Constant Contact vs. Aurea Campaign Manager

Constant Contact is the best tool for communicating information in an attractive way to multiple people with customizable pictures, content, and links. It is also the best option for tracking information regarding what constituents received the email, clicked through, unsubscribed, etc. This platform makes keeping track of data for multiple levels of constituents manageable.

Incentivized

I feel that this is a very good email marking system. You really can accomplish any task needed for your email marketing needs. I think that if a few key features were added, it would really take Lyris HQ over the top. We are very happy with this product and we tell our clients about it when they ask us.

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.

• I like the file import process - quick and efficient.
• List segmentation is thorough.
• Campaign monitoring is easily accessible and accurate.

Incentivized

• Drag and drop interface can be buggy. For example, when you drag in a component, sometimes the email template keeps scrolling, so you're not able to actually drop in the component.
• Reporting is a bit confusing. There are 2 different ways to access reporting and I believe only one of them allowed you to view click rates for embedded links.
• Limitations on the drag and drop interface. For example, you're not able to create a sidebar that spans the entire length of the email, which was a request from a client.

• PHP API
• Segmentation
• Creating messages via API calls

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.

Lyris HQ is a simple tool, but it is highly effective and , for smaller organizations, it can save a lot of time and money.

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

Super easy to use.

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

Incentivized

No issue.

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

Running larger segments can take some time.

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 found one really good tech support guru and stuck with him forever.

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

Implementation was one of the most painful parts for us as we had to find and create our own library to interface with Lyris's SOAP API interface which still to this day is one of the top libraries used in its language.

Incentivized

We tried Mailchimp. We could send messages to larger groups for free with Constant Contact. And we simply found more people read the emails and responded more frequently when we used Constant Contact. I think it's because it didn't feel as much like a marketing tool as when we contacted them with Mailchimp.

Incentivized

They are much better

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

• Good email marketing option that we need to expand on
• We have not had a strong determinable ROI, but we do not always know if a donation resulted from an email
• Very affordable and we plan in keeping it as a resource

Incentivized

• More defined lists for third party blasts, which turns into more leads for the clients. Which is more money in our pocket.
• Some segmentation pulls do take a long time, thus leading to multiple requests and a time suck for myself.

Incentivized