Constant Contact

Pros

I do independent contracting for a nonprofit and have been using Constant Constant for about 4 years now for the electronic newsletters to our supporters and network. I love that the software and the many different template options to use for mailings. I also like that I am able to change fonts, color, backgrounds and layout with ease. It is VERY user friendly and if I need to stop in the middle of my work it, will be saved where I left off. This is actually an update because in the past if you didn't save the work manually you could lose it, but they have updated that and it now autosaves (which I am very grateful for). Also, I love that I can schedule mailings and campaigns in advance for when I want them to go out (I currently have 5 pending to go out on designated days within the next 5 weeks). This save me a lot of time and not having to wait til the day of to log on and send them out.

What I REALLY like is that we can track analytics. we know what emails (and topics) people are more interested in versus ones they barely open. This helps us in choosing more engaging content. I know what percent of our contacts have opened the emails. I can create different groups to send certain thing to (like Board members, parents, LSC), I am even able to see the time and date (and by whom) an email was opened and if the donate button was clicked or not (which is good for best practices and implementing measures of accountability within the org).

Cons

I don't like that the only videos that I can embed into the mailings have to be a Youtube link. But other than that, there isn't much that I do not like about using this software.

Pros

As an email marketing solution, CC fits most small to medium business owners needs with plenty of easy to edit templates, branded emails, newsletters, calendars, event apps, and website integrations. Additionally, business owners can set up events and registrations via the app. The templates are easy to use with varied options and designs. For more experienced handlers, HTML is available to set up templates. Emails offer clients and recipients the opportunity to opt out or stay tuned while landing the emails in their in box rather than their spam filters . Analytics are a plus and helpful to see what works and what doesn't in an email campaign. CC also integrates social media platforms. Overall it is a great all-in-one marketing tool.

Cons

While the software is generally easy to use, it is not intuitive and does on occasion produce glitchy results from missing images to random changes in text, font, and email structure. I do like the tiered pricing structure, although find CC to be far more expensive than their competitors. One of my biggest complaints is the placement of images - it doesn't really allow flexibility in design - if you are ok with their more cookie cutter template designs then its a 5 star - but the ability to place images becomes tedious and reduces the functionality. Overall the program is a go and worth the expense even if the image placement issues are annoying.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

Love the ease of use - whether you want to send a quick email using a premade template, or customize every part of your message, Constant Contact gives you the tools. It's easy to find what you need, and you don't need to know anything about pixel size or the HTML color codes to create professional emails.

Constant Contact just introduced A/B testing, so you can better gauge the headings and send times that get your audience to open the emails.

Constant Contact is a very solid platform - I've yet to see any service outages, or experience any features that feel buggy, unstable, or like they're still in beta testing. If you have access to a feature on Constant Contact, you know that it will work.

Cons

It's difficult to manage old campaigns. Want to see what your message was last time, what template you used, or how long ago you sent an email to a particular group? Good luck - you'll be scrolling through pages of old campaigns by hand.

At this time, you can't run reports to compare the percentage of opens/click-throughs per recipient group, or to compare how various keywords or send-times compare. To really analyze your marketing approach, you'll have to extract this data by hand.

Some of the updates (i.e. A/B testing, custom template options) have been available to users of free competitor services for years. It would be nice to see Constant Contact take a more proactive approach to innovation and updates.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.