Constant Contact is a popular email marketing service aimed at small businesses. This tool has a robust set of fundamental email marketing features and some advanced ones. Small enterprises, non-profit groups, and entrepreneurs can utilize Constant Contact to showcase their marketing ideas while selling their products. Constant Contact began as a pure-play email marketing platform. Still, it soon followed in competitors like Mailchimp and expanded to include advertising platforms like Google and Facebook ads.
Constant Contact is one of the oldest participants in the email marketing game, having been around since 1995 and boasting a customer base of over 650,000 users. Digital product downloads, event management, appointment scheduling, and social advertising are just a few of the new services they’ve added recently.
They offer integration with over 400 applications to give their customers more choice. They also interface with Zapier, allowing them more freedom to integrate with over 2000 apps. They cater to small and medium-sized businesses, although their costs are on the higher end of the spectrum.
Constant Contact is a fantastic combination of functionality and ease of use. It’s simple to set up and use, with a personalized approach that makes it appropriate for marketers of all experience levels, even those who have never used email marketing software or are unfamiliar with industry principles. Constant Contact excels in contact management, but it falls short in areas like segmentation, and the price may be prohibitive for marketers on a tight budget.
Constant Contact is a well-known email marketing solution that allows companies to construct custom email marketing campaigns to reach their clients.
Depending on your company’s demands, Constant Contact’s email marketing services can be combined with their e-commerce platform, website builder, and social media marketing.
Constant Contact is a dependable partner for small businesses and NGOs looking to improve their online marketing outcomes. We make it simple to establish a professional web presence, attract consumers, and increase sales—all while assisting you in moving your business ahead.
Small businesses want an affordable email marketing strategy that is successful. That means allowing small companies to run the email campaigns they need to thrive with a wide range of tools and complete services, even at lower pricing tiers. You can send an infinite amount of emails with Constant Contact, and the pricing is based on the number of subscribers on your contact list. The email editor is straightforward to use, and we were able to send emails to the correct inboxes using Constant Contact. Constant Contact also offers advanced campaign reporting and interfaces with various tools. We chose it as our best selection for small enterprises because of these factors.
Constant Contact Features Review
Constant Contact Email Marketing Review
One useful feature is the option to modify emails to match your brand’s colors and designs by simply entering the website’s URL. Of course, you can utilize Constant Contact’s built-in templates and drag-and-drop email editor to get started if you don’t want to do that.
Even if you select a template, Constant Contact gives you a lot of customization choices, from adding RSVPs, surveys, and donation options to inserting photographs, videos, and social sharing options. You can change the styles and backgrounds of the newsletter as a whole or the elements of each content block. You can make your own entirely personalized emails in seconds because it’s so simple to use, and everything is self-explanatory.
With the dynamic content option, you may even select to offer different content to specific contacts based on any criteria you desire, whether it’s demographic information like age or region, purchase history, or even an email segment. This quick yet efficient technique sends highly relevant content to specified contact groups.
Ensuring that every aspect of the user experience is technically right is one of the most basic and critical aspects of developing a superior user experience. Constant Contact can assist you in this area by checking for missing links, typos, copywriting issues, and dates, among other things.
When it comes to previewing how your email will appear to recipients, you can enter email addresses one by one to ensure that your email will look well on both desktop and mobile devices. You must pay for an add-on if you want to preview a newsletter across all email applications – Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and so on.
You can choose from a variety of scheduling choices when sending an email to help maximize open rates based on prior customer behavior, as well as resending to customers who didn’t open the first time to enhance available rates.
Instead of waiting for all of the emails to arrive, you can have early access to campaign results, allowing you to make modifications mid-campaign if an issue arises.
Unlimited email sending is the most lauded feature in Constant Contact evaluations, and it sets the platform apart from many of its closest competitors. In addition, because the size of your bill is mainly determined by the number of contacts stored, you can be as active in your campaigns as you like.
If you upgrade to the Email Plus or Pro plan, you’ll be able to construct an unlimited number of pop-up Constant Contact forms with custom fields and timing to boost your lead generation efforts.
The best aspect is that they bear no resemblance to its logo. Displaying Constant Contact newsletter subscription forms around your site will make your company appear more professional.
This feature is also available to select clients and allows you to send a series of communications to newly subscribed contacts automatically.
This function is only available in the Email Plus and Pro subscriptions, and it allows you to create triggered email series that target your subscribers based on how they respond to your messages.
You can use the program to personalize content based on the information you receive from your subscribers.
You can alter mobile-responsive designs with more than 100 editable Constant Contact templates to deliver your message effectively and drive results.
Using the Constant Contact template builder, you can draught communications using your brand elements or change existing templates.
You can compare two subject lines for your email in Constant Contact to discover which one has a higher chance of getting opened and read.
This function automatically resends unopened mails to increase open rates. Your contacts who disregarded your email the first time won’t assume it’s the same one if you give them a choice to change the subject line.
You may design a secure, mobile-responsive page for donation collecting and online link surveys to gain feedback from your contacts using the Constant Contact platform. Also, use the Poll feature that allows you to send out polls via email. You now have another tool in your armory with Email Plus’s mobile-responsive discounts to advertise a new offering and drive more site visitors. Use Email Plus to make it easy for your visitors to confirm their participation.
Constant Contact allows you to connect your Shopify and WooCommerce digital marketplaces to your email marketing platform. Subscribing to the Email Plus subscription if you use Shopify or WooCommerce enables you to include products directly from your online stores in your emails.
Constant Contact offers real-time email marketing reports to assist you in keeping track of your campaigns and track their progress.
Constant Contact Marketing Review
Constant Contact also provides the following services: Even if you have no graphic design abilities, you can use this AI-powered application to generate a logo for your company. In addition, you can let your imagination run wild and experiment as much as you like with its customization choices.
The Constant Contact program makes creating a lead list a breeze. You can combine your contacts online, in person, or on the go with a battery of tools that operate on your business site, social media channels, and other marketing platforms.
You can easily import it into the Constant Contact email marketing platform if you already have a subscriber list. Excel, Outlook, Gmail, and many other popular programs are all supported.
You may use the program to design landing pages to make calls to action more persuasive and increase your conversion rate, in addition to sending people to your company’s website.
If you don’t have any eye-catching digital assets to add to your site, you can search through the platform’s library of over 550,000 professionally shot stills.
Constant Contact can be used as a jumping-off point for Facebook and Instagram advertising campaigns. In addition, it offers reporting capabilities, so you don’t have to go anywhere else to determine how your target audiences react to your ads and what to do next.
Constant Contact can also assist you in dominating search engine results pages, mainly if your site’s SEO requires improvement. In addition, you can enhance your brand’s search exposure and surpass your competitors who appear above the fold by using the software’s direct Google Ads support.
Constant Contact can act as your social community’s eyes and ears. You’ll be able to identify which campaigns are functioning well and which are not, allowing you to change your strategy accordingly.
The Constant Contact app may be used to manage events, make registration more accessible, and collect valuable data. Although this feature is free, the company does charge a fee for each transaction it processes, and WePay completes.
Constant Contact SMS messaging is only available in the Pro plan and is great for generating leads, initiating promotions, and interacting with unconverted prospects.
Constant Contact Ecommerce Review
You may list and sell as many products as you want to create an online site with Constant Contact.
The company takes a percentage of every item sold on your site as part of its revenue-sharing model.
You can sell digital products on the site and deliver them using Constant Contact’s autoresponder.
Your digital storefront will be able to accept payments via credit card, debit card, PayPal, and Stripe if you use Constant Contact.
You can send triggered emails for numerous events using Constant Contact automation, such as purchase placing or cancellation. You can also add essential facts in your transactional correspondence, such as tax calculations and shipping labels.
You can use the e-commerce platform to sweeten the deal. For example, you can eliminate shipping and handling charges, apply direct savings at the product or order level, and print coupons.
Constant Contact allows you to set flat shipping fees, but you can also connect the platform to all carriers and see the most up-to-date weight-based pricing.
If you join up for the Pro package, you can use Constant Contact to combine and manage all of your Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Etsy, and eBay listings.
You may sync your inventories across different marketplaces with the same Constant Contact subscription to prevent being penalized for selling items you don’t have in stock.
The platform offers a unified marketplace dashboard for seeing sales and inventory reports as a Pro subscriber.
The AI Marketing Automation Playbooks tool gives you access to over 20 pre-designed marketing playbooks that reduce contact targeting and automation trial and error.
Every Pro subscriber may optimize automatic email sending with the help of Constant Contact’s AI.
The Pro plan is only compatible with Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento, unlike the Email and Email Plus versions, which work with many of the most popular e-commerce platforms.
Constant Contact’s AI collects and analyses data from linked e-commerce platforms, generating personalized messages from over 30 prebuilt segments (defined as either standard or anticipated).
In most Constant Contact evaluations, segmentation has been a common complaint. However, most of the platform’s critics must have gone mute due to the AI.
Customers of Pro-subscribed businesses can use the Subscription Preferences function to select the type of material they want to receive and the frequency it is delivered. Another way to learn more about your connections and keep them interested is to use this strategy.
You may use the company’s bot to choose which goods to promote to your subscribers, and these choices will appear in every Constant Contact campaign you send.
Another valuable addition to the Pro package! You’ll be able to figure out the most cost-effective rewards for particular clients to provide tremendous value.
The Pro package generates detailed e-commerce revenue reporting. You may use comprehensive statistics and visuals to examine the success of your online stores and the impact of expected trends. In addition, you can save your data as a CSV file.
Constant Contact Contact Management Review
Constant Contact allows you to import contacts from other primary email services and productivity apps in addition to manually entering them or uploading them from a file. This is especially helpful for marketers currently using another email service and switching to Constant Contact swiftly and efficiently.
Constant Contact helps you maintain contacts but also assists you in building your email list, which is especially important if you are just getting started and don’t have a lot of time to devote to this function. In addition, constant Contact walks you through the process rather than leaving you to figure it out on your own, which is especially helpful for inexperienced email marketers just getting started.
You won’t have to pay for third-party web hosting if you utilize the Constant Contact Website Builder.
A Constant Contact subdomain is automatically added to every site developed on the platform. However, you can utilize an existing one or directly purchase one from the firm.
You can upload as many files as you want at no extra charge with Constant Contact. This means cloud storage limits won’t restrict you.
The Constant Contact Website Builder is synonymous with mobile-responsive design. You may rest sure that all site elements you utilize will adjust to any device’s screen, providing optimal search engine optimization (SEO) and improving usability.
To market your brand’s topic expertise, get a footing in the blogosphere. Make a name for yourself as a thought leader in your profession.
You can use this tool to evaluate the performance of your website. The platform has a report generator that may display your most recent statistics in an easy-to-understand format.
Constant Contact’s database is built on the principle of privacy. The platform encrypts site visitors’ sensitive information, protecting their usernames, passwords, contact information, payment card credentials, and other personal information from identity thieves and fraudsters.
These are some of the actions:
- To collect additional email addresses, create a sign-up page for your website.
- Including a text message option for users to join your email marketing list.
- Additional apps can be connected (including Facebook).
Constant Contact Segmentation Review
You can only build segments in Constant Contact depending on whether or not a user has received, opened, or clicked on your email. On the other hand, other email marketing software allows you to categorize clients based on variables like the last time they opened an email and whether or not they have made a purchase.
Connecting with Shopify and using data directly from your online store to build segments is a helpful segmentation capability. That enables you to send relevant campaigns to clients at various phases of their customer lifecycle, increasing the possibility that they will buy your products or services or reengage with your company.
Constant Contact also has basic automation features, albeit just a few trigger possibilities. These are the possibilities:
- Open Emails
- Click on links
- A new subscriber is joining the mailing list.
An option such as “make a purchase” or “unsubscribe from a list” is available in other email software.
When a contact performs one of the three activities listed above, the sole workflow is sending an email. There is no way to move them to a different list, segment them, or give them a push notification or SMS.
Because of the lack of automation, you’ll have to take action manually when clients behave in a certain way. For example, you won’t quickly detect links that will help you understand the many paths customers take when making purchases.
Constant Contact Reporting Review
One of the most valuable features of Constant Contact is the ability to view the performance of several emails (sends, bounces, clicks, and opens) on a single graph, allowing you to compare the accomplishments of each measure side by side and track progress over time.
Constant Contact has expanded its reporting capabilities, including spam and bounce data. You can also compare your campaigns to plan for improvement on your next campaign with this overview report, which includes trends, successful subject lines, click heat maps, and more. Constant Contact, on the other hand, will not enable e-commerce tracking.
For example, if you notice a significant drop in your sends over time, you know you need to dig deeper to figure out why and take action to fix it.
You can examine additional precise statistics about each campaign’s performance, such as the time it was sent and the activity of particular subscribers.
Constant Contact Signup forms Review
You must collect users’ contact information through signup forms on your site to grow and manage your email list. Depending on your business’s needs, Constant Contact allows you to generate popups, integrated forms, and customizable landing pages.
To represent your company’s brand, you may personalize the registration and landing pages by adjusting the style settings and background pictures.
Constant Contact Integrations Review
Third-party apps and integrations abound in the MarketPlace. It has 534 things (and counting) and a powerful search engine as of this writing.
You may filter through hundreds of tools with ease because you can search by keyword, browse by industry, business requirement, and attribute, and sort by popularity, name, date of introduction into the system, price, and so on.
This marketplace has no restrictions on the Constant Contact integrations you can use. It’s only a portal to a larger universe of third-party business solutions that can help this platform reach its full potential.
The Zapier integration is an excellent example. When connected to your Constant Contact account, this bridge builder can assist the platform in communicating with over 2,000 other apps, allowing you to increase your automation capabilities.
The marketPlace also includes a list of service suppliers. Constant Contact’s certified trusted partners can supplement your in-house team and take your marketing efforts to the next level in 17 categories, including branding, content and copywriting, graphic design and HTML, and software development.
MarketPlace’s successful Technology Partner and Agency Partner programs ensure that the company will continue to expand. You’ll be a direct beneficiary of this growth if you use the Constant Contact email marketing platform.
Constant Contact Pricing Review
Constant Contact Free Trial Plan
To begin with a premium service, a free trial is always a better option. Constant Contact offers a free subscription for a month to try out the email marketing service before committing.
The 30-day free trial of Constant Contact needs you to provide your credit card information. Unfortunately, the firm makes it exceedingly tough to cancel your free trial (or your account in general) during the trial period. On the internet, there is no way to “cancel.”
Your location determines the length of your free trial with Constant Contact. For example, if you live in the United States or Canada, it offers a free 60-day trial during which you can utilize all of their services with certain restrictions on the number of contacts you can have.
If you live outside of the United States or Canada, you’ll get a 30-day free trial, which is plenty of time to try out the email marketing service. In addition, if you cancel within 30 days of purchase, you won’t be charged anything for the trial time.
Instead, you’ll have to look up how to cancel in the Knowledge Base because there’s no information about it in the My Account section. Then you must contact the billing department during regular business hours to complete the process. Finally, if you want to cancel your account, you must offer a reason for doing so.
Because canceling Constant Contact is time-consuming and challenging, make sure you want to join up before starting the free trial.
Constant Contact’s price is determined by the number of contacts you have, as it is with most email marketing software. There are two paid pricing plans to choose from:
Email:
Constant Contact Email Price Plan:
The basic premium option for small enterprises and organizations is the email plan. It allows you to send personalized professional emails, engage with customers, build connections, and generate campaign reports.
Custom templates, branded templates, campaign tracking and reporting, automated emails, A/B testing, basic eCommerce marketing, and more are included with the Email package.
You get free hosting, an SSL certificate, a blog, and analytics with every Constant Contact subscription.
It also contains email marketing, contact management, landing pages, an image library, and other marketing tools.
The Email plan is ideal for email marketing and connecting with customers. As your company expands, you can always upgrade your plan.
- 500: $20/month
- 2,500: $45/month
- 5,000: $65/month
- 10,000: $95/month
Constant Contact Email Price Plus:
Everything from the Email plan is included in this plan. The Email Plus package is for companies who want to take their email marketing to the next level.
It includes various automated email campaigns, such as a welcome email series and a behavioral email series. Aside from that, it provides unique popup forms for generating leads that become clients.
A robust eCommerce marketing solution is included in the Email Plus subscription. It not only works with eCommerce platforms, but it also allows you to have products directly from your store into emails.
It also allows you to send RSVP emails to your customers to get a quick response. You might include polls, surveys, and coupons in your emails to increase traffic and purchases.
You can take your content and marketing to the next level with the Email Plus plan. It allows up to 10 individuals to collaborate and produce highly engaging email campaigns with a larger team.
- 500: $45/month
- 2,500: $70/month
- 5,000: $95/month
- 10,000: $125/month
If you pay for 6 or 12 months in advance, you will receive a 15% discount, and non-profits will receive a 30% discount.
Constant Contact is comparatively pricey, especially when it only offers essential functions in some areas, such as segmentation and landing page capabilities, when similar email marketing software provides free plans for firms with fewer than 1,000 connections.
If your contact storage requirements reach 10,000, the Email Plus package is automatically activated.
Aside from the two Constant Contact plans mentioned above, the company also offers a subscription for consumers that don’t want email marketing assistance. For $10 a month, the Website Builder plan includes all Constant Contact functions except those under Email Marketing.
If you don’t want to develop your website, Constant Contact can do it for you.
The company’s in-house team of specialists can register a domain, design a site, set up an intuitive digital storefront, and do everything else on your behalf with the Website Quickstart. This solution can focus on what you enjoy most: expanding your business for as little as $249.
Constant Contact also provides skilled email template design assistance for as little as $79 per project, in addition to website development.
In addition, the firm offers marketing strategy consultation. Although the initial consultation is free, hiring a marketing advisor to train you or a marketing manager to handle everything for you is not. The monthly fee for this service begins at $50.
Now, let’s get back to the packages. A money-back guarantee is included with the Constant Contact price plans shown above. You have 30 days to terminate your account if you are not happy with the goods.
This guarantee is only valid for new and paying Constant Contact customers. You can only request a refund if you have previously made a successful similar request. You must also have imported a contact list and delivered at least one email to your target audiences.
If you complete all of these requirements, the company will return your initial monthly subscription payment in full using the payment method you used. However, the guarantee does not cover any charges you make for special services, add-ons, or third-party advertising expenses.
Constant Contact rewards clients that pay in advance. Regardless of plan or contact count, it offers a prepayment discount based on how many months you’re prepared to pay upfront.
10% for 6 months
15% for 12 months
Nonprofits will benefit from more significant savings from Constant Contact. For example, qualified organizations can get 20 percent and 30 percent instead of 10% and 15% for 6- and 12-month advance payments, respectively.
These reductions are in addition to the limited Constant Contact free trial that non-profits can take advantage of when they sign up. In the FAQ area, you can learn more about this.
Finally, Constant Contact has a fourth package called Pro. With AI-powered marketing automation, predictive analytics, and a large variety of multichannel integrations, this bundle seeks to help e-commerce businesses create more sales.
The Pro package, which starts at $195 per month, is far more expensive than Constant Contact Email, Email Plus, or Website Builder memberships. However, if you buy the Pro plan for one or two years, you get this deal. Furthermore, this subscription is only offered to clients in the United States and Canada.
The pricing of Pro, like all other Constant Contact services, is determined by the number of contacts you have. If you need to upload more than 50,000 files, the company will provide you with a quote individually.
Constant Contact’s Ease Of Use Review
Constant Contact offers video tutorials to assist you in getting started with each function, as well as in-app suggestions for improving your email marketing campaigns. For example, it suggests that you develop a pop-up to invite users to subscribe to your newsletter so that you may grow your email list when you’re in the contacts menu.
Constant Contact is simple to browse with its well-designated menus, albeit specific capabilities can be challenging to discover at times. For example, email automation and landing pages aren’t marked anywhere in the menus, so you’ll have to go back to the main page and start from there.
Constant Contact takes a long time to load, which is inconvenient when you’re trying to do activities or switch between features rapidly.
Constant Contact Pros and Cons
Constant Contact Pros
- Constant Contact is a relatively simple company to work with.
- Drag and drop editor that is simple to use.
- A large number of email templates are available.
- App integrations are fantastic.
- There is a plenty of supporting data accessible. During our Constant Contact evaluation, we received a lot of help.
- Some cool features include sign-up lists for the web and social media and a scan-to-join QR code that can be added to printed materials.
Constant Contact Cons
- Building shapes with limited possibilities.
- The number of tagging choices is minimal difficult to use. For instance, you cannot automatically tag/segment your contacts (you have to do it manually).
- Only the most basic automation is available.
- There is no tagging mechanism to categorize people depending on their contact behavior.
Constant Contact Review: Final Verdict
Constant Contact is the industry’s top email marketing solution. Small enterprises and startups can take advantage of its cost-effective pricing schemes.
The platform’s feature set is just stunning. However, any honest Constant Contact review will reveal that some of the most effective email marketing platforms outnumber and even overwhelm its features.
It provides many options, such as location-based pricing and prepays discounts, to help you automate your marketing campaigns like a pro. On features and pricing plans, Constant Contact easily outranks other email services such as Mailchimp.
However, because it is part of the EIG family of businesses, you will benefit from Constant Contact’s associations.
You may be hesitant to choose a paid email service at the start of your business and want to check anything out before purchasing. With Constant Contact’s 30-day free trial and 30-day money-back guarantee, you’ll have plenty of time to try out the email marketing service and conduct campaigns without fear of losing money.
Furthermore, its reasonable pricing structure, as well as its extensive free trial and comforting money-back guarantees, can make up for the lack of a free software version. Its in-house services and its massive app and integration marketplace provide enormous value and flexibility.
Constant Contact’s refusal to charge by email send is likely its most significant asset in an increasingly competitive market. This platform is worth a try because there is absolutely no risk involved.
If you live in the United States or Canada, you’ll get a 60-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee, which should be enough time to take complete control of your email marketing.