Item: Constant Contact
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used Constant Contact in our Marketing department for email marketing and sales campaigns. Our Account Management department also used it to stay engaged with health plan members (e.g. quarterly newsletters, webinar invites, etc.) and clients (e.g. quarterly updates, surveys). It allowed us to send customized emails to specific populations of customers.

Pros and Cons

You can accomplish quite a bit using the drag and drop interface, so there is less custom HTML required.
Easy to use for folks who are not tech savvy.
Very quick upload speed for contact lists when compared with other email marketing vendors.
Easy to customize contact lists.
Displays much more consistently across different email clients when compared with other email marketing vendors.

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.

Return on Investment

I can't report hard numbers, however, being able to execute sales and marketing campaigns led to a noticeable increase in brand awareness in our industry.
We were able to offer white-labeled email communication services to clients, which is not something that other administrators typically offer. This helped us win and retain business.

Alternatives Considered

Twilio SendGrid

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.

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?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Constant Contact again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Smartsheet, SendBird, Atlassian JIRA Align (formerly AgileCraft)

Likelihood to Recommend

It's well-suited for standard email campaigns with relatively simple text, graphics, and reporting requirements. It's very easy to use, so you can really train anyone to use it, which is not always the case w. email marketing tools. I don't have too much experience with the HTML side so I couldn't speak to that. I think it's less appropriate for email campaigns with more complex requirements, unless you plan on doing this in HTML. The drag and drop interface, while intuitive, has limited options. Unlike other platforms, Constant Contact's emails consistently display as expected in all email clients (Outlook, Gmail, etc.), which is a huge plus. It's also very easy to design and schedule campaigns.

Very intuitive interface that satisfies most email marketing needs.

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Constant Contact