Constant Contact vs. GaggleAMP vs. PunchTab (Discontinued)

Constant Contact is great when trying to target specific market segments. We typically like to segment our master list by region, but also have product segments, as well. They do provide pre-made segments to start you off too. We don't usually use their email builder, we find others to be more flexible, intuitive, and have more variety. We do prefer emailing from Constant Contact, however.

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.

Incentivized

• Constant Contact allows the users to send unlimited emails and just pay per list size.
• The software does welcome emails pretty well and allows you to set up all sorts of automation.
• The branded templates and starter templates are very useful and look good.

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• Ease of use - we can create a new campaign in under ten minutes
• Customer support - we've never had an issue go unanswered for more than an hour

• Sometimes some software provides outdated and useless features and functions, but this email marketing tool gives advanced kinds of functionalities with modern features.
• I like the ease of use of this platform also appreciate its professional customer support team.
• I am no longer desperate after getting this tool at my work.

Incentivized

• Activity notification emails are sometimes late in reaching peoples' inboxes.
• Sometimes activities just fail to work and an IT ticket is needed.
• GaggleAMP has to explore more ways to get ahead of API issues.
• Some pages on the new dashboard aren't as intuitive.
• Activity notification emails could use some design work.

Incentivized

• Limited ability to add custom data collection fields

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

Incentivized

Until something better comes along, Punchtab is the best there is. Support has been great, pricing is great and the product fulfills our needs

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

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.

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!

Incentivized

Extremely fast support from a knowledgeable team

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

Nothing more required than signing up and authenticating with Facebook/Twitter

We selected Constant Contact due to pricing constraints. However, if the pricing were to increase, we may look at alternative products that offer more features. We are looking for a product that will allow us to stand out from other organizations like ours that are appealing to the same customers—a product that will set our company apart from the others.

Incentivized

Hootsuite does a good job of planning and scheduling for social media as well as a decent analytics program. However, their usefulness stops there. Hootsuite does not have an integrated feature to automatically pull posts from your website or blog and they do not have a social advocacy section either.

Incentivized

Rafflecopter, Woobox - Punchtab offered powerful custom features, and allows us to run a variety of campaigns across multiple platforms

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 can't report hard numbers, however, being able to execute sales and marketing campaigns led to a noticeable increase in brand awareness in our industry.
• We were able to offer white-labeled email communication services to clients, which is not something that other administrators typically offer. This helped us win and retain business.

• Overall, ROI has been very positive and had a positive impact on engagement as well.
• We went from content creation of 0-2 per week and engagement of 0-20 per week to 4 times that amount
• Boost in sales of 1.4 K per month on average

Incentivized

• An average campaign generates around 2500-5000 new followers on our channels with a very minimal investment.