Constant Contact is among the oldest email marketing platforms in the market and it has surely come a long way since its first release. It has a wealth of features ranging from email marketing and automation to SMS marketing and CRM. What’s more, it can cover your social media posting needs and help you with your ads.
In this Constant Contact review, we used our deep knowledge of email marketing solutions in order to deliver an in-depth insight into what Constant Contact offers, its strengths and its weaknesses, and more so that you can decide if it’s the right fit for you.
Constant Contact Overview
Constant Contact is a service aiming to make the life of small businesses and beginners easier. It can also prove immensely valuable for event organizers, due to its niche features and its ability to take payments for those events.
Being one of the best email marketing services we’ve reviewed, it has great email deliverability rates, so you can safely avoid the spam folder.
But while its pricing is attractive, especially if you’re starting out and looking for something affordable, businesses with larger audiences soon find themselves paying a hefty price.
Below you can take a look at a quick overview of the email marketing tool:
Constant Contact Pros and Cons Summary
Here you can take a quick taste of the major pros and cons of Constant Contact.
Constant Contact Pricing
Constant Contact offers a wider range of plans since we last reviewed it. For one thing, there’s a Website Builder Only Plan for $10 a month. This is for businesses just looking to build a website and landing page for which Constant Contact throws in free hosting as part of the price. You’ll also have access to list-building tools, an e-commerce store, and the social media marketing features available with the other plans
Key Features
Now let’s move on to the heart of this Constant Contact review, the features. Take note as these features will help determine if Constant Contact is the right email marketing software for you.
Create a Subscriber List
Constant Contact makes it super easy for its users to add their contacts. You can copy and paste, manually add addresses into a form, or upload CSV, TXT, XLS, or XLSX files. You can also import from Gmail, pulling from Microsoft programs, and other CRM tools.
Another thing to mention is how Constant Contact manages duplicate contacts. This software can easily merge duplicate contacts so you don’t have to. Plus, Constant Contact makes it possible for Mailinator and other “burner email addresses” or disposable addresses to disappear after a short time.
Users are also able to assign tags to contacts to make tracking easier. You may also create segments of users based on location, preferences, and other information you have gathered from your contacts.
Emails & Newsletters
Constant Contact also allows you to create forms for emails and newsletters that clients may use to sign up. It also provides landing pages and OptinMonster, Facebook Lead Advertising and Facebook Join My List App integrations. You can segment the customers based on whether they use the sign-up form or other ways.
Take note that Constant Contact requires verification that you’ve sent consent forms to your subscriber list. Bought lists are a definite no no for the software. Group addresses such as [email protected] or [email protected] addresses or delivery lists should also not be used. This is due to there is no way to guarantee that you have the permission to send messages to that address.
Segmentation
Constant Contact only helps you create segments depending on whether your email has been received, opened, or clicked by a recipient. This contrasts to other email marketing tools that helps you to segment clients based on factors such as whether or not they have bought something and the last time they opened an email.
The ability to interact with Shopify and use data directly from your online shop to create segments is one helpful segmentation feature. This helps you to reach consumers with suitable promotions through all stages of the consumer lifecycle that increase the possibility that they will purchase your goods or services or re-engage with your company.
Basic automation is also possible for Constant Contact with three trigger options available:
- Opening of Email
- Link clicks
- Subscriber who joins a list
Campaign Creation
It is as simple as selecting from Email, Email Automation, Event, and Survey to create a campaign. You can check for campaigns by date or keywords. You can also view the Recents tab if you wish to revisit or copy a campaign. In order to plan emails based on holidays or other activities, Constant Contact also has an integrated campaign calendar.
With Constant Contact’s drag and drop editor, you can easily choose a template to start blasting emails. There are plenty of templates to choose from. You can easily edit text with access to Google fonts, images, and colors.
You can also add a blog post preview and import PDFs that are converted into emails that are interactive. Constant Contact’s branded template builder lets you incorporate your brand’s logo, colour scheme, and social media links in all of your emails.
Further, you can also store images in Constant Contact’s media library. The image library now has 2 gigabytes (GB) of storage, with a maximum file size of 5 MB. Users can also access free and paid stock images directly from this software.
Email Scheduling and Automation
Constant Contact for email marketing is packed with resources that make it an outstanding service. It allows you to quickly contact your subscribers. Scheduled emails or newsletters can be sent to the readers once they have signed up. Then, later follow-up actions are possible.
Constant Contact helps you observe the approach of the receiver of your emails through reports specifying whether the email was bounced, opened or forwarded. This allows you to plan your subsequent newsletters or emails in a manner that will enable more clicks and shares.
Automated Series
It’s easy to create an automated series on this software. All you have to do to create an automated series or an “autoresponder” is select Email Automation from Constant Contact’s campaign options. Then, choose an email trigger, create a new email or use a preexisting email. After that, choose how long you want to wait before sending the follow up email. Lastly add as many email follow ups you want.
You may also send a sequence of emails to a particular group of contacts. Simply segment the contacts into various folders and match them to the automated sequence.
Campaign Tracking and Reporting
Constant Contact’s Reporting tab can monitor the progress of your email or newsletter after you have sent them. The dashboard reveals the basics, including requests to open, click-through, bounce, and unsubscribe. You can even see the subject line that has the most engagements and the opens on desktop
There are video tutorials from Constant Contact that walk you through the tracking and reporting process. They explain what your reports mean and other helpful tips.
They also have a mobile application that allows you to view your campaign’s performance on mobile.
Signup Forms
If your goal is to expand and maintain your email list, then you need to collect user contact details via signup forms on your site. Based on the company’s needs, Constant Contact lets you create popups, embedded forms, and personalized landing pages.
The signup and landing pages can be customized, including the style assets and background photos to match the brand of your company.
This concludes our Constant Contact Review
Constant Contact fulfills its promise of helping small businesses grow through their email marketing service. You can create and deliver professional-looking newsletters thanks to advanced contact management and email builder tools .There are also various special features in the app, such as the event scheduling tool. Get your one month free trial here.
With an overall score of 4 out of 5 stars, it’s truly a great software any business can try. Have you used Constant Contact for your email marketing campaigns? Tell us your experience and thoughts in the comments section below.