Constant Contact vs. Firstup vs. GaggleAMP

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.

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Firstup is a well-suited solution for companies that would like to spread brand awareness and get employees to be their number one ambassadors. Employees like to share/brag about the company they work for so why not use them as a driving force in spreading brand awareness!

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GaggleAMP is well suited when you want to get timely local language content out to folks in other countries/regions, or content for a specific group/department. It is also well suited when you have multiple Gaggle content managers with multiple content calendars. It might be less appropriate if you want to hold multiple Social contests (gamification) with different rules, scopes, leaderboards, etc. for different groups/tags as there is only one leaderboard.

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• 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.

• Intuitive, easy-to-use templates for posts, newsletters and email notifications.
• Consistent upgrades and innovation that keeps the tool current with other apps.
• Flexibility on how users can use the tool (i.e. comments, sharing photos, etc.) This decision is left to each organization, individually.

• Easy to tell associates what posts to like and share. Especially like that we can point them to like or share industry posts.
• Easy to get others in organization to sign up. Also offers app and browser app.
• Gamefication aspect allows associates to have friendly competition and allows awarding of prizes for reaching set point values

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• 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.

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• We'd love to see a calendar added that would show key upcoming dates.
• It would be awesome if the Message feature had a drop-down directory you could scroll through vs. requiring you to type a few letters before the potential names came up.

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• There are no out of the box implementations to get started quick.
• The campaign manager could be more involved and vocal about recommendations and how to implement them.
• I'd like deeper insight into what my employees do and do not like to share.

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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.

Customer service has been good. It's easy to use. It's cost effective. It's a good way to expand your social presence and get your employees more vested in branding the company without spending a ton of money. There are bells and whistles that may be good for other users. I just haven't had the time to use them

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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

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

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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.

Support for GaggleAMP is easily the best customer support I've experienced with any software tool. Our rep, Sam, is dedicated to our account (no bouncing around a call-center bullpen), and is highly proactive and eager to help us succeed. Most of our interactions have nothing to do with problems, but rather opportunities to optimize our use of the tool and set us up for greatest success. GaggleAMP sets a gold standard for customer support!

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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

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.

I can't really answer this as the platform was already in place when I took my current role.

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A former colleague suggested EveryoneSocial, but I think that GaggleAMP has more industry experience in terms of employee advocacy and social engagement. While it did appear somewhat easier to use, it didn't have all the features and attention to detail that GaggleAMP provided such as the detailed reporting and the specific activity suggestions I was looking for.

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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

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• 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.

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• We look at the earned media revenue tool that Firstup has, and we have earned media of over $4000 most months. Amazing!
• We have been recognized by peers, clients, and partner agents who say they always see our Hilldrup news pop up on social media!
• Marketing has been able to control the voice of the brand while amplifying the message to new audiences - amazing!

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• Take this with a grain of salt, but our company's all-time CPC (cost per click) savings is $1.85 M ($184,116.95 last quarter).
• GaggleAMP has become an important part in getting our employees and partners to engage with us on Social Media more regularly - a great tool for getting information out there.
• Brand awareness.

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