Constant Contact vs. Reply

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

The
reply is an excellent sales management solution. If any company wants
to save time and keep their sales team flexible, they should try it first. It
is a fantastic tool for delivering multiple emails to any target audience. This
is also the best deal for firms who looking for an all-in-one solution, as it
provides virtually unlimited email addresses along with CRM and outreach
automation.

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.

• This product gives me the liberty to very easily and freely navigate all things on my own, which does not require many skills to start working.
• This product gives us the leverage of creating our own tailored and personalized templates for our teams in just a matter of minutes.
• This program is so automated that it performs everything on its own from LinkedIn to email search, to even booking meetings.
• I found the onboarding process pretty great and efficient. I am really happy with the overall customer support. They are some of the nicest people I have met who are there to willingly help me at any time of need and problem.
• Their usability is also hands down very good. However, I find their user interface to be slightly less user-friendly, so there is some degree of scope in the improvement of their user intuitiveness and user-friendliness.

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

• Syncing to other programs. You cannot interrelate Reply with other software in a simple way. Zapier is required and even then it’s not perfect.
• Similar to syncing, there’s no way to export results of particular campaigns. This is awful. If I send out a campaign to a group, I’d like to export the results to enter into a CRM since I can’t sync the contacts. One of these features must be added ASAP.
• Organization. While Reply itself is user-friendly, keeping campaigns and contacts and results organized is not. You cannot organize campaigns or file them away when they are done. Therefore you have to delete campaigns to stay organized and lose results, which you cannot even export.

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.

I generally receive a reply in no time at all and found not only the support org. but the sales team to be extremely helpful. Additionally I found a great onboarding process with plenty of resources to consume.

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.

These tools are great, but they aren't built for what we use Reply for. Reply is perfect for doing these outbound campaigns at scale, whereas with ActiveCampaign and Vitally we were trying to turn the tools into something they are not.

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

• They lacked proper security certifications.
• Saved time and effort on mass email campaigns.
• Helped gain insights on our outbound business efforts.

Incentivized