Constant Contact is known to offer a range of intuitive marketing applications that are designed to aid small businesses as well as nonprofits to expand their customer bases as well as strengthening relationships. The solutions are inclusive of email marketing, event marketing, reporting, social campaigns, management, as well as survey management. They are available independently as well as a part of an integrated suite known as the Constant Contact toolkit.

 

It also allows businesses to import customer data from spreadsheets as well as email clients like Gmail or Microsoft outlook. You can personalize email sign-up forms as well as embed them on web pages or Facebook to get new contacts as well as build strong email lists. There are hundreds of customizable email templates with elements like drag-and-drop plus it includes real-time reporting features.

 

It offers online as well as in-person seminars or training to add people to improve their marketing efforts.

 

Constant Contact – Features 

 

  • Marketing automation – The users get the chance to set up welcome emails, anniversary or birthday emails, etc. to send to contacts based on specific triggers. Later, the emails are ready to modify the content.
  • Contact management – The contact management dashboard of Constant Contact offers tools that users need to organize their subscribers into one contact list. Marketers also have the choice to upload text files or spreadsheets as well as import contacts from Outlook as well as Gmail. Tagging contacts as well as including custom fields is easy and the platform offers users the chance to clean it up to avoid duplicates.
  • Statistical reporting – It offers detailed reports to see statistics on the number of clicks, forwards, spam reports, etc. These are graphically displayed in the account. Also, the software offers users with customization option in the spreadsheet that they can export anything. An activity tab logs exports, updates, additions, etc.
  • Event marketing tools – This is a great feature for all the marketers that have a keen interest in leveraging email marketing so that they can drive attendance at trade shows as well as conferences. The EventSpot offers the necessary tools to create email invitations as well as registration forms as well as the home page. The online form includes the event registration process, avoiding the need to gather registration information through phones. Also, there are some integrations with other tools like Eventbrite.
  • E-commerce integrations – It offers native integration with various e-commerce solutions to allow marketers to complete abandoned cart emails, check sales in the Constant Contact dashboard, and a lot more.

 

A/B split testing 

 

With this feature, you can create two subject lines that can be sent to some of the contact lists. The software decides the better-performing subject line as well as automatically sends the best one.

 

Autoresponders 

 

With this, you can create personalized series, automated emails that will send to specific triggers automatically. Plus you can automate emails like welcome messages, birthday emails, etc.

 

Deliverability 

 

It boasts around a 97% deliverability rate. Constant Contact also offers resources on its site to learn amazing practices of email as well as phrases that can trigger spam filters.

 

Email editor 

 

After clicking on ‘create an email’ there is a choice to add your website. If you click on this option then Constant Contact can scrub the website to find the brand’s color, social media accounts, etc. by adding them to the email. Later you can choose the template and edit using the drag-and-drop tool. If you are confused then you can check the video which plays automatically.

 

Email templates 

 

It has various templates and every template can be reused and is built for desktop as well as mobile. After selecting the template it can be customized with images, colors, or fonts.

 

List management 

 

There is an option to upload the existing contacts with Excel, Outlook, as well as Salesforce. After uploading new contacts, tags can be used to categorize them. Plus, Constant Contact removes duplicates as well as unsubscribed contacts.

 

Reporting 

 

After sending the emails, you can check the reports from the campaign. It includes open rates, click rates, total email sent, spam reports, etc. There is also an option to see what links are clicked, poll responses, etc. And from the dashboard emails can be resent.

 

Pros of Constant Contact

 

  • Supports subscriber tagging as well as lists
  • A nice library of email templates in various industries
  • Good drag and drop email builder
  • Email preview for mobile plus other various email clients
  • Can build both inline as well as popup forms (+ a page builder)
  • Supports basic autoresponder sequences
  • Provides simple reporting features for normal campaigns
  • Various integrations

 

Cons of Constant Contact

 

  • Lengthy as well as annoying approval process (industry-specific)
  • There are no rule-based segmentation options for campaigns
  • Outdated and not-so-good email template designs
  • Limited form templates as well as customization
  • No support for email A/B testing
  • No automation workflow builder for dynamic sequences
  • Limited reporting for autoresponder sequences
  • Costly as compared to competitors

 

Constant Contact – Customer service and support 

Support

There are various customer resources offered by Constant Contact like:

 

  • A knowledge-based which has how-to-articles, guides, as well as tutorials.
  • A database of various video tutorials that offer beginners to advance level tips as well as strategies.
  • A professional service team that is known to offer marketing advice, premium design, campaign design/copy, list growth, and a lot more.
  • Educated events that involve seminars as well as training held online or in-person

 

Customers can also get support through phone, live chat, or via social media accounts. They can also get in touch with the Help Center where there are 665, 000 plus members.

Pricing of Constant Contact

 

Pricing

There are two plans offered by Constant Contact, Email and Email Plus. Also, there is a 60-day free trial by it. For both plans, there is a requirement of creating professional email campaigns. The plans send unlimited emails and have customizable templates, list-building tools, tracking and reporting tools, image library, etc.

 

However, Email Plus provides dynamic signup forms, 2GB file storage, email automation, online donations, surveys as well as coupons, and access to around 10 users.

 

Here are some of the other things to know about its pricing:

 

  • The prices of plans depend on list size. If you prepay for 6 months then you can get a 10% discount, if you go for 12 months then you get a 15% discount. There are some more discounts for nonprofits and special plans can be found for the franchise as well as associations.
  • The price of Email plan starts at $20/month for 500 subscribers, $65/month for 5, 000 contacts and $335 for 50, 000 contacts.
  • The cheapest package starts at $45/month where you can send emails to around 500 contacts. Also, $70/month for 2500 contacts and $335 for 50, 000 contacts.
  • In case you have 50, 000 plus subscribers then you can get in touch with Constant Contact for a price quote.
  • In case the contact list changes from one billing cycle to another then it will be adjusted automatically.
  • There is a 60-day free trial that offers all the tools like templates, live support, contact management, images, etc. However, you can only send emails to around 100 contacts and even less.

 

Endnote 

 

We didn’t like the lengthy approval process as well as the email templates. The visual editor or reporting features were not that impressive. Also, we felt that there was a lack of split-testing as well as automation capabilities.

 

However, most of the aspects of Constant Contact feel dated and even limited which makes everything difficult. This is the reason that instead of choosing Constant Contact, you can search for other email marketing software.