Item: Constant Contact
Rating: 10
Author: Terri Betts

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Currently, Constant Contact is being used for email marketing and fundraising at Health Care Center for the Homeless. Year-end giving and opportunities like Giving Tuesday are the main uses. As a one woman development department with a strong lean towards proposal writing, I wish I had more time to use it to provide regular newsletters and patient or clients stores to keep our supporters up to date and informed of all the good work we do. While COVID-19 should have pushed our usage higher, it turned my focus to other areas and temporarily derailed my plans to make better use of this platform.

Pros and Cons

User friendly (even for marketing challenged people like me)
Ability to keep previous templates
Scheduling when you want emails to go out
Reporting back to the user on open rates, etc.
Ability to send yourself a test message

Maybe make a bit more intuitive
Have it make suggestions for what you could or should do
More storage room for pics, logos, etc. (without additional cost)
While I think it is user friendly in general, I need a bit more guidance with options and possibilities

Return on Investment

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

Alternatives Considered

I have not used products like this other than Constant Contact. I did look into systems that integrated email marketing with the donor database along with other tools, but they were cost prohibitive when compared to the current options we are using from different companies. While appealing on some levels, the price difference was so great that we could not justify moving to an fully integrated system at the time of review or since.

Key Insights

Do you think Constant Contact delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Constant Contact's feature set?

Yes

Did Constant Contact live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Constant Contact go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Constant Contact again?

Yes

Other Software Used

DonorPerfect, Network for Good

Likelihood to Recommend

I think it really is a great resource for smaller non-profits and those with smaller development/marketing teams. While permission based marketing should provide you with a larger opening percentage, we struggle with that. If someone doesn't sign up, they don't get the emails. In this case, sending it to your contact list outside of Constant Contact is better. But the templates inside Constant Contact offer a better visual result in my opinion. I do not have strong design skills and need the templates.

Constant Contact Works for Me! :D

Overall Satisfaction with Constant Contact