What is Constant Contact?
Constant Contact is a nifty online marketing tool designed to help businesses create and manage all their email, SMS, event, and social media campaigns in one place. The platform is super easy to use and offers lots of options for customization, so you can make your campaigns look slick and professional. Constant Contact also provides helpful tools for managing your email list, tracking your campaign success, and getting valuable insights about your audience
History of Constant Contact
Constant Contact was co-founded in 1995 in Brookline, Massachusetts by Randy Parker and Bob Sinclair. The company initially focused on providing online marketing and consulting services to small businesses. Fast forward to 2001, Constant Contact’s core activities and mission shifted to offering web-based email marketing services and went public a few years later in 2005. 15 years later, to answer to the high demand of the market, Constant Contact launched a new email editor and other features, including integration with Shopify and Facebook.
Constant Contact was the largest email marketing service provider in the world in 2009.
Constant Contact Screenshots
Companies using Constant Contact
Constant Contact is used by businesses of all sizes and industries. Some examples of well-known companies and organizations that use Constant Contact include:
- The Smithsonian Institution
- The American Red Cross
- The Los Angeles Lakers
Constant Constant Key Features
Constant Contact offers a comprehensive suite of marketing tools to help businesses effectively reach and engage with their audience across multiple channels. Contact Key Features include Email Marketing and Templates, Marketing Automation, Landing Pages and List-building tools, and A/B testing and reporting. It is also quite a secure platform to connect to.
The most useful and interesting features of Constant Contact are their reporting capabilities but also their Social media and Event Marketing campaign management.
SMS Marketing is available in all Constant Contact Plan and include a dedicated phone number for text messaging at no additional charge. The SMS editor is very easy to navigate and use and as with Email Marketing, you will get access to detailed reporting to track your results, compare campaigns, and see what’s working or need to be changed. You can also build our SMS list using one of Constant’s Contact customizable landing pages.
Constant Contact Interface and Use
Constant Contact has a very clean and intuitive interface to use that makes it easy to navigate between functionalities and dashboards and to create and manage contacts, email campaigns, signup forms, reports, and more. The platform is divided into nine sections: Campaigns, Contacts, Reporting, Sign-up Forms, Google Ads & SEO, Events, Social, Integrations, and Library;
- Campaigns: This section organizes all your email campaigns by status and you can toggle between list view and calendar view. Constant Contact has a good drag-and-drop designer editor to use to help you craft your email templates unless you prefer building it from scratch using their HTML editor instead. The template library includes both pre-built designs and pre-built layouts.
- Contacts: this is where you can manage all your customer data including lists, segments, tags, and contacts. You can also manage your contacts from anywhere by downloading the Constant Contact mobile app. You can manually add or import contacts from file uploads and from integrations.
Constant Contact has pre-built segments to send targeted emails based on the subscribers’ engagement level. This feature is only available with the Plus plan though.
- Reporting: provides a wealth of information about your email program, automation performance, and in-depth campaign insights on who’s opening, clicking, and sharing your emails. In this section, you also get access to trends to compare your stats over time and across your industry during a specific time range.
- Sign-up Forms: Constant Contact has pre-built pop-up form templates, banners, flyouts, and landing pages to choose from to start building and growing your list. You can also connect your WordPress or any other lead generation tools compatible with Constant Contact to unlock additional functionalities and designs.
- Google Ads & SEO: Available with the Plus Plan, Constant Contact offers to connect your account to Google Ads to grow your business and drive more qualified traffic to your blog or online store. On the SEO side, get access to see which keywords engage the best with your audience to expand your organic reach and analyze how you are performing against competitors. SEO is a nice-to-have functionality but won’t replace SEO tools and platforms already out there in the market that provide more insights and details.
- Events: if you are organizing events on a regular basis, Constant Contact is a good solution to help you create, promote, and manage registrations and attendance in one place.
- Social: Constant Contact offers to help you create and manage your Facebook & Instagram ads and posts to monitor your social stats and message your followers directly from the platform. It comes quite handy and useful when you manage events, webinars, and new product launches on a regular basis. As usually set up through legacy social media platforms, with Constant Contact, you can create customizable ads, choose your audience, set a budget, and analyze performance on one screen. You will need to sign up or a PLUS plan to unlock this cool feature though.
- Library: this is where all your creative assets live; you can organize all your images, videos, and other documents and edit and customize your assets with Constant Contact’s native Canva editor feature.
Constant Contact Integrations
Constant Contact’s email marketing tools integrate with many integrations to grow your contact list fast, bring your emails to life with beautiful creatives, automate your work, and easily engage with customers on social media. The email marketing platform has over 5,000+ integrations such as CMS, CRM, Analytics, and Databases to make it very easy for users to sync their data across multiple platforms, automate their workflows, and streamline their marketing efforts. Top integrations include:
- Contact Database and CRM: Salesforce, Outlook, QuickBooks, Gmail
- Marketing Channels: Facebook, Instagram, Google, WordPress
- Automation and Workflows: Zapier
- Event Management: EventBrite
- E-commerce: Shopify, WooCommerce,Stripe, Big Commerce, Etsy, eBay
- Images and Videos: Canva, Vimeo
Whenever you are, there will be a way to optimize your campaigns and processes and get access to data more easily.
Constant Contact Pros & Cons
As with any ESP, CRM tools, and online platforms, there are pros and cons to consider with Constant Contact email marketing software; our verdict:
Pros:
- Free Trial
- Social Media Schedule and Posting
- High Deliverability Rates
- Intuitive and easy-to-use Interface
- Large Marketplaces of Apps and Integrations
Cons:
- Limited Advanced Marketing Automation tools
- Limited A/B Testing Options
- Outdated template Designs
- Pricey
Constant Contact Support & Resources
Constant Contact has many different forms of resource documents, training, and support to help you get started, scale your online business, or simply answer a specific question;
- Get content ideas based on the industries you are marketing in
- Get valuable advice whether you are just getting started or for any advanced marketers – schedule 1:1 with live experts or get professional services.
- Find additional resources in Constant Contact’s Small Business Hub
- Keep learning with the Constant Contact blog and events
- Join Constant Contact Community – more than 10K discussions happening now!
Constant Contact Assistance, chat, and phone support are available with any plans
Constant Contact Plans & Pricing
Email Marketing and SMS Plans
Constant Contact has three email marketing and SMS plans: Lite, Standard, and Plus. Both plans offer many features to manage your customer list growth, email marketing campaigns, email automation, reporting, and social media posting, and get the support you need.
| # of contacts | Lite | Standard | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 – 500 | $12 per month | $35 per month | $80 per month |
| 501 – 1,000 | $30 per month | $55 per month | $110 per month |
| 1,001 – 2,500 | $50 per month | $75 per month | $150 per month |
| 2,501 – 5,000 | $80 per month | $110 per month | $200 per month |
| 5,001 -10,000 | $120 per month | $160 per month | $275 per month |
| 10,001 – 15,000 | $180 per month | $210 per month | $325 per month |
| 15,001 – 20,000 | $230 per month | $260 per month | $375 per month |
| 20,001 – 25,000 | $280 per month | $310 per month | $425 per month |
| 25,001 – 30,000 | $310 per month | $340 per month | $455 per month |
| 30,001 – 35,000 | $340 per month | $370 per month | $485 per month |
| 35,001 – 40,000 | $370 per month | $400 per month | $515 per month |
| 40,001 – 45,000 | $400 per month | $430 per month | $545 per month |
| 45,001 – 50,000 | $430 per month | $460 per month | $575 per month |
| 50,000+ | Custom Pricing | Custom Pricing | Custom Pricing |
- While Constant Contact does not have a free plan, it offers a free trial period to explore all email and marketing automation features has to offer and decide whether or not it is a good fit for your online business.
- The Standard plan also has fully automated email marketing capabilities, including automated email resends to non-openers, birthday and anniversary greetings, abandoned cart reminders, and any other automated email behavior series. You will get very limited with the Core Plan, only offering automated welcome emails for new contacts.
- If you are serious about growing your email marketing and automation programs, we recommend subscribing to the Premium plan for unlimited users, email engagement heat map, additional Google ads, and Facebook Ad targeting capabilities to expand your customer list and inform your paid media program on what audience engages the best.
- SMS marketing is available with any plan, starting at $10/ month for up to 500 messages.
Lead Gen & CRM Plans
Constant Contact’s lead gen plan starts at $499 per month and is a great solution for B2B to attract the right leads, nurture with personalized content, and grow through better conversion—all through a unified marketing and sales platform. Top Constant Contact’s features include:
- Lead Gen & Scoring
- Marketing Automation
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Pipeline Management
- Sales Automation
- Analytics
Constant Contact Alternatives
Constant Contact’s best alternatives and other platforms are MailChimp, MailerLite, and Hubspot;
- Mailchimp offers a better brand and customer experience and a wider range of automation features than Constant Contact.
- MailerLite option is a bit more affordable platform for email marketing if you are getting started with less than 25,000 contacts.
- On the lead gen & CRM side, if you are looking to prioritize marketing automation and CRM pipelines, HubSpot Marketing Hub and Sales automation is a bit more robust and include premium consulting and integration services.
Constant Contact FAQs
How to Contact Constant Contact?
There are several ways to get in touch with support or get your questions answered;
- Use their live chat, training, knowledge base, and support center to find the resources you need.
- Get started today for free by signing up here
- Contact them at +1(866) 289 -2101.
What is Constant Contact Affiliate Program?
Constant Contact Affiliate program offers to help customers and publishers generate more revenue by getting paid for each referral and earning unlimited commissions for any qualified leads. Get access to promotional resources and reliable tracking and reporting capabilities. This is a great occasion to build passive income while referring your clients and followers to the top features the platform has to offer and how it can help businesses grow and scale their businesses with email marketing and powerful automation.
Become a Constant Contact Affiliate
Final verdict
Overall, Constant Contact offers a comprehensive email marketing and CRM solution to help you create and execute effective marketing campaigns across email and other channels.
The software goes beyond just email marketing and includes other features such as event management, social media marketing, and online surveys. This feature-rich platform will allow you to manage your marketing campaigns across multiple channels, enhancing your customer engagement and reach.
The pricing of Constant Contact varies based on the number of contacts but it comes with a free trial option. Additionally, the platform provides users with in-depth analytics and reporting tools to measure the success of their marketing campaigns and make data-driven decisions.
If you are really serious about contact management, hosting webinars, and other events requiring registrations, and if you heavily rely on Google ads and social media to expand your reach and build awareness, Constant Contact is probably the best option for you.
