Constant Contact Review
Posted on March 11th, 2006by Michael Gray in Advertising, Reviews
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In an earlier post (see Bridging the Gap Between Email and Blog Marketing) I mentioned how I’m trying to use email marketing to bring some customers to my sites who weren’t yet up to speed with reading RSS feeds. I looked at few solutions and decided on Constant Contact, because it seemed to offer the most features for the cheapest price.
Signing up for Constant Contact is fairly easy, getting it configured is a little more time consuming. You really should give yourself a hour or two of uninterrupted time to do it correctly. They do have a free 60 day trial, however if you are going to upload more than 50 email addresses you are going to give up the free trial period. I’d advise uploading a few test emails to while in set-up mode first. You do have to go through a few screens to enter things like web address, phone number, physical address, and links to standard pages on your site like about us, privacy, TOS, etc. You also have to configure a few other things like welcome email, list categorization, and sign-up box. Again nothing is too complex but there are quite a few steps you need to go through, and you want to verify it’s correct (you don’t want any “Welcome blah blah blah” messages to real customers).
Once you’ve got the base settings done you are going to want to test sending an email. There are lots of templates to chose from or you can construct your own from scratch. You can also monkey with the HTML to some extent. Personally I’d suggest picking a base template and modifying it. You can insert modules into the email like text blocks, promotions, and slew of other choices, again it’s going to take a little while to go through and find the ones that work best for you. You can change colors, insert pictures, logos and links back to your website. Again this all fairly straightforward and easy to understand, but there are quite a few configuration screens to browse through. The only problem I had was the inability to delete and rearrange the modules. It is a feature they are considering adding, but currently don’t have available, so you may have to employ some workarounds. My suggestion is play with the layout and get a base template you like save it and then copy it for future emails.
Once you’ve got it configured and entered your text, you can send a test email to addresses you specify. This gives you the ability to preview it in different email clients. It also gives you an idea how spam blockers will treat the incoming mail (an important consideration). Once you’ve got it tweaked and polished you can send the email out. You select a date and approximate time for the emails to be sent. From my two campaigns I found it went out within about 15 minutes of the scheduled time. Something to also note the emails go out en mass, not in a trickle. So if you have a large list of subscribers and an underpowered web server, you could end up shooting yourself in the foot. Once the emails are sent you have access to delayed reporting.
Click to Enlarge
This is a high level report view and there are more in depth reports, however I would have to sanitize the screen shots so much they would be useless. You can see who opened the email, who bounced, who unsubscribed, who clicked, and what they clicked on. Hopefully this information tells you what worked, and what didn’t, so you can improve your next campaign. Yes both of my campaigns had pretty lousy results.
While Constant Contact is fairly time consuming to use, it is pretty throuough, despite some editing limitations. After signing up I did get a sales call the next day asking if I had any questions. For those of you who run multiple sites the service is not set up to handle that very well. The salesperson I spoke to had a few suggestions, but between us we worked out the best way to do it was to have a separate account for each website. Proactive and knowledgeable sales staff, that’s a plus in my book. The service isn’t overly expensive, but isn’t cheap, and is based on the number of subscribers in your list (0-50 - free, 50-500 - $15, 500-2500 $30 per month). You pay for the service per month irregardless of the number of emails you send out. You want to find a balance that gives you the most bang for your buck, without annoying your users. Once you get set up and get a base template going it’s pretty easy. I repurpose the content from the previous month’s blog, with a few ads, so it takes about an hour to get set up, tweaked, tested, and ready to go.
I’d like to see some improved editing features, I think the editing interface on Squidoo is a better execution for a similar purpose. However the interface is workable without being too cumbersome. The pricing is higher than I’d like, but still within reason. The service was excellent on both the initial call and a later email inquiry (less than 1 business day). If you are in the market for an email marketing solution Constant Contact is definitely worth a test drive.
Constant Contact (aff)
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March 25th, 2006 at 12:39 am
I am a new customer of Constant Contact. I have no problem exporting the “Main Identity’s Contacts” from my Outlook Express address book, but am unable to export from the “New Folders.” When I select a New Folder and execute the export, it exports the Main Identity’s Contacts again, but nothing from the New Folder. What am I doing wrong?
Jordan
April 21st, 2006 at 2:43 pm
Have you ever tried RapidNewsletter.com? What did you think?
January 7th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
I only have two major complaints with the Constant Contact service:
1. A document prepared in HTML doesn’t convert to text format cleanly (irregular margins, etc.) and I have to redo a mailing for those who want only text.
2. The Safe|Unsubscribe feature is forced in each mailing, and CC says that’s because it’s a requirement of the Can-Spam Act. Wish it could be removed for my paying subscribers, because a click on them forever removes them from the mailing list (and cannot be restored).
March 28th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
We will never use Constant Contact because they spam. We NEVER opt in to e-mail lists, and yet we regularly receive UCE from CC customers. Today is the fourth time we’ve unsubscribed, reported abuse to their abuse address, and complained to their customer as well. That usually gets us an apology and an assurance that our address cannot be re-added to their database. Yet it always does. Maybe from now on we’ll go as far as reporting the customer to their ISP for spamming. Can anyone please suggest a way to get CC and their customers to stop spamming us?
May 18th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
I signed up with ConstantContact a month ago and had a question so called their support.
They were the rudest most unprofessional group of folks ever to take our money?
As a non-profit group, we are appalled!
Needless to say, we have switched services and are now thrilled.
May 24th, 2007 at 9:08 am
ConstantContact BLATENTLY SENSORS emails of it’s users and clearly violates freedom of speach rights. NO ONE should should ever use their system until they change their policies. Here is how I found this out:
My company used Constant Contact for quite a while until the company said our campaigns were recieving too high a spam rate (slightly higher than 5 in 1000) so they asked us to leave thier system which we did. This was several months ago. Our company frequently participates in cross promotions with other companies and organizations and recently an organization that used ConstantContact created an email to their members that promoted our business and contained a link to our website. When they tried to send that email to their members, the email was rejected and not sent. The business called customer support at ConstantContact and they told this company that a link to a company that used to do business with ConstantContact in the past that was asked to leave could not appear in any emails as they wouldn’t be sent. The business that this happend to was very upset with this and felt as I do that it is a blatent freedom of speach issue and no company should have the right to sensor email. Of course they can ask customers to leave their service if they wish. I then proceeded to talk with a supervisor at the company and he said that is what they do to past customers that have been asked to leave and they have no plans on changing the policy. Everyone I know that uses ConstantContact will know about their sensorship policies and I will let them know that much better services and companies exist that they should consider switching to. ConstantContacts policies should be Totally Unacceptable to everyone. We are much happier with our new service provider in all respects.
July 4th, 2007 at 7:30 am
Bill should understand that ConstantContact is executing their Freedom of Speech Rights by *not* allowing e-mails they object to from using their service. I always find it interesting that the people that intend to push *their* views on others are the ones that call out “Not fair — it’s against my Freedom of Speech Rights” the quickest. Your freedom of speech does not require others to broadcast your message on your behalf.
I for one do not find it offensive for someone, like CC, to execute their own Freedom of Speech Rights. In this case (without knowing details), I applaud them.
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:26 am
In the past few months, we have noticed an increase in the number of Constant Contact customers switching to our PoliteMail software for Outlook.
The comments here echo what we’ve been hearing from new customers switching from Constant Contact. As PoliteMail runs as a Microsoft Office add-in, your email is sent from Outlook through your own authentic email server instead of a shared server like Constant Contact. Constant Contact has to be so restrictive because one bad apple can ruin the deliverability for everyone else using the Constant Contact mail server. PoliteMail avoids these issues because you send email from your own email server, right from Outlook.
One thing to note if you are leaving Constant Contact is that their CSV export files tend to have format problems beyond record 15. To get past this, you have to first open the file in Excel, then save as CSV to actually be able to successfully import your contacts into another application.
August 28th, 2007 at 7:35 am
I am also using Constant Contact and I love it
September 6th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Constant Contact has NOT provided our company with good service. Everytime I place a call to their support line I can expect to be on the phone for a solid 30 - 60 minutes depending how long I am put on hold for.
We have NOT gotten the service we had hoped for, and although they are a low cost provider it is not worth it for the complications we have encountered. We are currently terminating our services.
HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE
September 19th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Constant Contact is not al all reliable. They will ditch you at the most critical point. Irresponsible custome service. Never use if your emails are time sensitive. Can you afford to wait for two days to send an email to 6K contacts?
I’ve been using Constant Contact for about six months now. Although, I had some starting issues, it was working fine untill I uploaded some new opted in contacts. Now starts all the trouble in the world.
October 9th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Constant Contact Sucks! They have the rudest policies and procedures. Instead of notifying you that they need to do a List Review (of lists that you have had for months!), they simply disconnect you, for you to find out a few minutes before closing… that the work you have been working on for two days, will not make it to SEND. And you have to wait, in my case, till after the extra long holiday to be able to send out your e-mail. Plus they keep you disconnected for an entire month, and expect you to PAY!
Not to mention their obnoxious logo and advertisement that has to be plastered at the bottom on each of your e-mail promotion campaigns. Shouldn’t they be paying ME to get to advertise their service to all of MY customers.
Constant Contact the WORST customer service, the rudest people, unethical billing, disrepect of customers time and no accountability.
October 11th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
This is bloody shocking. As a competitor to ConstantContact (I run BetterMail.ca) I always had in my mind that they had great customer service - I am surprised now that I am doing a bit of research since the IPO that this may not be the case.
Censoring emails…
Taking two days to send 6,000 emails…
Shutting you down without notice?
Those guys must be marketing geniuses to grow so big with this kind of service!