Email Marketing for Small Business: Constant Contact vs Mailchimp

When smaller businesses compete against large corporations, implementing the right SEO strategies is critical. Although you have an abundance of options, do not believe the rumors that email marketing for small business is dead. In fact, this method of reaching your target audience is not only alive but also crucial to your overall success. In this article comparing Constant Contact vs Mailchimp, you will discover that one platform outperforms the other.

Email marketing for small business

Mailchimp, which is the largest application available for email marketing purposes, offers a fast and easy setup, free membership, impressive dashboard interface, email templates, and relatively decent mobile apps. On the other hand, when looking at Constant Contact vs Mailchimp in 2019, you will find the Constant Contact email solution remains one of the most popular thanks to its incredible features, such as sleek designs, easy setup, and free trial offer.

Mailchimp vs Constant Contact overview

With the following breakdown, you will have a better understanding of the differences between Constant Contact vs Mailchimp.

Constant Contact

Templates

When it comes to email marketing for small business, Constant Contact has an abundance of templates available. You can also customize your email layouts, allowing for even more design flexibility to get your message to stand out. What’s better is that you don’t need any HTML knowledge. Although Mailchimp offers design versatility, there is no question that Constant Contact scores higher in this area.

App integration

The integration of apps is another important topic when comparing Constant Contact vs Mailchimp for the purpose of email marketing for small business. Because Constant Contact integrates with most major apps, including Facebook, Shopify, Salesforce, QuickBooks, and Wix, you have ample opportunity to reach your target audience.

Customer support

When comparing Constant Contact vs Mailchimp, you will discover that Constant Contact is remarkably better for customer support. With a department dedicated to helping customers, which includes live chat, email, and phone communication, you can quickly get the guidance and answers you need from a highly qualified expert.

Analytics

Analytics is another important aspect of comparing Constant Contact vs Mailchimp. Along with a high-level view of general trends and marketing campaign overviews, you can drill down the numbers of each email. With this, you can make comparisons between different campaigns, gaining a better understanding of which one is the most successful.

Deliverability

Emails that do not reach their intended target are useless. One of the excellent things about Constant Contact is its deliverability rate of 89.75 percent, which is quite remarkable.

Automation

Automation saves you time, resources, and money, making it a vital part of email marketing for small business. Some people feel that Constant Contact has limited automation. Although you might not have all the rich-behavior-based automation provided by Mailchimp, it still provides you with the most crucial things you need, including autoresponders.

Registration

The easier you make it for people to register on your site the better. With Constant Contact, you can create a registration form that compels people to sign up. For this, you can select different layouts, designs, and colors.

Testing

The makers of Constant Contact took the product through extensive testing and continue to test to ensure emails arrive as intended. In fact, this software has a new spam testing feature.

Reporting

Reporting is a perfect way for you to measure the success of your marketing newsletter. Constant Contact includes information on when a prospective or existing customer opens your email and clicks on the newsletter. This tool is highly advantageous for tracking conversions.

Pricing

While pricing may not be the most critical factor when choosing an email marketing for small business solution, it still matters. With Constant Contact, you enjoy the first month of service free, including access to all the features. After that, Constant Contact pricing stays incredibly affordable. The Constant Contact price for up to 500 contacts is only $20 a month. You would pay a slightly higher cost of $45 per month for up to 2,500 contacts. As a bonus, if you pay for 6 or 12 months upfront, you receive a 10 percent or 15 percent discount, respectively.

Additional features

Along with standard and customized email templates, email marketing for small business becomes more exciting when you consider all the other innovative features that Constant Contact provides as part of its Plus plan.

• Event marketing and management
• Ample image storage (2 GB) with the ability to upgrade using the MyLibrary Plus
• Access to free stock images
• Surveys
• Autoresponders
• Coupons
• Donations

Mailchimp

Templates

In this Mailchimp versus Constant Contact comparison, it is important to note that Mailchimp has an impressive selection of standard templates, although customization is also possible. However, its customizing options are not as streamlined. That means you can still produce your own email designs, but it requires a little more time and effort.

For a tool used for email marketing for small business, Mailchimp lags behind Constant Contact in the customized template department. With this, your only option is drag and drop, requiring you to adjust image sizes by hand. In other words, unlike Constant Contact, which allows you to customize with a simple click of the mouse, you have to move around quite a bit to accomplish the same goal when using Mailchimp.

App integration

When it comes to integrating apps, Mailchimp and Constant Contact have about a 50/50 tie. However, many users prefer Constant Contact due to integration simplicity. As for Mailchimp, you can integrate with virtually any CRM application.

Customer service

When comparing Constant Contact vs Mailchimp, customer service is definitely the weakest aspect of the latter. Unfortunately, the company lacks in its ability to provide the support that customers want and need. The main issue is that instead of reaching an actual representative, you have to depend primarily on self-help topics that often create more confusion.

Analytics

For the most part, analytics for Constant Contact and Mailchimp are the same. With Mailchimp, you can review detailed analytics to compare your figures with the industry average, track your campaign’s overall performance, determine the opened links, and more. The one advantage this software has over Constant Contact is its A/B testing functionality. However, Constant Contact still supplies a ton of information that you can use to tweak future campaigns.

Deliverability

As for deliverability, Mailchimp falls short of Constant Contact’s rate at 87.52 percent. While that might not seem like much of a gap, it makes a dramatic difference in the effectiveness of your marketing campaign.

Automation

Mailchimp offers many automation options. You can send emails automatically based on a user’s activity, as well as those that include recommended products, discount codes, purchase reminders, and so on.

Registration

Like Constant Contact, Mailchimp allows you to create an impressive registration form. Along with the drag and drop feature, you can add custom fields and modify color options. The one downfall to this software is that it requires you to use a HEX color.

Testing

When you compare Constant Contact vs Mailchimp, you will discover the latter relies on a third-party tool for spam and other types of testing. For you to benefit, you have to pay one token. Although not expensive, these smaller fees can add up quickly.

Reporting

Along with reports on who opens and clicks on newsletters, Mailchimp offers information on click maps, social media, and geo-tracking. There is even tracking for e-commerce conversions, helping you identify the products sold at your brick-and-mortar location.

Pricing

When comparing Constant Contact vs Mailchimp, you cannot help but feel excited about the latter’s forever free plan, which covers up to 2,000 users. Although Constant Contact pricing is competitive, as a small business owner, free is very appealing. With this plan, you can send as many as 12,000 emails every month at no charge and have access to support for the first 30 days free.

However, to accommodate more than 2,000 contacts, you can select between differently priced plans based on how much modification and advanced segmentation you need. Despite Mailchimp’s lower price, a lot of people find Constant Contact’s price worth it because of the fantastic customer support.

Additional features

If you want to add email marketing for small business to your SEO strategy, it is essential to pay close attention to every feature provided. The following are some additional options provided by Mailchimp.

• Multiple layouts, button placement, and image options
• Team collaboration before sending out emails
• Unlimited image storage space
• Photo editing
• Detailed analytics

The Bottom Line

As you can see from this Mailchimp and Constant Contact Review, both have a lot to offer. However, when you lump everything together, it becomes obvious that Constant Contact has more perks, making it an ideal choice, especially for small businesses.