Constant Contact Vs Mailchimp? Which Is Best and Tips for Use

Constant contact vs MailChimp are two of the leading email marketing companies operating in the market. They offer the coveted automation in their services along with a host of other features at various price points.

Back in 2010, when Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg publicly stated the ‘end of email’ she may have jumped the gun on that claim. Social media, along with other audio and visual mediums, has witnessed a steep rise in the past decade owing to the rapid progression of internet users. However, email has remained the mainstay.

Marketo, a USA based marketing Automation Company, has recently concluded a market research survey. Their survey shows that 94% of the total internet users in the USA check their email first when they go online. Moreover, it is estimated that 307 billion email will be sent per day in 2020 compared to 247 billion sent per day in 2010.

The power of email marketing is rooted in its ability to cross the barriers of culture, class and generation. Additionally, its ability to offer a steady return on investment is also practical for marketers. The ROI factor of an email is about $39.40. Given its foothold on customers, both B2C and B2B organisations need to stay involved in this email marketing game to beat their competitors.

An overview of Constant Contact and MailChimp

Constant Contact

Constant contact was founded in 1995 as Roving Software, and later it changed its name to the current one. The headquarters of the company is located in Waltham, Massachusetts. The company has over 1200 employees and over 60,000 customers all over the world. Furthermore, the company has an annual revenue of over $330 million.

Some of the prominent features of constant contacts are –

• Email editing tools
• A/B testing options
• Attractive email templates
• Excellent deliverability
• Image library
• File hosting
• Innovative email tracking features

MailChimp

MailChimp was founded in 2001 by Ben Chestnut and Mark Armstrong. Dan Kurzius later joined hands with the other two. The headquarters of the company is located in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. They have over 800 employees and annual revenue of 700 million.

Some of the prominent features of MailChimp are –

• A drag and drop editing feature to design emails
• Advanced analytics
• Engaging landing pages
• Extensive personalisation options
• Ability to record real time statistics

A comparative study of Constant contact vs MailChimp

On paper, both of these email marketing services offer quite similar services. However, technically Constant contact vs MailChimp is very different from each other. Therefore, a comparative study of these two service provider is essential to gain a better understanding of these companies.

Moreover, on a larger scale, this study will help in comprehend email marketing techniques and their importance.

• Subscription offers

The first point of comparison between Constant contact vs MailChimp is the paid services they offer to their customers. Constant contact has two paid subscription plans on offer; they are email and email plus. The email plan costs $20 per month, and the email plus plan costs $45 per month. Both of these plans are based on the number of contacts.

The standard email plan is primarily recommended for businesses starting their email marketing journey. It allows them to create a professional email from its variety of 240 custom-design templates. On the other hand, the email plus plan is more suitable for companies planning to automate their email marketing. Constant contact offers you a one month free trial on both of these plans.

MailChimp, on the other hand, offers four such plans to their customers. These are free, essential, standard and premium. The free plan has no charges associated with it; users can use various basic email features. This plan is ideal for small business that is just starting their operations and anyone trying to get acquainted with the idea of email marketing. Under the free plan, users can save up to 2000 contacts and send up to 10,000 emails per month.

The essential plan includes all the features of the free one and allows users to send up to 500,000 emails per month based on their number of contacts. This plan costs $9.99 per month.

The standard plan costs $14.99 and allows users to send up to 1.2 million emails per month. It also offers advance audience insight and automation based on separate events.

The premium allows users to access the entire feature list of MailChimp at $299 per month.

• Automation

Automation is a vital feature in email marketing and an essential factor in distinguishing Constant contact vs MailChimp. Constant contact has a built-in automation system that can–

• Send a welcome email to every new contact automatically
• Nurture their leads via drip campaigns
• Increase audience engagement using segmentation

MailChimp also offers automation to its users. They can integrate their account with their websites. It helps them to send targeted emails based on the activities recorded on their website. With MailChimp users can further perform tasks like –

• Whether to send a single email or a series of emails
• Send specific emails to the visitors of a particular page of the website
• Integrate their goals and pool leads

• Contact management

Properly managing the contact list is vital in case of email marketing.  Constant contact vs MailChimp both offer this feature but have a different approach.

Constant contact offers a very easy to tag contacts by just clicking a button on the toolbar. Additionally, users can easily remove any unresponsive contact. Furthermore, they have a video tutorial available to guide users through the list segmentation and management process. Users can import their contact from an excel sheet, outlook, e-commerce platform, etc. Moreover, their list management system automatically eradicates any duplicate contact.

MailChimp, on the other hand, has a very different approach. Here the terms groups and segments stand for two completely different things, and users need some time to get used to it. Here the group is used for organising and segment for filtering. Contacts can be imported here via CSV files, excel sheets, google docs, salesforce, etc.

• Analytics and reporting

Analytics here helps business to track email opened, unsubscribed, clicks, purchases of every contact on their lists. This allows companies to understand their ROI from email marketing campaign. Additionally, they can track down what is working for them what is not. In terms of analytics and reporting, Constant contact vs MailChimp has two very distinct approaches.

Constant contact has a built-in analytics tool, and it provides real time data and easy-to-read reports. Additionally, they offer the following features –

• Integrating this account with Google analytics.
• A comprehensive engagement report. It consists, email opening rate, the performance of a campaign, clicks, etc.
• Users can compare up to 5 email campaigns
• The click segmentation feature allows users to segregate their customer into different lists based on the content they have clicked on. It helps them to create more focused groups and deliver them more relevant content.
• Furthermore, the click-tracking heat map feature allows companies to check the links that have got them more clicks.
• Users can also track emails opened via mobile devices.

MailChimp has a built-in analytics tool also. It offers the following features –

• An efficient ROI monitor to track a sale from the first click to its conversion
• Provides growth, engagement and revenue reports for better decision making
• Assemble every marketing campaign on a single platform along with real-time statistics.
• Track every purchase, staring from the item to its value

• A/B testing

A/B testing is essential to understand the response of the audience. Constant contact vs MailChimp allow users to test their emails before starting their campaigns.

Constant contact allows their users to test the subject line of their emails via this testing method. It helps companies to understand customer preference. However, this A/B testing only limited to the subject line. Other aspects like template, content, etc. are not included.

However, MailChimp allows its users to test up to 3 variations at the same time to understand which one is more suitable. Furthermore, they also advise on how much time they have to perform this test to get the desired result. The premium plan allows users to test up to 8 variants simultaneously. MailChimp allows testing the following of an email –

• Subject line
• Content
• Form name
• Number of customers receiving the email
• Send item

• Form integration

Sign up forms plays a crucial role in generating qualified leads. Companies nowadays integrate such form with their website for this purpose. Thus, these forms should be attractive and easy to fill-up. Constant contact vs MailChimp both offer two different sets of such forms for their users to display on their website.

Both companies offer simple and massively customisable sign-up forms. However, comparatively, MailChimp provides more customisation and their sign up form can support any SSL certificate. Moreover, it is more user friendly.

• Customer service

In terms of customer service, constant contact vs MailChimp has not much difference between them. They both offer excellent service in this regard.

Constant contact vs MailChimp are two of the world’s largest and most prominent email marketing tool. They both have their advantages and disadvantages. Constant connect offers an excellent package and has several unique features and better analytics. On the other hand, MailChimp has its strengths too. It offers more customisation, an extensive range subscription packages, better A/B testing, etc.

Therefore, if you are planning to use an email marketing tool, then consider your requirement first and then opt for the most suitable one.