Constant Contact Review [2020]: The Right Email Marketing Software for You?

If you’re looking for a thorough Constant Contact Review, you’re in the right place.

When you’re doing your marketing and sales activities right, there comes a point in business where you have too many people to respond to, or initiate follow-up with (in a timely manner) when you’re operating manually. Whether you do majority of your marketing online or offline, you reach an apex, and it’s at this time where it’s vital to look at tools to increase your productivity like Constant Contact.  In this Constant Contact review, I will give you:

• What it is
• How it works
• Pros and Cons
• What it does well and what it does not
• What others are saying (good and bad)
• My Recommendation
• And, Alternatives (in case you want to do some comparison shopping)

What is Constant Contact? An Overview

Constant Contact started in 1995 as Roving software. The founders saw email as a solution to level the playing field between small businesses and big businesses, and others quickly caught on. By 2005, they’d surpassed the 50,000 customer mark, and today, they’ve reached more than 600,000 customers!  In 2016, ConstantContact was purchased by Endurance International Group: the same owners as BlueHost, HostGator, and IPage!

Constant Contact is an email marketing service that enables you to automate emails to your contact list, so you can be more efficient with sending emails. Automating email can be an extreme time savings, and can increase your productivity drastically, which is why Constant Contact has grown into a huge company.

How Does Constant Contact Work?

Let’s say you go to a local business event today and you walk away with 50 business cards or new contacts: some prospects, some potential vendors, and some potential new friends. You decide to send a message to each person saying “nice to meet you” and telling them a few things about your services. It’s likely to take you 1-4 hours, right?

With an email service provider like Constant Contact, you can automate the process. You can add the new contacts onto your email list and send out automated messages based on how you’ve tagged them inside the software.

Similarly, if you have a website and people are stopping by. You could create a “lead magnet”, newsletter, gift, or freebie offer that would incentivize website visitors to get onto your email list.

You’ll hear many long time entrepreneurs say “the money’s in your list” because once you’ve built an email list and you nurture the relationships thru email, it becomes much easier to make sales. An email list gives you instant access to lots of people with a simple email.

Here’s a video tutorial that shows you how it works:

How Do I Get Started with Constant Contact?

To get started with Constant Contact, you would:

1. Create your free trial account

Constant Contact gives a very generous 60-day free trial (without billing info) where you can test the software and evaluate whether it’s a good fit for you. You can CREATE YOUR FREE TRIAL ACCOUNT HERE.

2. Import your email contacts or begin collecting email addresses

If you’ve kept a contact list or you’ve been using another email marketing service, you can import the email list to Constant Contact. Here’s a tuturial that shows you how:

3. Set up your email autoresponders

You can set up holiday emails, special offers, a newsletter, or auto responses to go out after meeting someone new. Here’s a tutorial that explains how to create an email with Constant Contact.

Who is Constant Contact For?

• Small businesses who want to email many customers at once without being very tech savvy or complicated
• Nonprofits who want to send out newsletters or manage contacts
• Someone who wants basic email automation functionality
• Those who may be learning how to do email marketing
• Businesses who want to send out simple emails, their special offers, or holiday emails to customers

Who isn’t Constant Contact Good For?

• Those who want detailed analytics on each email sequence or campaign
• Those who want to do advanced A/B split testing
• Those who want advanced segmenting by activity or tagging based on user preferences
• Those who rely primarily on email automation to run their businesses (e-course companies, information companies, etc.)
• Or, those who want the most advanced email technology options

Constant Contact Tools & Training

Constant Contact has lots of resources to help business owners learn how to do email marketing, how to build customer relationships with email, and how to use the Constant Contact software.

Constant Contact Support

Constant Contact offers 24/7 support my email, live chat, and by phone.

What Does Constant Contact Do Well

• The software enables email automation
• The software gives customers the ability to send mass emails
• The software offers analytics to help you see how many people open your emails
• The customer care team makes sure customers know how to do email marketing and get software questions answered
• They offer surveys
• They offer 50% off for nonprofit organizations
• It’s priced competitively

What Doesn’t Constant Contact Do Well

• Constant Contact doesn’t offer features for moderate to advanced marketers
• The software doesn’t offer all of the segmentation and tagging features other alternatives offer
• Doesn’t offer lead scoring or features that let you know a prospect is very interested
• Customer reviews suggest the design and A/B features are very limited in comparison to competitors

Constant Contact Review Roundup

After reading several reviews of Constant Contact, here are the common things people would say:

Common Positive Feedback

• They have lots of great integrations
• They have a free and a paid plan
• They offer lots of helpful courses
• Their support team is great
• Helps me send mass emails to my team and my customers
• Tracks open rates and gives good suggestions on how to increase them

Common Negative Feedback

• Interface is outdated
• The A/B Testing doesn’t offer enough data to suit our needs
• The templates are difficult to customize
• Not good for designing emails

Most Helpful Positive Constant Contact Review

“Constantly Promote your brand with Constant Contact”

What do you like best?

The name says it best. Constant Contact facilitates you constantly promoting your brand with contact with your current and prospective clients. As a consultant, the metrics and reports allow us to show our clients the success of their email campaigns and how they can improve processes.

What do you dislike?

I really don’t have any dislikes with the software now that I am familiar with the product.

Recommendations to others considering the product

Constant Contact is one of the keys to success for your business. If you are looking to stay in contact with your clients with a professional image, Constant Contact is your go-to tool. If you are not the creative type, their templates provide the marketing department for your business. For organizations, the ability to send out email blasts to your members is great. You are able to monitor your member engagement and follow-up if necessary. It’s great watching who opens your email, how quickly they open the document, and determine the best way to engage your members via mobile/desktop. As a consultant, I am able to recommend strategies for my clients based on how their members engage.

What business problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Brand recognition – the ability to present a professional message to my customer base. The benefit is that it keeps our name top of mind with our customers.

June J., G2Crowd reviewer

Most Helpful Negative Constant Contact Review

“Can be great for the right person”

What do you like best?

Constant Contact is great if you don’t care what your email newsletter looks like or need a bunch of automation. If all you need is to send a newsletter to a bunch of people, this is the tool for you.

What do you dislike?

Constant Contact is a bear to customize and doesn’t offer many of the automation features of competitors. This is by design, but most people who make the recommendation to use Constant Contact don’t understand that and often confuse people who need more than what CC offers.

Recommendations to others considering the product

If all you need is a tool to send a mass email and you don’t want to do a lot of work customizing the template or content, this is the tool for you.

What business problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

It is only good for sending a newsletter to a list.

Matt E., G2Crowd reviewer

Constant Contact Price

Constant Contact charges based on the size of your list. Here’s how the pricing breaks down:

My Final Opinion of Constant Contact

Overall, I’ve seen many local businesses who love Constant Contact, and I think it’s perfect for those who want a simple tool to mass email employees, customers, potential customers, or a larger social circle. You can automate birthday messages, holiday messages, and business promotions very nicely and easily.

However, if you’re very tech-savvy and you’re looking for detailed reporting and analytics, a primary email design tool, or an email A/B testing platform, you may want to look at other alternatives.

VERDICT: Recommend

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