I have battled with Announcer Pro for a little while now and have in the past managed to successfully send out Newsletters etc. However things seem to getting worse to the extent I have given up on it completely and regard it as the most frustrating program I have ever used (and I worked in the computer industry for 5 years!)
So for anyone thinking about using it I thought I just let you know my experience and frustration with Announcer Pro during the past couple of weeks.
1. I decided to send a follow up message to contacts from a Wedding Fair I recently attended. Eventually I managed to design the HTML email (more on that later) or so I thought. It looked fine on the design screen but when I sent a test email or did a preview from the send email screen the header image didn't appear. I logged a call with BT. After a few days heard back and they said they couldn't find any problem but miraculously the problem had 'fixed itself'. Come on BT, please own up to please things.
2. This week I decided to design a HTML email newsletter from scratch. This is where the frustration sets in and here I've listed just a few of the problems. a.) Highlight some text to change the font size and when click on the new font size the highlighted text has become un-highlighted. b.) Highlight text to change font size - this time it changes the font size but also changes the text colour for all text in that box (not just the highlighted text). c.) Highlight text and I would expect the font and font size to show the current values (as in all other software I've ever used) - but it doesn't. d.) When I think I'm getting somewhere close to finishing, as it all looks OK on the design screen, I do a preview and get text overlapping text (or itself), text overlapping images - it's just a mess. I spend hours trying to get it right. e.) Theres no way to get a text box to go full width across two columns if you are using a two column template. f.) Finally I think I've got it right, send a test email to myself and no Company name or Slogan appears (it's fine in the design screen). This is the point I finally gave in.
3. These are just some of the problems. I've spent days trying to get this right - something which should have taken me a couple of hours.
At 10.30pm the other night I gave up. I did a Google search for HTML email suppliers. The first one in the list was MAILCHIMP. I signed up. By midnight I had gone through all their settings, designed my HTML email from scratch, setup my email contacts and sent my Newsletter. I have never used MAILCHIMP before. Previously I'd spent days trying to do this in Announcer Pro to no avail, then do it in less than two hours with another program I've never used before.
I apologise for the long winded message, but I would like to give some advice to anyone thinking of using Announcer Pro - DON'T. It just doesn't work very well.
My advice to BT - Please fix the problems or better still replace it with something that works.
Ian
