Constant Contact is a full-featured email marketing solution with capabilities such as social media integration, drag-and-drop editing, and real-time reporting. It is a bulk email tool designed for SMB customers. Since 2019, Constant Contact also offers marketing automation features, a website and landing page builder, and other tools to support midsize businesses.
$12
per month
kvCORE
Score 3.8 out of 10
N/A
The kvCORE platform is described by the vendor, Inside Real Estate in Draper, as a next-gen solution for modern brokerages and enterprises to run their entire business on one platform.
N/A
Pricing
Constant Contact
kvCORE
Editions & Modules
Lite
Starting at $12.00
per month
Standard
Starting at $35.00
per month
Lead Gen & CRM
Starting at $449.00
per month
Premium
Starting at $80.00
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Constant Contact
kvCORE
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
The SMS Marketing tool can be added to any Core or Plus Constant Contact account. SMS is only available in the US for Core and Plus paid plans. SMS can be added when logged in to an account after purchase. Plans start at $10/month for up to 500 messages.
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.
I think if you have a very large brokerage and can afford to pay for a fully customized set up then it may be worthwhile. I would make sure you have a dedicated support team, not an account manager. In my opinion, the account managers are worthless and will not respond most of the time. We are on our second account manager in 9 months of using the system and cannot get in touch with him. In my experience, the account managers have no knowledge of how the system works or how anyone in real estate would want it to work. Obviously, I can only say this for the two managers we have had so far. I would steer clear of this system unless you want to spend a few thousand a month for a system that, I feel, will impede your business rather than improve it.
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.
It sends unwanted canned responses to potential clients that you haven't approved. You must figure out how to use it to make them stop. This was day 1.
If you like to learn using many many different videos to learn a product, then this maybe for you.
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.
Their support is good, but wait times can be long. They want you to use their chat, but then when you ask your question, it can be a several hour wait time between responses. The people are nice and resolve your issue. But I think chat is for quick back and forth communication, not something with a long delay. Also, you can only really do it effectively on your computer, not on your phone.
It's proving very tough to track leads from campaigns we are running ourselves. If your website converts a lead, it really just gives you the website source, and even that only some of the time. It would be great to create custom sources and have kvCORE track that traffic and lead via some sort of UTM tag or URL parameter.
Some of the load times aren't great. When I load up my database, it takes a while to actually display. Also, when a lead is claimed in a pond, you have to refresh to be able to contact them. Then once you add a campaign, you have to refresh again to see the tasks that fire. This is a bit clunky.
The app is great, but there is still some limited functionality. It would be great to access and claim leads from a pond on the mobile app. Also if you could get push notifications when new leads are added. Our time to lead sucks, and that's because kvCORE doesn't alert you super quickly.
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.
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
It doesn't deserve a zero because you can access contacts and get reminders to contact them. In my experience, you can not use the system for proper communication with both prospects and their spouses.
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.
I love kvCORE's support. Having the little chat feature in the bottom right of my screen the whole time I'm working takes away any stress or worry about using it. When I first started using it, I learned its features by clicking and trying things, and more than once I had to go into the chat support and ask how to undo or fix what I had done. I don't think I've ever waited more than 5 minutes to get a reply back and it being almost instant and right there on my screen allowed me to continue working and know immediately when my question had been answered.
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.
Konversion and BoomTown are the only two I have used. Both have their things to recommend. Since I used Konversion, using kvCORE was simpler and I was able to upload my contacts seamlessly. This made adopting a new system easier and less likely to have a gap in contacting customers.
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
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.
