Constant Contact vs. PAR Punchh

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

We launched the program quickly and on schedule, Punchh has continued to evolve and enhance to adapt to our changing business needs, importantly developing integrations with other key partners —Olo, PAR Brink POS. I think it's ideal for a brand of our size with under 200 locations, perhaps for a chain of more than 2,000 locations, it could be worth considering building an in-house solution as a potential cost saving.

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.

• Reward-based App material. Punchh is great platform for reward tracking and fulfillment. I have not found one that does a better job at customer loyalty.

Incentivized

• 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

• Look carefully into the integrations, find out exactly what is possible. We launched when we had Monkey Media as our online ordering tool, although it was integrated, we ended up having to move to Olo just because it was such a stronger integration.
• I would re-think having Facebook as an option to allow registration and signup to our app. This was recommended by Punchh, but we ended up getting so many out of date email addresses in our system that were associated with the Facebook account.
• One thing we wanted to launch with was a gift card integration, but due to Punchh not being PCI compliant, and due to other technological limitations, that's not something we've been able to bring into our loyalty app, which would be nice to have.

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.

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.

The customer success people are not as invested as it seems they should be in their clients' business, at least not for the amount of money the platform costs. I am always looking for best practices to be provided or at least discussed with my AM, and she doesn't ever seem to care about what others are doing in my industry.

Incentivized

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.

We were looking for a partner who would help us get a loyalty program and a mobile app launched quickly, Punchh delivered our app on-time, the cost was very competitive and Punchh was being used by similarly sized brands in the restaurant industry. The integrations were in place and Punchh offered the Product functionality and performance we were looking for.

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

• We brought in over $7M from the app use alone in Q1 & Q2 of 2019.
• It costs a ton to keep up, especially the more modules you subscribe to. Our (not so fancy price tier) price was about $100K for 2019.

Incentivized