Constant Contact Review

Constant Contact is an e-commerce focused email marketing solution with high delivery rates.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Constant Contact has done a lot of work since we last test it, expanding its marketing automation capabilities and adding new integrations for e-commerce and social media marketing. Monthly, starting at $20.00 per month Constant ContactSee Products are independently selected and reviewed by ItPCMag editors. If you purchase through affiliate links, we may receive commissions that help support our testing. Learn more.

PROS

Intuitive and elegant user interface
Wide range of third-party integrations
High email deliverability

CONS

Templates don't offer much flexibility
Prices will increase after you have thousands of contacts
No multi-channel automation

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CONSTANT CONTACT SPECS

ALL SPECIFICATIONS

Since we last tested it, Constant Contact has expanded its email marketing solution to cover e-commerce focused marketing in addition to direct brand marketing. You'll find a good mix of launch features, a good list of third-party integrations, and a generous 60-day free trial. But while it's easy to use and integrate with other web services, its feature set is definitely aimed at small businesses, which means it's definitely behind our most flexible and comprehensive Editors' Choice winners Campaigner and Mailchimp.

Constant Contact Pricing

Constant Contact offers a wider variety of plans since our last review. First of all, there is only a website builder plan for $10 per month. This is for businesses that just want to build a website and landing page, for which Constant Contact includes free hosting as part of the price. You'll also have access to the list building tools, e-commerce store, and social media marketing features available with other programs (see below).

The entry level for email marketing is the email plan starting at $20 per month for up to three users with unlimited monthly email sends and basic marketing automation (list building tools, email forwarding, automated email unopeners and subject line A). /B testing). Those features will tick all the boxes that small and medium businesses (SMEs) will need, albeit with an emphasis on smaller organizations.

Next up is the Email Plus plan, which will run you $45 per month for up to 10 users with all the features of the email plan, but also adds automation, ecommerce segmentation, custom pop-up forms, online surveys, coupons, and consulting. online for new customers. another very good feature for those who are just getting their feet wet in digital marketing.

Email Plus is upgraded to the new eCommerce Pro program. This tier starts at $195 per month and is based on the number of contacts you have, with a minimum of 2,500. As the name suggests, this plan is for businesses that want to sell online in addition to marketing, so pricing is based on number. contacts. If you fit that description, you'll find a well-equipped platform with plenty of integrations with third-party store websites. It also has AI-powered personalization, good automation workflows, and an analytics suite focused on e-commerce.

The higher tiers are nice, but the email plan offers all the features most small businesses need to start an email marketing campaign. This includes list management, template creation and customization, and audience segmentation. Email Plus is designed for businesses with more complex needs and offers A/B testing, an automated email series, event marketing and registration, online donations, online surveys, and more.

When compared to the competition, Constant Contact is only on the verge of being competitive. At $45 per month for 2,500 contacts at its basic level, it's actually a bit better than Campaign Monitor, which will charge you $49 per month for the same number. However, it's a far cry from Editors' Choice winner Campaigner, which charges just $59 per month for 5,000 contacts.

What really makes Constant Contact is the 60-day free trial. It goes far beyond what the competition offers and has most of the service's features as well as an easy way to upgrade to a paid tier. The free trial does not automatically transfer and you can still access your data without signing up. There's also a 60-day money-back guarantee, which is also generous compared to most other players we've reviewed. Constant Contact Campaign 2021

Creating a Subscriber List

There are several ways to connect your subscriber lists to Constant Contact: copy and paste, manually enter addresses into a form, upload a file (CSV, TXT, XLS or XLSX), import directly from Gmail or Microsoft Outlook address book or. importing them from various supported customer relationship management (CRM) tools, including HubSpot CRM, Nutshell, and Pipedrive.

We uploaded four Microsoft Excel and CSV documents with contacts covered, and uploads were fast and mostly accurate. Constant Contact recognized most of data fields and merged duplicate contacts. We had to map some fields and add a new custom field that was easy and aligned with most of our small business focused competitors like Campaign Monitor.

Our only quibble here with Constant Contact is that editing user posts is a hassle. If you want to add more details to multiple contacts, you need to load each record separately and update the fields. We prefer to do a quick edit from the main contact list, like you can do with Editor's Choice winner Sendinblue, because it makes the process less tedious. Of course, the best way is to have a table with complete information in the beginning, but that rarely happens.

Another way to grow your subscriber list is to create web forms that allow your customers to sign up for newsletters and other promotional emails. Constant Contact also offers landing pages and integrates with OptinMonster, Facebook Lead Ads, and the Facebook Join My List app. You can segment new contacts based on these methods they used to engage, which is also useful when segmenting your lists.

Like its competitors, Constant Contact requires you to verify that you already have consent from your entire list. Purchased listings are not allowed. You also can't use group addresses like sales@ or marketing@ or distribution lists, because there's no way to verify that you have the consent of everyone who receives messages sent to those addresses.

However, since we last tested it, Constant Contact has improved its ability to control fraud. You want this because it doesn't allow your email. emails to be placed in your customers' spam folders. It also contributes to Constant Contact's 90 percent email delivery rate claim. The company's updated Spaminator algorithm now detects and prevents fraudulent behavior, which the company says has led to a 77% drop in malicious emails between March and December.

Campaign Creation

Creating a campaign is as easy as choosing between email, email automation, events and survey buttons. If you want to revisit or copy a campaign, you can search for campaigns by date or keywords, or view the “Recents” tab. Constant Contact also has a built-in marketing calendar so you can schedule emails around holidays or other events.

For an email campaign, you can use a template to get started. Constant Contact has redesigned its drag-and-drop editor since we last saw it, so it now offers more layout options and fewer limitations. The editing tool allows you to modify the text using Google fonts, as well as images and colors. You can add blog post trailers and import PDF files that turn into interactive emails. Constant Contact also has a branding template builder that can take your company logo, color scheme, and social media links and include it all in your email.

The mobile versions of Constant Contact are a bit weak. It has mobile-friendly templates, but not all templates have this feature. Mobile oriented email. the ability to preview emails also isn't as flexible as in other packages, especially for high-end players like Editor's Choice winner Mailchimp. On the other hand, if you really can't find something in Constant Contact's built-in library, the company offers a custom email template design service that will create everything you need, although this is an additional cost option.

You will have a media library to store your company assets such as logos and other images. The image library now has 2 GB of space, but the maximum file size is 5 MB. Also like Campaign Monitor, you'll have one-click access to free and paid stock photos.

When the newsletter is ready to send, you can send it immediately or schedule it for a later time (in five-minute intervals, such as 3:05 am, 3:10 am, etc.). You can also send recurring emails for birthdays and anniversaries, though there's no option to send messages daily, weekly, or monthly like Campaigner offers, or send messages based on the local time of the recipient's location, like GetResponse does. the

Improved Integrations

One of the attractions of Constant Contact is that it has a wide variety of product integration options for small businesses. This includes e-commerce partnerships with Shopify and Vimeo, as well as Eventbrite. Eventbrite integration allows subscribers to RSVP, take surveys, download coupons and donate directly from email instead of going to a landing page. The same goes for product descriptions and buttons. There is also an abandoned cart email. the ability to create letters that you can use to contact potential customers, a feature important to direct-to-consumer (DTC) retailers and resellers.

Constant Contact has a number of other integrations that focus on things like SEO and social media marketing. The app includes Facebook and Instagram ad creation and a decent selection of social media monitoring tools, though not as comprehensive as dedicated tools. There's also access to Google My Business and an SEO tool to optimize keyword usage. Again, for a tool aimed at small businesses, that's a lot of power under the hood. Constant Contact 2020 campaign

Campaign Tracking

After sending your email, you can track its success using the redesigned Reports tab. The dashboard shows the basics, including open surveys, clicks, bounces and unsubscribes. You can also see your most engaged subject line as well as open on desktop or mobile.

Constant Contact has video tutorials that show you what all their reports mean, as well as tons of information on things like creating effective subject lines and other ways to improve your open rate. The mobile app is useful if you need to see how your campaign is doing on the go.

he report page is also where you can see the results of the subject line A/B test, which appears as a heat map showing where subscribers are engaging. However, as with Campaign Monitor, what you won't find here is the ability to create custom reports. Canned reports, while useful, are all you'll get unless you export your data to another reporting tool.

Email Automation

To create an automated series (formerly called an “autoresponder”), select Email Automation in the campaign options view. Start by selecting an email launcher. These are subscription actions, such as opening an email, clicking on a link, clicking on a specific link, or adding a new contact to a list. You can then create a new email or use one from an existing campaign and it will automatically be sent in response to the action. You have flexibility in how long you want to wait to send a follow-up email, and you can add as many of these automated emails as you want to a particular campaign.

Where Constant Contact falls a little short in automation is that it focuses exclusively on email marketing. Other players like Mailchimp and HubSpot Marketing Hub have multi-channel automation features that can create workflows not only for email, but also for social media and SMS activities.

Customer Support Options

Constant Contact is easy to use and has many help options, starting with the Help icons located next to the Options tab in most dashboard views. You can also access an extensive collection of knowledge base (KB) articles, and there are even tutorials available toll-free.

A slight downside is that phone support isn't available 24/7, but the hours are still generous. It is available from 8 am to 5 pm. m. until 10 p.m. m. Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Fridays, and from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. If the phone doesn't fit, you can use live chat and you can also communicate with customer support via Twitter.

An Ideal Marketing Solution for SMBs

For small and even very medium-sized businesses, Constant Contact email. The wide variety of templates will easily satisfy most beginners, although more advanced creative designers may find it a bit lacking when it comes to customization. It is definitely getting closer to our email. Marketing Editor's Choice winners Campaigner, Mailchimp and Sendinblue.