10-second breakdown:
If getting your email marketing up yesterday is your priority, Constant Contact can help you get up and running as soon as possible with their extended importing tools and prebuilt email templates.
Constant Contact is used in small (0-50 employees), and medium companies (51-1,000 employees).
The good:
Mobile app, Spam tester, autoresponders, templates, and easily branded emails allow you to get started right away with your marketing campaign.
Constant Contact offers an unheard of 60 day free trial so you can really get a feel for all of the features and know what this service can do for you.
You really feel no pressure to buy but if you do purchase a plan you will feel secure knowing CC offers a 30 day money back guarantee.
The bad:
Customization is a bit cumbersome. The interface to edit your contacts is slow and can be frustrating. Also they lack the ability to custom create different autoresponders.
Currently there is no option to schedule and send reoccurring emails. If you frequently need to send our daily or weekly reminders this service isn’t for you.
How it works:
If getting your email marketing up yesterday is your priority, Constant Contact can help you get up and running as soon as possible with their extended importing tools and prebuilt email templates.
Constant Contact includes everything you are looking for as far as email services go, they enable you to develop email campaigns, keep track of contacts and track how those emails were doing in some very detailed reports. While the interface isn’t quite as slick as some of the competition, it won’t be dense enough to scare the less tech-savvy members of your team.
Where Constant Contact really shines is in the ability to help you to go from 0 to marketing in almost no time flat. A lot of this industry only lets you import contacts in if you have them specifically formatted on spreadsheets but that’s not the case here. Constant Contact comes with a ‘contact management interface’ that can detect contacts and help you import them in with minimal hassle.
There is traditional importing as well, if you’re just starting out and keep your emails on a spreadsheet, no problem. Their most impressive import feature is the ability to import contacts directly from Gmail and Outlook, with a few clicks of the mouse you can be up and running.
Once you have the contacts in the system, Constant Contact provides you with one of the largest pre-built email template libraries in the industry. There’s over 400 of them in all, and they are well categorized so you don’t need to go on a treasure hunt paging through a hundred before you find the perfect golden template you’re list will just love. Editing that template is a snap as well, putting in your own images or modifying the text is as easy as dragging and dropping.
If you’re looking for power instead of simplicity Constant Contact can hand you the reins. The same editor can be switched over to manual, advanced options and you’re free to modify a template or roll up your sleeves and start from scratch.
Constant Contact packs in great event management tools as well. If you use your newsletters to invite guests to special events like galas or fundraisers, you have all the tools necessary to set up the email invitation, make a web page for the event, and add a registration form to it. You can also embed payment options right into the body of the email, attendees can pay you in advance rather then at the door if your event has an admission fee. It even ties into social media, you can set a link to the event’s Facebook page in the email invites as well.
Speaking of social media, Constant Contact offers quite a few methods to reach your client base, and even prepared a ‘Social Media Playbook’ if you’re not familiar with how powerful it can be. You can kick start a social media campaign by choosing a relevant email template, adding your sales magic with a call to action or offer, and sending it off to your list. Several templates are designed to link your customers to your Facebook page and engage with your brand.
One thing to note, Constant Contact is a little lacking when it comes to campaign management. They don’t offer RSS to email or action-triggered campaigns. For that reason, their campaign automation is lacking a little behind the competition. There’s also no A/B testing, Constant Contact’s help desk recommends making two separate lists and physically moving over half. It’s a band-aid but still isn’t nearly as comprehensive as some of the 5 way or more splits some of the industry offers.
The pricing page is a little more hidden then it has to be, if you want to find more details you have to scroll to the bottom of Constant Contact’s website and find ‘Pricing’ down below. They offer an extremely long term 60-day no credit card free trial, and add on a 30-day money back guarantee. Although there aren’t any contracts, Constant Contact does offer discounts if you commit to a full year of service and to all nonprofits.
There are two paid plans you can choose, first up is the elegantly named, ‘Email’ package. It starts at $20 a month for under 500 subscribers and scales up to $90 for 10,000. Email limits you to 1 user and gives you 1GB of storage space for you photos. You get all of the features you would expect and it includes support from the phone, live chat, email and even twitter.
The second plan is ‘Email Plus,’ for less than 500 contacts it costs $45 a month and goes all the way up to $115 a month for 10,000. Email Plus ups the users to 3 and includes 2GB of cloud storage. It comes with everything the other plan does but also throws in email automation, trackable coupons, customer surveys and more.
If you have a large email list, Constant Contact can still accommodate you. Just give them a call, you can’t get a plan above 10,000 subscribers online.
Constant Contact may not be the cheapest option around, but you get one of the easiest systems to work with, packed with tons of features to get you working as quickly and painlessly as possible.
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