VERY DISAPPOINTING
We are a marketing agency servicing travel businesses. As a result of Covid 19 our business was severely hit, and we were approached by Park Row Marketing, initially to focus on LinkedIn outreach to generate leads.
Initial conversations were good, where it was suggested we do a mix of live chat, email outreach and LinkedIn. Our insistence on supplying an email address which was part of our primary domain (to ensure brand consistency), as opposed to the suggested Gmail account, meant that the email marketing campaigns weren’t able to commence for a few months. This was our issue, not Park Row’s.
Since working with Park Row we’ve mostly been hands off, allowing their team to handle initial communication, and raise any questions or concerns to us, before we follow up directly with prospects ourselves. The leads we received were of varying quality (as expected), although most have been based outside of the UK (our core market), and hence have proven poor quality leads or very limited in terms of budget.
Two weeks ago now, as part of a review into email accounts, I reviewed the support@ email account (which only Park Row have been using). To find that the email address had been flagged as spam well over 6 weeks ago was a surprise, especially given that every subsequent outreach email had received the same spam non-deliverable error message.
What followed has been an exercise in trying to extract blood from a stone to understand the process and why this fundamental issue with the campaigns wasn’t highlighted to us. Whilst I was initially expecting this was due to the account not being monitored (most messages were left unread), or even an oversight, I have since been assured that the account was checked daily and their team were well aware of the issue.
If they were aware of the issue, why were bulk messages still sent every day for the next 6 weeks? If they were aware of the issue, why wasn’t this highlighted to us to discuss and agree the best option to get things moving at an important time for our business? Unfortunately I have been intentionally prevented from speaking to the one person who manages our account to get answers on this. To be unable to get answers to understand both their processes and why this happened tells me that they clearly have something to hide.
Travel has been so volatile over the last few months, and we’re seeing signs of recovery with our clients. So to have to myself stumble upon the fact that no outreach has been performed for at least 6 weeks, and yet, Park Row have reportedly known about the issue since the day the account was marked as spam is very disappointing.
