Constant Contact is an autoresponder service based in Massachusetts with over 500,000 paying customers. They have plans starting at as low as $15 a month. Their products span a wide range of internet marketing avenues, including events, social media, surveys and deals. Their most prevalent product is, of course, their email marketing tool.
Constant Contact is known primarily for sending out great looking HTML emails. If you’re a design fan or want to make sure that all your emails look fantastic, the Constant Contact is a great choice.
It’s important to note that Constant Contact actually cannot send out plain text email. If you prefer sending plain text rather than HTML emails, Constant Contact might not be for you.
Here are some of Constant Contact’s many advanced features.
#1 – Create Email Campaigns from Your iPhone
If you’re on the go and want to create an email marketing campaign quickly, Constant Contact’s QuickView makes it easy to do so.
You can send emails, edit emails and schedule emails to go out all from your phone. You can also check all your most important stats, such as open rates and clicks all from your phone as well.
#2 – Social Campaigns
Running a social campaign doesn’t have to be a huge hassle. Instead, it can be an easy yet exhilarating journey – Provided you have the right tools.
Constant Contact helps you build social marketing campaigns and get it published. It helps you spread your message, get most subscribers and communicate with your followers in a trackable way.
#3 – Email Template Creation
Is there a specific look you’re going for?
If you know exactly how you want your email to look and don’t see anything in the templates area that appeals to you, you can have iContact do the actual template design for you from scratch.
The price? For email marketing, it’s $599. That includes two rough drafts of different design styles and one final draft.
If you’re not a designer, this avenue allows you to get a professional email template design from someone who’s intimately familiar with the system. After all, they do work for iContact.
#4 – Importing Your Contacts
Constant Contact lets you import your contact from a number of different sources.
First off, you can import your contacts from Gmail. Very few other autoresponder services allow you to do this. Make sure you don’t just dump your contacts in, but cull the list so you only add people who really want to be on your mailing list.
You can also add contacts from an external file. This allows you to port over entire databases. For example, if you wanted to move from another autoresponder service to Constant Contact, all you’d need to do is upload a list of all their email addresses.
#5 – Multiple Support Avenues
Need customer support? You can get in touch with Constant Contact a number of different ways.
Many customers prefer not to call up customer support. Instead, they want to just get a quick answer to their question. Constant Contact’s live chat option is great for that.
If you’re not in too much of a rush, just send customer service an email. Alternatively, you can just give them a call whenever you need.
#6 – WYSIWYG Template Editor
One of Constant Contact’s primary drawing points is its attention to its templates. Not only does Constant Contact have a myriad of different designs for you to choose from, but you can also take existing templates and alter them in a built-in WYSIWYG editor.
You can edit the font, the size, the color and the placement of any text in the template. You can move around other elements, add or delete pictures and make the template look exactly the way you want it to.
#7 – Create an Email from Scratch
If you’re a web designer or coder and have a good sense of design, you can create your own templates and emails from scratch.
Constant Contact allows you to use your own HTML code in your emails. That means you’ll have full control of every minute detail of the emails you want to use.
You can use header graphics, sidebars and unique fonts. You can also integrate tracking pixels and tracking links in your HTML as well.
#8 – Event Management
If you run events, Constant Contact’s event management features is a great way to integrate your event with your email marketing.
Using Constant Contact, you can send out event invitations, customize invitations to specific groups of people, track your response, collect registrations and do everything you need to do to make sure your event is a success.
#9 – The App Store (“Marketplace”)
Constant Contact has an app store. Constant Contact makes it easy for developers to create software solutions for Constant Contact specifically. As a result, there are a lot of apps you can purchase for Constant Contact to extend your email’s capabilities.
For instance, if you run events and want to collect registrations offline on an iPad and have them go directly to Constant Contact, you can. You no longer have to input names into your lists manually afterwards.
There are tons and tons of apps you can choose from to make your life easier. Browse the app store and see what other cool functionality you can add.
#10 – API (for Developers)
If you’re a developer or have an in house developer, you can get an API key from Constant Contact and develop your own apps.
If you have very unique needs, this is a fantastic way to get Constant Contact to do exactly what you need it to do. By programming your own applications, you’ll be able to execute all kinds of advanced marketing tactics that the normal version of Constant Contact doesn’t offer.
In short, with the right coding expertise, Constant Contact is more or less fully customizable.
There are primarily two kinds of people for whom Constant Contact would be a great choice. First, designers and people who want to send exquisite looking emails often choose Constant Contact. Their templates and WYSIWYG editors are second to none. Also, programmers and tech savvy people who want an extendable set of features also often choose Constant Contact.
Thank you for the great post. I was just looking to start a new mailing list for one of my blogs.