When it comes to reaching and staying connected to your audience, nothing beats a good email marketing campaign!
But, as great as your promotions, content, and newsletters might be, sometimes you need more than that. Sometimes, to make the most of your email marketing efforts, it comes down to finding the right tools to help you create, automate, and analyze your campaigns to get the most ROI for your marketing spend.
And when it comes to email marketing tools, there are two very popular platforms out there both offering powerful features for your campaigns: Constant Contact and Mailchimp.
While Mailchimp and Constant Contact offer many useful features for marketers, which one is the right fit for your business? And which can offer you what you need to meet your email marketing goals?
If you’re on the fence between these two tools, then you’re in luck, email marketer!
Today’s blog is taking you through a side-by-side comparison of Constant Contact and Mailchimp to give you a closer look at their key features and help you understand which platform works best to maximize your email marketing success!
Let’s get started!
What is Constant Contact?
Constant Contact is an email marketing platform designed to help businesses create and manage their email campaigns. First established in 1995 when the Internet was young, it has since evolved to offer a range of tools aimed at simplifying online marketing for small to medium-sized businesses.
Constant Contact Features
- Email Templates — Access a variety of professionally designed templates to create visually appealing emails without the need for design expertise.
- Marketing Automation — Set up automated email sequences, such as welcome emails or birthday messages, to engage with your audience at optimal times.
- List Management — Easily add, store, and organize your contacts in one place, and segment lists to target the right people.
- Reporting and Analytics — Monitor the performance of your email campaigns with detailed reports on open rates, click-through rates, and more.
- Event Marketing — Manage event invitations, registrations, and promotions directly through the platform.
- Social Media Integration — Connect your email campaigns with social media platforms to broaden your reach and engage with your audience across multiple channels.
What is Mailchimp?
Intuit Mailchimp is a comprehensive marketing platform that had its beginnings as an email marketing service in 2001. It has expanded since then to offer a suite of tools designed to help businesses of all sizes manage their marketing efforts in multiple channels, including SMS marketing, websites, social media marketing, and more.
Mailchimp Features
- Email Builder — Create emails using a drag-and-drop editor or custom HTML, with access to a wide range of templates.
- Marketing Automation — Develop complex customer journeys with behavior-based triggers to send personalized messages at the right moments.
- Audience Segmentation — Use advanced segmentation tools to target specific groups within your audience based on various criteria.
- Analytics and Reporting — Gain insights into campaign performance with detailed analytics, including A/B testing results and revenue tracking.
- Landing Pages and Websites — Design and publish landing pages and websites to support your marketing campaigns and online presence.
Integrations — Connect with numerous third-party applications and services to enhance your marketing capabilities.
Constant Contact vs. Mailchimp: A Features Breakdown
Deciding which email platform works best for you depends on the features you’re looking for.
So, to give you an easier time of it, we’ll break those features down now:
1. Pricing and Plans
Constant Contact
Constant Contact offers 3 plans to choose from:
- Lite Plan — $12/mo for 1 user, 10X contact monthly send limit and limited features.
- Standard Plan — $35/mo for 3 users, 12X contact monthly send limit and more features.
- Premium Plan —$80/mo for unlimited users, 24X content monthly send limit, and a full list of features.
*Exact pricing will depend on the number of contacts in your list
Mailchimp
Mailchimp offers 4 plans, including a Free one! They are as follows:
- Free — Totally free with a limit of 500 contacts and a max of 1,000 monthly sends.
- Essentials Plan — $13/mo for 500 contacts, customer support, 10X contacts send limit and limited features.
- Standard Plan — $20/mo for 500 contacts, customer support, 12X contacts send limit and more features.
- Premium Plan — $350/mo for 10,000 contacts, priority customer support, 15X contacts send limit, and full list of features.
2. Ease of Use: Which Platform is More User-Friendly?
Constant Contact
Constant Contact is generally considered the easier platform to use when compared to Mailchimp.
It is very popular due in part to its straightforward and intuitive interface that makes it accessible to beginners, a feature that is very convenient to those who might be new to email marketing.
It’s got one simple dashboard and easy navigation, which makes it possible to create email campaigns without a steep learning curve. There’s also a drag-and-drop editor that lets you customize a wide variety of built-in templates, letting even non-designers create professional-looking emails without a lot of effort.
Mailchimp
While Mailchimp might come with a slightly steeper learning curve, it still offers a pretty user-friendly experience, featuring a clean and simple interface.
It has an intuitive drag-and-drop editor that lets users create and customize emails from a wide range of templates. Its extensive features and customization options, while extremely useful, might make it a bit more difficult for beginners, though it does offer plenty of tutorials and support resources to help improve your skills.
3. Templates and Design Options
Constant Contact
Constant Contact makes designing emails a breeze with over 200 professionally designed and mobile-responsive templates to choose from, suitable for different uses and industries.
The templates are easy to customize as well, using its drag-and-drop editor to change up layouts, colors, fonts, and images.
As a bonus, Constant Contact also provides AI content suggestions in case you need a hand in writing your emails!
Mailchimp
Mailchimp provides users with 100+ customizable email and landing page templates.
Like Constant Contact, it also features a drag-and-drop editor to change up layouts, colors, and other design elements, as well as the ability to import your own HTML code for complete customization control. And if you want premium design, Mailchimp’s Marketplace offers additional templates to choose from.
Mailchimp also has an AI tool, Creative Assistant, to help out by generating on-brand designs to help streamline the process.
4. Email Automation Features
Email automation is a crucial feature in email marketing platforms to let your brand send targeted messages based on specific triggers or schedules.
Here’s a comparison of the automation capabilities offered by Constant Contact and Mailchimp so you can see which better fits your needs.
Constant Contact
- Automated Email Series — Set up email sequences that are triggered by specific actions, like when a contact joins your list or clicks a link. Ideal for welcoming new subscribers or nurturing leads.
- Behavioral Triggers — Automatically send follow-up emails based on user actions, like opening an email or clicking a specific link, which allows for more personalized engagement.
- List Management Automation — Segment contacts automatically based on behavior or demographics, so you can target your messaging more effectively.
- E-commerce Integrations — Great for online retailers and eCommerce brands, Constant Contact offers automated emails for abandoned carts, product recommendations, and purchase confirmations to boost sales.
These automated workflows make Constant Contact ideal for small to medium-sized businesses' needs.
Mailchimp
- Customer Journey Builder — Create multi-step workflows that guide customers through personalized experiences based on their actions, so each customer journey feels unique.
- Pre-built Automation Templates — Use ready-made templates for common automation tasks like welcome emails, re-engagement, and order notifications, helping you get started quickly.
- Behavior-Based Triggers — Trigger emails based on specific actions, like signing up, making a purchase, or visiting a certain page, to ensure timely and relevant messaging.
- Advanced Segmentation — Target audience groups with detailed segmentation options, making your automated campaigns more effective and relevant to each user.
Mailchimp’s automation features are more advanced than Constant Contacts’, making it more suitable for larger businesses with more complex needs.
5. List Management and Segmentation
Constant Contact
Constant Contact offers several tools to help you organize and segment your contacts for better targeting.
- Contact Lists and Tags — Organize contacts into lists and apply tags for more granular segmentation. For example, you can tag contacts based on criteria like customer location, product preferences, or recent purchase history. This allows you to send more relevant messages to groups like “Local Customers” or “Customers Interested in Product A.”
- Segmentation Tools — Use the segmentation tools to filter contacts based on different criteria, like contact details (job title, company size) and engagement history (i.e., recent opens, clicks, responses) for more personalized communication.
- Pre-built Segments — Constant Contact gives you ready-made segments to work with, like "Most Engaged," to quickly identify and target specific groups within your audience.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp also offers several tools to help you segment and target your customers, including:
- Audiences and Tags — Organize contacts within distinct audiences and apply tags for more detailed segmentation, making it easy to manage groups and run targeted campaigns. For example, you can create an audience specifically for "Newsletter Subscribers" and then tag individuals within that audience based on different actions like "Attended Webinar" or "VIP Customer," to make sure each group gets messaging designed for their relationship with your brand.
- Advanced Segmentation — Use Mailchimp's advanced segmentation to create highly customized segments by combining multiple criteria, like purchase activity, engagement metrics, or demographic data. This means you could target customers who have recently made a purchase, are over a certain age, and have a high open rate, allowing for more precise messaging.
- Predictive Segmentation — Mailchimp’s predictive segmentation feature uses analytics to identify high-value segments within your audience, such as those likely to make a purchase or those who engage frequently with your content. This lets you focus your marketing efforts on contacts with the highest potential impact, making your campaigns more effective and increasing ROI by targeting the customers most likely to take action.
6. Analytics and Reporting
Constant Contact
Constant Contact offers plenty of reporting tools to give insight into their email campaign performance, allowing users to track key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and unsubscribe rates.
The platform also provides heatmaps that make it possible to see which links are getting the most clicks within the emails you send and integrates with Google Analytics to help track the web traffic generated from those links.
With customizable dashboards and downloadable reports, Constant Contact gives users a crystal-clear view of what's working in their campaigns and what isn’t, allowing them to optimize future emails and refine strategies for better results.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is well-known for its in-depth analytics, offering users valuable insight into metrics like open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and more.
Beyond the basic metrics, Mailchimp also provides advanced reporting features like A/B testing results, comparative campaign analysis, and subscriber behavior tracking. Users can also use its “Customer Journey” tool to see how subscribers are interacting with emails over time.
Like Constant Contact, Mailchimp also integrates with Google Analytics to give users insight into the web traffic driven by their email campaigns and even allows for segmented reporting to show which groups are most engaged.
7. Customer Support
Constant Contact
Constant Contact offers its users extensive customer support options to help troubleshoot issues and navigate the platform.
You’ll enjoy access to phone support, live chat, and email assistance, as well as a large online help center full of articles, tutorials, and webinars designed to help guide users through the most common issues and walk them through advanced features.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp’s customer support options depend on the pricing plan a user is on.
Free plan users have access to email support only, while paid plans grant users additional access to live chat and priority email support. Phone support is also available for the highest-tier plan.
In addition to the direct support Mailchimp offers, they also have a huge knowledge base that includes plenty of video tutorials, guides, and community forums for users looking to either troubleshoot or learn how to use new features.
Constant Contact or Mailchimp? The Verdict
So, which email platform has the features your brand needs?
If your business is focused more on local engagement and retail, or has a smaller in-house team, then Constant Contact might be the choice for you. Its user-friendly interface, event management tools, and direct customer support are perfect for smaller businesses, nonprofits, and brands that are looking for ease of use and more hands-on support.
On the other hand, if your brand is a larger business or looking for more advanced automation, multi-channel marketing capabilities, and more comprehensive and detailed analytics, then Mailchimp might be more your speed. Its scalability, flexible pricing, and integration with other marketing tools make it a great choice for digital companies, eCommerce brands, and agencies that need to manage multiple campaigns.
But whatever platform is your ideal choice, Designity is here to elevate your email marketing efforts to even greater heights!
Designity is made up of the top 3% of all of the talented creatives who apply, meaning our creative community consists of nothing but the best of the best in fields like digital marketing, copywriting, graphic design, motion graphics, coding, and more — everyone you need to help you write, design, and build the emails that stand out in any inbox!
And with a designated Creative Director to manage your account and flexible, subscription-based pricing, you can boost your next email marketing campaign without having to give up your valuable time or break your budget.
Go ahead and have a look at our email marketing service page and portfolio and see how Designity’s team of experts has been able to make a difference for brands just like yours. If you like what you see, then book your demo call.
We’ll get you started right away with a two-week, no-obligation trial so you can test-drive our email marketing and design services and see firsthand why Designity is the email marketing partner you’ve been waiting for!
Are you ready to level up your next email campaign?
