J. Carelli Consulting, LLC | Email Marketing Automations

Feb 2024

I agree with Sean's experience. I trusted EMA at the outset with our CRM build and integration with our other software as they were highly recommended by a colleague. After 1.5 years with EMA, our CRM was a complete disaster. Disorganized, cluttered and confusing. Amid all of this, we were told our requests for help were too numerous and our rate would be increased by 50%. As it was a busy growth time for the business, we agreed since we did not want disruption to our operations. As the nature of our requests quieted down signifcantly following the brief burst of activity, I asked for an audit of how time was being spent on our account and whether the significantly higher fees were still merited. The owner responded extremely unprofessionally, citing 'trust' as a missing factor and resenting 'accusations' that they were overcharging. In my experience, the best defense is a good offense. I was take aback by this response since any business owner has a right to inquire 1) how their money is being spent 2) why fees are increasing 3) if there is scope for negotiation. After this interaction, their entire team became openly hostile and aggressive. I would again concur with Sean and issue a strong warning against transacting with this business.

Apr 2023

I spent $8000 and 5 months of my time building out an email system with Jenna Carelli and Email Marketing Automations. She delivered a system that did not even remotely work.The goal was to sync Active Campaign with my CRM Zoho. The system they built was completely dysfunctional and did not at any point reflect the information in the CRM.In fact, it was so poorly built that it used my entire task allotment from Zapier which crashed the rest of my business as we rely on Zapier for many other functions. I was then told I had to upgrade Zapier to a multi-thousand dollar per year version in order for their system to work. I begrudgingly agreed, but the system still didn't work (I later had their work reviewed by a Zoho expert, who confirmed that it was horribly built).I asked multiple times for this to be resolved, and each time Jenna assured me that they would fix the problem. Each time I got an email a few days later telling me why they weren't going to fix the problem.In fact, she later admitted that she was "not a Zoho expert" after I signed the contract, not before of course. Jenna did not follow through on a single deliverable from our contract. I had to flush the $8K down the toilet and start all over again.This is not an ethical company, they will make a lot of promises and won't follow through on any of them. I hope this review saves someone a horrible experience.