Item: Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM
Rating: 9
Author: Tim Hemingway

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Initially, we signed up for SharpSpring for our marketing automation platform. As we have learned more about the platform we have adopted it across the company and currently use the Contact Manager and Sales Pipeline for our sales and account management teams. For marketing, we use email, landing pages, dynamic forms, life of the lead, automated workflows, etc. While the individual tools are great, SharpSpring really comes to life when you use it across your entire company. The CRM is incredibly customizable and can be used across a variety of industries. Once set up, nearly everything can be used as a trigger for automation flows.

Pros and Cons

Marketing Automation - simple to use and effective.
Sales Pipeline - very customizable for any industry.
Customer Support - their team is very responsive and knowledgeable.
Email Marketing - Easy to use but powerful segmentation and dynamic content capabilities.
Dynamic Form Creation - simple to use and very powerful.

Landing page builder - It is okay but is very basic.
No native SMS or Push notification integration.
Reporting - their tools are limited and there isn't an easy way to send it to a different reporting suite.

Return on Investment

Streamlined Processes - sales and marketing are now all in the same place.
Reduced Number of Platforms/Tools - CRM/lead management, email, automation, landing pages, forms, etc are all in the same place rather than using multiple tools.
Time-saving - sales pipeline is very easy to use for sales. For marketing, we have dozens of workflows that eliminate much of our manual processes from the past.
Return on Investment - We're more focused on moving the building the business than ever before because SharpSpring has simplified so many of our business operations and we're seeing massive results!
Lead generation - Up SIGNIFICANTLY (between 3x & 4x) since setting up SharpSpring.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Act-On Software, Nutshell CRM, Mailchimp, Klaviyo and BenchmarkONE (formerly Hatchbuck)

We reviewed several platforms, some that I've used, others that were new to me (SharpSpring being one of the new platforms), and it became clear very quickly that SharpSpring included more features and was more customizable to our needs than the other platforms we evaluated. I was a bit hesitant that they were overselling their capabilities but have been pleasantly surprised because they've done everything they've promised and more... That's something I can't say about most platforms I've worked with.

Key Insights

Do you think Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM's feature set?

Yes

Did Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Semrush, Iterable, WordPress

Likelihood to Recommend

Over the past several years, SharpSpring has become my preferred solution for small to medium businesses. It has probably 90% of the features that you'll find with the enterprise solutions and is much more intuitive than the competition. Additionally, they pretty much include all of their features in the price. There really aren't upsells or upgrades to get more features. Some tools are better than others. I really like the CRM, Email, & Marketing Automation components. The Landing Page builder is okay but very limited and doesn't take too well to custom HTML code. I probably wouldn't recommend SharpSpring for an enterprise-level customer because it isn't as customizable as many of the enterprise-level marketing automation platforms.
For the prices, features, and ease of use, it really is hard to beat.

Best CRM/Automation Platform for Small to Medium Sized Businesses!

Overall Satisfaction with SharpSpring from Constant Contact