Constant Contact: The Email Marketing Tool that Gives Time Back to Creators (2023)
Constant Contact is one of the leading email marketing tools on the market today. With its all-in-one email marketing platform, Constant Contact can capture leads, share updates, and drive traffic for your creative business. It provides many essential needs creators have from email to ecommerce, SMS to social, CRM, and event management.
Disclaimer: **I was compensated for this post. This post also contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.
In this article, we revisit Constant Contact as a contender to be one of the best email marketing tools for creators and small business owners with many newly added features since 2023.
How to Choose the Right Email Marketing Tool for Your Business
First, we must discuss the criteria for choosing the right email marketing tool. This can be a daunting decision for many creators. It’s like buying a house (almost), a choice you don’t want to regret down the road. Here are some things to consider:
- Determine the type of emails you want to send (text only, image/media, etc.).
- Decide on your must-have features.
- Create a shortlist of apps (for integration considerations, etc.)
- Conduct testing on your own and with your team
- Start with a free or the lowest tier plan available – but prepare to upgrade for features you might need down the road.
How to Best Transition to a New Email Marketing Tool
For some of you, it may be time to switch to a different email marketing tool. However, the transition can be complex and even impact deliverability. When you switch platforms, you can’t take your “sending reputation” with you, which is tied to your sending IP address, which is provided by your email marketing platform.
Constant Contact averages a 97% email deliverability rate!
Most of us eventually will have to switch to a new email marketing tool. When that time comes, many creators will say “I would love to switch off [current email tool], but it’s such a mess.” Or even “I can’t even think about switching tools right now.”
But you know you have to, eventually. This is when superior support from the new email marketing tool can shine through. Some of them offer free migration to their tool, and some such as Constant Contact offer stellar customer support to make sure your transition is smooth and stress-free.
Constant Contact uses screen-share to walk you through the transition.
This is unheard of in the industry. Constant Contact will assign an onboarding specialist (yes, a real human) to walk you through the daunting process. The call typically takes about 30 minutes. If you have messy segmentations or are not sure how to import and manage your small or big email list, they’ve got you covered.
Video Tutorial
Who is Constant Contact designed for?
Constant Contact is not shy about its targeted audiences: creators, small business owners, and nonprofits. Specifically, it primarily targets businesses with 1-10 employees and under 10M dollars in revenue.
It’s also easy to make an argument that Constant Contact is designed for very busy people who don’t have much time to waste on the newest and latest technology that doesn’t live up to their promises. Most creators and small business owners fall into that camp.
Brand New AI Features for Content Generation and Automation
Here’s more from Constant Contact that helps creators save time right from its platform.
Constant Contact’s new AI Content Generator uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automate the process of drafting copy for email, text, and social media campaigns. The feature is available to all new Constant Contact customers for free, including the free trial.
Constant Contact’s AI Content Generator was developed using the company’s proprietary data and AI algorithms, which recognize content small business customers are most likely to engage with. Then, ChatGPT technology from OpenAI is leveraged to automatically draft high-quality copy that can be used across multiple marketing channels.
Press release, constant contact
The AI Content Generator can be used to create content for announcements, product promotions, and newsletters. You can find the generator in the Constant Contact dashboard.
Constant Contact also offers an autoresponder feature that allows you to create, schedule, and send a series of automated emails.
Native Integration with Canva (Your Favorite Online Design Tool)
Canva and Constant Contact integrate to allow users to create email marketing campaigns using Canva’s design tools. Users can create images with Canva’s tools and add them to their email campaigns without leaving Constant Contact.
Built-in Event Management Tool
From charity fundraisers to cooking classes, Constant Contact makes it easy to create, promote, and manage your event, all in one place. This means you can coordinate all of your event projects in one convenient location. Payment is built-in as well to manage ticket sales, and donations, and get reports for all the details.
To create an event inside Constant Contact’s email marketing platform takes only 3 steps:
- Step 1: Create your invitations, landing pages, and tickets.
- Step 2: Spread the word with posts on social media and email invitations, all of which drive people to a custom landing page just for your shindig. (Everything can be done without leaving Constant Contact)
- Step 3: Analytics, reporting, ticket sales – your learning in one place to inform your current and future events.
Other Essential Features of Constant Contact
Here are the key features in a snapshot:
- Reporting: You can see the performance of different emails on one graph, including sends, bounces, clicks, and opens.
- Landing page builder: You can create a custom-designed landing page in minutes.
- Drag-and-drop email builder: The drag-and-drop editor is easy to use.
- Social media tools: You can create and publish posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
- Email deliverability: Constant Contact has great email deliverability rates (averages 97%)
- User-friendly interface: Constant Contact has a super user-friendly interface that eases beginners into the world of email, text, and social media marketing.
Of these features, the website builder and social media tools are often taken for granted, but they shouldn’t be. Why? These features are often missing even among many popular email marketing tools. And it can cost you time trying to find an alternative, even if you are technical.
For example, the landing page builder is a must-have for creators to easily build sign-up pages and forms for different newsletters, products, and offers you may have. While you can do that using WordPress or a CMS of your choice, it’s going to take time away from you as a creator. Instead, Constant Contact offers a landing page builder even for the Lite version at $12/month.
For an alternative tool such as Brevo (which we also like quite a lot), you won’t be able to access their landing page feature unless you have their Business subscription starting at over $60/month.
Superior Customer Support (with Real Humans and Phone Numbers)
Can you believe that they not only have live customer support but there are phone numbers you could call?! I have never seen this before for any popular email marketing tools. At best, you will have a live chat available that starts with a robot. But to speak to a real human being? Never!
Constant Contact’s contact support: https://community.constantcontact.com/contact-support
There is a “Chat With Us” feature available, as well as “Ask The Community”.
Professional Onboarding, Knowledge Base and Marketing Professional Connections
Beyond onboarding, creators and small business owners can choose their own journey to continue their learning through a variety of mediums offered at Constant Contact, such as Community, Knowledge Base, Video Tutorials, Free Webinars, and Blogs just to name a few. Constant Contact doesn’t only write about their own email marketing platform but it also teaches you skills to grow your business from event management to running a successful e-commerce shop.
Personalized 1:1 Marketing Advisor
Constant Contact offers a marketing advisor program for small businesses. They call it “the Helpline”. When you get stuck or need some advice, you can call the Constant Contact Helpline to talk 1:1 with one of their Marketing Advisors, knowing expert advice is always one call—or chat—away.
Conclusion: Is Constant Contact right for creators and small businesses?
Yes! Just as I’m writing the conclusion of this article, I received a call from an online marketing specialist from Constant Contact who confirmed a few questions I had about Constant Contact. She even took the time to learn more about me and my business which made the conversation more relevant and productive.
I write about AI, and tech and love the convenience it provides for creators. However, there is something truly special about quality human interaction between brands like Constant Contact and their customers.
You don’t need to be a long-time paying customer or a business elite to experience Constant Contact’s customer care. Simply sign up for their free trial and see what you can learn even before you spend a single penny.
If you have any questions and thoughts about Constant Contact or any other email marketing tools of your choice, please let me know in the comments below or on social media @feisworld.
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