With robust email marketing software under your belt, you know you can take your business to incredible heights. Email marketing remains the most effective means to communicate with your target audience to showcase your products or services. Reports show that nearly 75% of email revenues are generated by properly targeted campaigns and not a one-size-fits-all campaign. This shows the importance of email marketing software for modern, small businesses that run on tight budgets and cannot afford to spend on elaborate or costly marketing tactics that may or may not resonate with their audience.
While there may be an overwhelming number of email marketing software in the market, ActiveCampaign, Constant Contact, Mailchimp being some, it is hard to find one that will not only serve its purpose but will also fall within your budget. Looking for discounts on these packages is normal, and so ActiveCampaign discounts or Constant Contact promo codes could come in handy. Therefore, it becomes important to shop around and compare features, pricing, and client feedbacks of different email marketing services before choosing one.
Constant Contact vs. Active Campaign
- Constant Contact caters primarily to smaller businesses keen to reach out to a bigger market and drive their business forward in a short period. They offer user-friendly marketing automation tools, social campaigns, and event management tools. In comparison, Active Campaign is mainly suited for SMBs and small enterprises, keen to expand their reach through customer relationships.
- Constant Contact provides a user-friendly and intuitive email editor having drag-and-drop features. You can get access to a wide variety of templates that are open for customization. You may drag custom elements from the media library and personalize these. A similar intuitive email editor is offered by Active Campaign, and here too, you can get many templates for different situations along with a drag-and-drop feature. It is possible to customize every single aspect of the email and not simply a recipient’s name. You can even import content from the website while the media library offers unlimited media storage.
- With Constant Contact, you can add your contact by uploading files manually or via synchronized imports from Gmail, Outlook, and Constant Contact CRM in multiple formats. It is even possible to build custom sign-up forms to sort the new subscribers into different listings. On its part, Active Campaign also integrates with the majority of email platforms, e-commerce platforms, and CRMs, and you can easily add contacts from any of these sources. You may add contacts manually or by importing CSV files.
- Constant Contact allows you to seamlessly move your contacts between lists and assign tags to enable advanced segmentation. It is also possible to track responses via these tags and make further segmentation. Active Campaign also provides elaborate segmentation features because of the rich data it gathers. You may use conditional fields in different combinations for segmenting according to behavior, tags, demographics, location, etc.
- With Constant Contact, you cannot enjoy the advantage of dynamic content. But with Active Campaign, you may build one email campaign that keeps adjusting contacts automatically depending on customer insights. This way, you can create a more custom email at a mass level seamlessly.
- You can easily schedule your emails with Constant Contact; you can even send recurring emails on one date every year. Constant Contact also allows you to create drip campaigns and send emails at regular intervals, whether on a daily or hourly, or weekly basis. With Active Campaign, you can design an email campaign and then decide whether to send it right away or on a certain date. You can also create drips campaigns for sending emails at routine intervals.
- With Constant Campaign, you can enjoy A/B testing for only the email subject line; this helps you see which emails have the highest open rates. With Active Campaign, you may test all the email elements separately and not just the subject line. You can split test the image placement, subject line, format, colors, CTA placement, etc. You may even run as many as 5 versions simultaneously and decide whether to sort these according to click rate or open rate.
- Constant Contact provides limited email automation features. You may be able to create an autoresponder for sending custom emails. For instance, if your contact is celebrating an anniversary or birthday. But you can enjoy more advanced email automation features with Active Campaign. For instance, you can easily install basic autoresponders for birthdays and anniversaries and even automate emails for a more personalized touch.
- Constant Contact will let you track your emails through real-time updates. So, you get to see the click and open rates, bounce rates, and unsubscribe requests. This software even lets you compare almost 5 email campaigns to see high-level results. With Active Campaign, you can track the click and open rates, view customer behavior when they have clicked through your emails, etc.
- With Constant Contact, it is possible to access event marketing. So, you can create events, and invite your contacts, monitor their responses. This feature is missing in Active Campaign packages.
- There is a mobile app for Constant Contact that allows you to manage your contacts and organize them over different lists. You can also stay updated about your email campaigns no matter where you are. This offers Constant Contact users an advantage over the Active Campaign users that lacks this feature.
- You can even create surveys and polls, and donation requests using Constant Contact. The app will allow you to get donations and track the RSVPs or responses. This feature is not present in Active Campaign plans.
- A solid reason to use Constant Contact is its ease of use; even newcomers will face no trouble using this platform. Adding or managing contacts and using the editor is simple enough. Even subscribers of Active Campaign plans will not encounter any difficulty in using its drag-and-drop feature. However, the dashboard is a tad cluttered; so, navigation may be an issue.
- With Constant Contact, integration with other business tools is never a problem. You can access and integrate your email marketing solution with almost 300 apps in the app marketplace such as Facebook, Shopify, Fresh Books, Zapier, Salesforce, etc. In comparison, Active Campaign cannot guarantee so many integrations; however, you can access 150 apps such as Facebook, WooCommerce, Stripe, Shopify, Survey Monkey, etc.
- Constant Contact provides 3 types of pricing plans, beginning at a modest price of $5. There is no top-level business plan because they seek to cater to smaller businesses that need tools different from those that larger businesses need. There are no contracts, but you can avail discounts from time to time. You are free to discontinue the plan anytime. So, interested users can take advantage of their month-long free trial. ActiveCampaign pricing is different, and there are 4 plans with different features. You can use their 14-day free trial to see if the plan works for you. The final price depends on how many contacts you have and your choice of plan. There are no contracts, but there are exciting discounts. You are free to downgrade or upgrade your plans or even cancel them at any time.
- Any email marketing service must ensure high deliverability rates. Constant Contact claims to offer an average of 97% deliverability rate. ActiveCampaign, however, does not give out such details. ActiveCampaign reviews can give you a better idea of this.
- With Constant Contact, you can rely on troubleshooting advice via its knowledge base and community forum. Besides video tutorials, you can reach out to the customer services through phone calls and chats. With Active Campaign, there are no video tutorials or help articles. There are neither any training sessions nor the FAQ section. You can, however, get in touch via live chat, although it is not accessible 24×7.
To sum up, Constant Contact is popular for offering far more integrations and a better user experience. When you own a small business and are interested in easy-to-use email marketing solutions, this platform can be your best bet. It is easy to master as the learning curve is not steep. It can give you all the functionalities and features you need. In terms of customer support services, it appears to be ahead of its competitor ActiveCampaign. This is especially true if you look at their mobile app that small business owners can use to stay informed about the progress of their email marketing campaigns.
This is not to say that it is superior to the Active Campaign because this platform offers more than only email automation. It provides a comprehensive marketing automation solution for marketing along with sales CRM. For those who need their email automation to connect smoothly with all other business tools, ActiveCampaign is the best solution. It is only lacking in a mobile app which when added will make it as easily accessible as Constant Contact. To get the latest discounts and promotional offers of either of these two robust email marketing platforms, visit our website, Don’tPayAll.
