Constant Contact

Puntos a favor

Constant Contact makes it really easy to make attractive, functional emails and to conduct email campaigns with sequencing. Building emails is done via a drag-and-drop interface (WYSIWYG), so you don't have to have any coding experience with html or css. It's really easy to schedule your campaigns, too. If you can use Outlook and Word, you should be able to get comfortable with Constant Contact pretty quickly. It's also really easy to build and manage contact lists, including importing from csv files. And Constant Contact does a good job of tracking bad email addresses and removing them from your lists, which is important because you are charged by the number of contacts you have. I also like that you can send yourself previews so you can try the messages out on different mail programs and tweak them to your liking. Once you've sent out the messages, Constant Contact offers reporting to let you know how successful your campaign was, including the click-through rate. It also sends you reports about who is being added to and removed from your contact lists. Its integration with several WordPress form plugins means it's easy to convert web traffic to email marketing recipients.

Puntos en contra

Permissions. There are basically two levels of permissions besides the account owner: campaign creator and account manager. It would be nice to have more granular control over what users can do, because account manager gives users a lot of freedom, but is necessary to work with contacts, schedule a send, etc. The other thing I don't like is how quickly the cost ramps up. Having used Emma and MailChimp, I feel like Constant Contact is the most robust platform. But it is expensive.

Puntos a favor

I use CC to to manage our large contact database and to send out email updates. It is great for segmenting our list -- from general interest to communications to fundraising. The automated features are great, especially that it will not allow the same email to appear in the same inbox twice. It also merges duplicate contacts. We use it across the entire organization. Constant contact is great for merging duplicate contacts, updating your address book, giving a reliable open rate and thorough reports, and allowing you to segment large email lists.

Puntos en contra

When uploading additional contacts, CC wants to see how they actively subscribed. This can be problematic when uploading an older email list (i.e. you may just have a spreadsheet of The List and they want to see more evidence). Additionally, it is a little pricey compared to competitors such as MailChimp. It would be great to be able to export email campaigns as HTML.Be extremely careful when importing contacts. Constant Contact wants to see how they actively subscribed. Sometimes it is hard to prove this when you have entered information for people you have an established relationship with, or if they verbally requested to be added. Constant Contact wants to actually see the (paper) sign-up sheet. This is unachievable for businesses/groups that have been around long enough to have established an email list based on personal relationships or when importing business cards. As for the design, sizing images can be difficult when you are using a self-designed template. As for the contact management services, representatives have very little technical knowledge and don't seem to understand marketing techniques used within certain industries.

Puntos a favor

Constant Contact has a smooth feel and almost always gives back more than I put into it. It's simple, solid, and scores big with me in mass management of details, as well as private and public listings. From crafting a simple update, to publishing an intricate periodical, it does the trick. The better your skills in composition and design, the better this suite will engage your craft. If you're not really into complex "back end" matters, like analytics, CTA, efficiency, and delivery success, that's ok. You'll still be able to feel the "pulse"; and like many things, the rest will come with time. The best part is that it grows on you over time, instead of impressing you upfront, and then disappointing. This "work-on-it-anywhere" app is chock full of tools for social marketing, surveys and campaigns, monitoring, scheduling, automation and similar workflows, to design, custom templates, storage, libraries, and hosting, etc. However, don't ease up on your final proof, because that's where I make the "best" mistakes! The more polished it is, the more embarrassing that typo will be! Constant Contact is a multi-level mobile tool, with plans that meet well.

Puntos en contra

While I don't always anticipate maintenance down-times, a more diverse notification system of maintenance times would be nice. I also believe a "pay-per-use" option for a reasonable time-frame would be great for businesses with less predictable budgets, trying to get off the ground. Also, sometimes design tools aren't as pliable as I'd like sometimes (I'm a so-so perfectionist). But for the price, that's ok!

Puntos a favor

I love the templates and the ease of creating great looking emails. It's easy to update the contact list. And I like that I can see a preview of the email as it will appear on computers and on mobile devices. I also really like the feedback that the data tracking component gives me.

Puntos en contra

There are a couple spots in the templates that can be glitchy. Sometimes blocks of text will get gaps or random changes in font size -- I have to do several test-emails to check that it will appear in good order on both computers and on mobile devices. That can be time-consuming. Also, some clients report having an issue finding the emails that come from Constant Contact, because the emails end up in spam folders or with warning messages attached.

Puntos a favor

Constant Contact does a great job of managing multiple groups/list and lots of contacts. I've worked with clients who have a large customer base and Constant Contact allows managing large amounts of group/lists and allows you to manual remove unsubscribers and errors. They are rolling out a new version of their email builder, but the older version does allow custom css coding per block which really allows customizing their templates.

Puntos en contra

There are a lot of quirks within Constant Contact that I haven't seen in Mailchimp, specifically with using external links for photos and links. The actual editing of text and links within the email builder is quirky and has some issues. Also, the new search feature for previous emails is really slow and takes a long time to find previous emails unless you create folders for all your emails.