice that with what's stated above: trying to sell something that's designed for merchants (and priced for merchants) to non-merchant vBulletin users (unless specific users like you of course)

Go ahead and ask IB guys the percentage of their licenced users use vBulletin to actually run online e-stores (which by they way lacks in vB by default).

[David Copeland]

Cesar, thanks for your post.

I am still waiting to find out where the "order page" is for me to look at the details. I hope an Admin comes along and provides me with that info.

And, I am waiting for the Announcement of the reposting of the Video you and others saw, so I can actually watch it! In the meantime, I am trying to connect the dots in order to move forward.

Worse case scenario for me is . . . . I simply sign up directly with Vertical Response (VR) and perform a simple copy and paste and upload of a text file to my newsletter at their site. I don't need to wait 6 months for the synchronizing of my members to VR. It only takes 3-4 minutes for me to upload my User Groups into VR's panel, and it's done!

I also like your idea about IB developing their own professional email service company. Who better knows what our needs are than IB! However, they are going to have to insure the service is white-listed with ALL of the ISP's, including Yahoo who is one of the tough ones to deal with. And what I mean by white-list is . . . the ability to pick up a phone and call an unlisted number to Yahoo's appeal desk to correct any issues immediately (without having to go through a mountain of trouble tickets).

And if IB is smart, they should consider part ownership in VR.

[David Copeland]

David,
It will be made available - I will make an announcement when it is!
Adrian

Any luck?

Also, where is the order page?

David

[IB Adrian]

David - we are just putting up an article now.
You will see it here shortly: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/conte...ideo-tutorials

The order page can be found once you log into Vertical Response