Constant Contact vs. Emplifi vs. OutboundEngine

Constant Contact is an excellent tool for sending out flyers and newsletters. However, I feel the content's appearance is typically all the same. When I receive an email from Constant Contact, I can immediately identify it - the templates usually all look the same. When sending out communications with images, it is easy to use Constant Contact and link webpages. However, the email layout is always vertical and can get very lengthy. I prefer a more flip-book approach with options to flip the page.

Incentivized

- Very well suited to grabbing top-level and more in-depth social performance data, across campaigns and BAU activity. - Not as well suited for moments where you need benchmarking or context of your performance compared with a previous time frame. This can be a bit clunky to go back and forth with as it requires multiple dashboards or consistent manual time-frame changes.

Incentivized

OutboundEngine does a referral campaign and I've been able to close a couple of deals based on getting in touch with people who engage with this campaign and state they could use my services in the next 6 months. This is a great follow up tool for those you may or may not know are going to be needing your services.

Incentivized

• Market segmentation is great: my main segmentation is by region because that's how our sales team is divided.
• Lists: making customized email lists is easy and intuitive; the custom fields allow some flexibility in case our fields don't exactly line up with Constant Contact's.
• Campaigns: creating campaigns is quick and simple. I especially appreciate the 'resend to non-openers' option. I am constantly using this feature.
• Subject line generator: I like using the recommended subject lines. I'm able to plug in their recommended ideas, or sometimes, this feature helps me generate my own ideas.

• Helps us prioritize requests based on urgency and tone
• Helps us divide work between several teams
• Helps us keep an eye on how our posts are being recieved and are performing
• Helps us stay in contact with customers, and helps us understand particular customers needs
• Helps us separate the chaff from the wheat

• The content that they generate to send to our clients is relevant and the clients want to engage with us. It makes us appear more professional and consistent, even though we are a smaller company.
• It helps us stay in touch with clients and helps us stay top of mind. We are able to generate more new business leads if we are in consistent contact with current, former, and potential clients.
• Their customer service and support is outstanding. All my questions were answered and I went into the program feeling confident and knowledgeable.

• It would be nice if we had more customizable options for emails - like moving around pictures and text boxes, rather than a set spot for everything to go.
• I would like it if multiple people could work on a document at one time. So if I'm in charge of graphics, I can get those updated while someone else is entering content, etc.

Incentivized

• Would love more robust search parameters for labels. ex. search for tickets labeled 'Availability' AND 'United States' but excluding any that are only one of those labels
• Ability to break conversations into multiple tickets; so labels can be more accurate if the same person reaches out again after 3 months with a totally different question
• The social account quick view doesn't always load the follower count for people reaching out to us. it makes it slower to manager messages from high level creators

• I do not like the use of drawings to attract new customers, and they have ignored my requests to eliminate that for my personal emails.
• I do not like it when a competitor in my immediate market has the same posts. It cheapens the service or makes it appear that I am simply sharing another's post.

Incentivized

There is no doubt that we are going to renew Constant Contact. We have not just invested a lot of time in learning and creating a great looking product but we have developed a strong database of information that allows us to track how we are doing for each newsletter. This supports our goals of creating products that residents desire and are excited to receive.

the balance between quality and price si perfectperfect for agency that have many client to manage, because it helps us to save time (we don't have to plan content from every single account, only one click to look at different community and moderate...)it also help the team works: senior can review content direcly from emplifi; labeling DM/comments as done help us to track where a collegue stop and we have to startIt makes the content approval from clients very easy

Incentivized

The biggest issue is poor ROI. The second biggest issue is rigid customer service process, lack of a sense of urgency, and inability to reach out to upper management with issues.

There is always room for improvement. I don't know how they test their systems, but they should invite not-so computer savvy people to test it. If I, as an expert have problems, they need to think like the technophobe. Since I've used Constant Contact in the past as part of my former employment, I have not viewed any of the tutorials and just jumped in to work on my client's newsletter. With that said, I found some areas easy and some a bit cumbersome

Since the main use of the Live Advisor is on the website that doesn't have e-commerce capabilities, it has been challenging to attach an specific metric to Emplifi's solutions and their usability in our websites. The Live Advisor is helping us to deliver our unique sale proposition in digital channels, which is great, but it is difficult to assign a higher mark in usability due to the limitation just explained.

Incentivized

Overall, OutboundEngine is very user friendly. It is simple to set up and explore, and if there are any issues or questions, the customer service team and account managers are always available to help. They are very knowledgeable and were able to explain everything in detail to me. The program is easy to navigate and helps me stay organized, and an uncomplicated and straightforward solution was exactly what I was looking for

No major problems in sending out the email campaigns and accessing the analytics

Incentivized

I haven't had to contact Outbound Engine because I haven't had any application errors or unplanned outages. I basically have had such a trouble free experience with them that I haven't had to call. Everything is automated and I get a notice to review every isse. I suppose if I personalized the newsletter a bit more and added some of my own articles, I would need to contact them, (which I should really start to do) but so far things have been so on point, I haven't felt the need.

Incentivized

The system seemed quite slow sometimes. Specifically, there was sometimes a delay in sends if it was during a high traffic period. There were time-outs when uploading new code for an email, and a lag in reporting analytics which was sometimes as long as 72 hours

I think the overall support for Constant Contact has always been incredible; I have nothing negative to say. Our customer support representative was attentive, easy to understand, and very knowledgeable. I never felt like I wasn't a priority of his and my issues, while very small, were fixed in a very short time frame.

We have a dedicated Customer Success manager, and that is very helpful. Anytime we have questions or need support, they are always there to answer. If thety do not know the solution, they always go around the bend to find one and provide it to us. They are always very kind.

Incentivized

The customer service was excellent! Everyone I spoke to was kind and knowledgeable. My account manager was easily reachable. Setup of the OutboundEngine program was explained really thoroughly, and we knew how we could best use the product to meet the needs of our clients and get our online and social media presence off the ground.

The online training was fine but, in the end, the best way to learn any product is by actually using it.

Implementation is very easy for someone who wants to send out the “batch and blast” type newsletters. If you want to use their templates with no customizations, the product works fine. However, the more customizations you get into involving link color, etc, that’s where things can get tricky for someone who may not be familiar with coding

The platform is so easy to understand that no "expensive consulting firm" is necessary to implement it!

Constant Contact is much more intuitive for people who are not tech-savvy. Also, while sendgrid offered more options in it's drag and drop interface, it displayed differently across different email clients, which made it very cumbersome to use. It also took much longer to upload contact lists and it was harder to manage existing contacts. Performance in sendgrid was much slower as well, and the Preview feature was quite buggy. Our team initially chose sendgrid because of the integration options that it's API offered, but we ultimately switched to Constant Contact because it was much easier to build campaigns and better suited our requirements.

We have used Sprinklr to source UGC content as well, but found the platform to be much more time intensive when searching for the desired images. Additionally, Emplifi's UGC tool has incremental tools the other platforms do not provide, including the ability to share images on digital screens within the property and put carousels on our websites.

Incentivized

I selected it for the ability to have an automated system do 3 things all at once, social media posts, emails and the instant communication with the chat box. I have never seen a chat come through that lead to a helpful client touchpoint. I have never used another product but have since begun to weigh some of the less expensive options.

Incentivized

Very reliable in sending email campaigns and controlling the recipients so that no contact is sent the same email more than once, even if they are on a resent list

Incentivized

• I have had nothing but positive impacts from using Constant Contact.
• The church is large, and there are many subgroups and axillary groups within the church. Setting up specific groups based on responsibility, interest, member goals, and service needs allows me to send information quickly, saving valuable time for other tasks.
• Constant Contact allows leadership to stay personally engaged with the members I work with, without over-taxing my time. It feels so seamless.

Incentivized

• reporting - this has massively reduced the time spent on creating reports for social media activities
• paid ads - has provided detailed analysis of how our ads are performing
• community - reduced the time taken to respond to social messages, resulting in more leads

Incentivized

• One client identified how one article I sent that he read saved him from having to replace his entire AC system.
• One client actually thought I was sending this to him personally because I valued him
• One of the above transacted with me twice for over $3M in sales

Incentivized