Constant Contact

Pluspunten

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.

Minpunten

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.

Pluspunten

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.

Minpunten

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.

Pluspunten

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.

Minpunten

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.

Pluspunten

What I like most about this software is the ability to reach a lot of client, customers, vendors, donors, etc., quickly as well as the ability to locate contact information on these individuals from any point intime in which we interfaced with them. The software helps us ensure effective and timely communciation which drive donor retention, fundraising, enrollment, etc. Constant Contact is an essential investment for all nonprofits.

Minpunten

What I like least about this software is that it does not recognize duplicate individuals; we have to screen and purge those entries ourselves.

Pluspunten

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.

Minpunten

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.