Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

I've used Constant Contact for about 4 years, and it has many great features. However the new Survey feature has one very expensive flaw - they charge for use based on your total list size, rather than the number of responses. So a survey to my list of 15,000 will cost me $100 per month! When I've done similar surveys with SurveyMonkey.com a good response for me is 100-200 and for this SM charge $19.95 per month for (from memory) up to 1000 responses. Way, way cheaper.

While I have the platform, one other thing that CC is going backward with is Safari (Mac) suppport - some reporting features that used to work no longer do. This seems to be going against the trend of most other online services.

Thanks John for your regular great work...

I can't comment on the survey feature of Constant Contact, but I can add a vote of confidence for CC's overall service package.
I too have been a CC user and customer for almost 4 years and have found it to be well designed and easy to use.
I'm a huge proponent of e-mail marketing as a customer loyalty/referal tool.

Another of the Constant Contact customers here....I Have used their service and agree with the ease of use and nice design tools. I fear they have lost touch with their customers through marginal customer service response. A series of long waits on hold, curt automated e mail responses, and inflexable policies have me on the look for a new provider Before adding new features and new costs, they should work on making their core customers feel good about using their existing product. Any suggestions on another, similar service provider?

Constant Contact is one of the worst I have ever dealt with.

They have no accountability to their customers. Their customer service is rude, their obnoxious logo stuck to the bottom of all your e-mails, while they solicit YOUR customers.

They block you from sending out e-mails and then refuse to send you a refund for the month you CANNOT use their service.

Whatever happened to Corporate Responsibility?

John,

It was a pleasure to spend some time with you in August and it seems that our discussion has led to some interesting posts by a number of your readers. I thought I would personally respond to the most recent post in order to continue the dialogue, as we take great pride in being able to support our customers.

So that others do not get the wrong impression, I would like to address the comment about Constant Contact “soliciting” our customer’s customers. Our logo is by default included at the bottom of every newsletter template and we have found that a vast majority of our customers choose to keep the logo on their newsletter mailings, as it shows that they are a trusted sender who is aligned with an email marketing company with strict anti-spam rules – similar to a seal of approval. However, for those who do not wish to have our logo included in their mailings, we promptly remove this upon request.

At Constant Contact, we are strict about our anti-spam policies. It is one of the key reasons that we have a 97+ percent delivery rate into the inbox (as determined by Return Path). From time to time a customer will come to us with a list that does not meet our permission standards, and we cannot allow them to send mail through our system. We understand that being turned away is never a pleasant experience; however, our 130,000+ customers have put their trust in us to get their mail delivered, and that trust is paramount to us.

Eric Groves
SVP, Sales and Business Development
Constant Contact

Thanks Eric for stating the Constant Contact story - I think the email business is a tough one, but one that your organization does well.

I very much find the comments posted by Eric Groves on 10/23/07 very interesting because as a new customer to Constant Contact, I find his statement to be mostly contrary to his company's actual business practices.

While I agree that the company seems very strict about it's anti-Spam policies, and rightfully so, this company also appear to discriminate against certain segments of the small business community by having different standards and policies for different, specific and particular businesses in the same market industry.

I make this claim on the basis of my recent experience and encounter with both their tech support and marketing departments. I just a few days ago signed up with the company through their 60 days free trial program, and on the same day set to work creating my first email. I repeatedly got an "error #1" message when I tried sending out the finished email. The error code indicated the presence of an XHTML code in my email. Since I did not have such a code in my email, I called their technical support department and was informed that indeed, there was no such code in my intended email, but that they could not figure out the problem. Their solution was to copy and re-send the email, and that also did not work. A second call on the same day to the technical support department yielded the advice to turn off the authentication option, which I did and yet the email would not process.

Finally, I was transferred to a marketing manager (name withheld), who informed me that his company does not allow emails from my business affiliation company, 5LINX, to go through their server because they consider them a MLM model company and Constant Contact has chosen not to do business with them. Furthermore, he found it objectionable that links in my email led to my website which had a button for franchise/independent business sign-up. He stated that if I were to remove the objectionable product button and statement, he would reconsider his company's decision. While informing him that I was very much aware of other similar and even identical businesses including many from 5Linx that were at that instant being allowed to send emails through Constant Contact, I agreed to redesign my website. Later that same day, I did exactly that by completely redesigning my entire website to remove the objectionable items and called both this same marketing manager and my assigned account consultant to inform them of the changes I had made and invited them to visit my website. I made two more calls to them that same day after not getting any response from them.

I finally got a call back from the marketing manager two days later. He informed me that in-spite of his previous statements and my newly redesigned website, Constant Contact still would not do business with me because of my affiliation with 5Linx. Once again, I reminded him of the other 5Linx independent representative businesses who were still being allowed to send emails through Constant Contact. He admitted being aware of those businesses and stated that his company was working on the issue.

At the end of the conversation, we both concluded that the only way Constant Contact would allow me to use their services was for me to set up yet another website with a completely new URL. I am looking at doing just that if only to be able to have the same opportunity and level playing field as every other business, to grow my small business enterprise.