Constant Contact Review

COMPLETE REVIEW

Email marketing may not work equally well for every company. Those who struggle or those who don't but want a huge boost in their email marketing will like the delivery rate, unlimited mail traffic, high level of message customization as well as advanced marketing tools like coupons and event invitations. Those who opt for the cheaper plan will still reap from the high delivery rates, able even to pave the way to Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo! Mail inboxes.

All plans feature unlimited emailing, a thing many providers won't offer. The basic Email plan offers 1 GB storage for documents and images, and these can be shared with recipients via a Web link in the message or newsletter body. List management and tracking options also exist in this plan. Besides the template library there is a stock image library as well, so you can use unique stock photos to enrich the messages. To all its users, regardless the plan and list size, there is a free mobile app and integrations with services like Salesforce, Outlook, Hootsuite, WordPress, Privy, Shopify, and more than 270 other integrations.

Anyone choosing Constant Contact qualifies for a 60-day free trial and 30-day money-back guarantee.  The difference between the basic Email and advanced Email Plus plan can be tried by using the latter and trying out all its possibilities. Those who pay for six months in advance get a 10% discount and 12-month prepaid accounts get a 15% discount. Verified nonprofits get 20%-30% discounts for prepayment. Organizations that need multiple accounts – such as associations - get special custom plans.

What makes Constant Contact stand out from tens of similar providers is their strong support and learning system. The website offers plenty of tutorials and materials covering the basics of email marketing and their platform. Marketing consultancy and services are available, so is the training with plenty of tutorials, seminars, and articles.  Phone support works 11 hours a day. Other than that, users and prospects can send inquiries in writing on the website or via email. The provider maintains community forums where users can help each other and get answers from the admin team.

Email Creation And Sending

Constant Contact offers a great number of templates which can be customized to make great unique newsletters and messages. You can also apply many effects on the stock images found on Constant Contact's image library, and it also applies to any other photos you add to the system, sparing you the need of using additional image manipulation software.

New content creation is a breeze, but importing templates and HTML codes requires a bit more effort. When you're done editing the chosen template and added all the needed content, you can preview messages and newsletters to see how these would look to recipients on various screen sizes and formats.

Unfortunately, Constant Contact does not offer an automated A/B testing environment, nor any other testing system in so far, though they claim they're going to introduce subject line testing. Until that happens, you can rely on plenty of analytic tools which can tell the destiny of every single email or newsletter sent. The result of your campaigns can be tracked on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.

Scheduling emails is another strong feature. Messages and newsletters are able to be delivered when the recipient triggers an action, such as opening an email, clicking through a link or on specific dates, which gives the campaign a more personalized touch.

List Options

Constant Contact allows users to import or manually create and update their contact lists. The list can be grown with new users who sign up via contact forms that are provided by the software. However, there would be those who will unsubscribe from the list. Such cases will be marked, but not deleted, which is great because you can keep track and see what might be detrimental in your approach through examining individual cases and find a way to get these people back on the list.

BOTTOM LINE

With its great marketing possibilities and quintessential support, Constant Contact compensates for its lack of an automated testing suite. But those well versed in email marketing already know how to create effective commercial content. The Email Plus plan which might be a bit pricey is perhaps the smartest investment in email marketing for those able use the full potential of all its features.