Review - July 22 by NickSQ

If anyone here reads our AppExchange reviews, you'll notice tons of favorable reviews, however, as any heavily used software company knows, you can't please everyone.

I think the idea of being able to post a review is great as it promotes the community aspect of the AppEx marketplace, but not being able to respond to posts (and provide updated or correct information) is more than a little frustrating. 

We aren't looking to brush the negative reviews under the rug, quite the opposite actually.  We want to create an open and public dialogue where feedback can be provided, factual information shared and upcoming solutions announced.  So how do we do that...Take it to the Blog -- of course!

That's right, going forward we'll be addressing any negative reviews on our AppExchange listing here on the VR for AppEx blog.  We'll dissect each issue and provide the official VR stance so you get all the correct information.  We encourage you to comment, share your personal experiences and engage with other users so we can get the back-and-forth correspondence that is sorely lacking on the AppExchange review page.

So to get us rolling, I've picked the review below as a starting point.  Note: The text of these reviews are taken directly from the AppExchange review page (i.e. copy/paste) so all comments, as well as spelling/grammar, are the sole responsibility of the original poster.

Original Review:

"You Get What You Pay For...

Vertical response is great because it gets you around the 1000/day mass email limit imposed by salesforce but it has 1 major drawback that makes it unusable for us. It won't let you specify a from address. It sends out email on your behalf but the from email address is a very spammy looking address. This resulted in a 3000 email campaign only having a 30% open rate. It also doesn't appear to be a true salesforce app as it just reads for the VR website and 'inserts' this inside Salesforce. Not only is the VR site very slow, it doesn't integrate with other Salesforce stuff."

VR's Comments:

"It won't let you specify a from address."

Just to clarify, we allow users to choose a From Label (i.e. Acme, Inc or Joe Smith) and this information gets inserted to the left of the @ sign in the From Address.  We use a static sending domain (@mail.vresp.com) as this helps email delivery rates for a few specific reasons. 

1. First, having a From Address that differs from the actual sending domain can have a negative impact on delivery rates as this is often referred to as "spoofing."  This is a tactic used by spammers to hide their identity and masquerade as a legitimate source in hopes of bypassing spam filters. 
2. Second, the static domain allows us to handle all the email authentication protocols (SPF, SenderID, Domain Keys)on our client's behalf and requires no additional set up on their end. 
3. Third, VR has a proven record in the mass email space and we've developed a very strong reputation as a legitimate sender.  As a result, our sending domain (noted above) has credibility with both major ISPs and corporate domains so customers stand to benefit from these in-roads.

Horn tooting? You bet. ReturnPath estimates VerticalResponse's deliverability rate as being about 99% for users that use VerticalResponse for AppExchange. Besides, 30% is a pretty good open rate and above industry standard for opt-in marketing emails.

"It doesn't appear to be a true SF application."

Hmm, "true" is a little subjective because it can mean different things to different people but from a user interface perspective we understand that making our app look and feel more like the native salesforce.com application is very important to some users.

We're working on some UI and workflow changes that will address these concerns and will have them ready for launch within a few weeks after Dreamforce.  Speaking of that, come see us at our booth for a sneak peek as we'll be demoing the new wares.

Ok, hopefully some of this information has helped and we hope to get some feedback from the readers out there (good, bad, ugly).  Let's get this open forum rolling and feel free to challenge any of the comments noted above.

Lastly, if you got a product idea, send it over. I want to hear from you all so we can make this app better than ever.

-- Chris Carpio, Associate Product Manager

Comments

[rugs]

Good idea to have both positive and negative reviews. That way the reviews don't look slanted and therefore users might think there is a conflict of interest. Makes the blog look more natural.