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What will I lose using Constant Contact instead of AWeber? What will I gain?

by Tiger Marketing
3 replies
I get that AWeber is the preferred autoresponder by Warrior Forum members (and others), and I understand the argument for high deliverability (99+%). Unfortunately, we need to bring our existing customer list of 9,000 names, and AWeber won't import without confirmation. That policy makes AWeber DOA as a candidate, because there's no way we are going to try to get 9,000 people to confirm, or deal with the fact that we can't communicate with a large percentage of our customers because they didn't confirm.

I've submitted an appeal on this policy, and we'll see where that goes. However, we need to get going, and I've confirmed that Constant Contact will allow our import. Constant Contact's deliverability is 97%, and that will almost certainly exceed the percent of our customers we can get to opt in through confirmation.

What else other than 2% email deliverability difference will we lose going with Constant Contact? I've searched the forum and members make vague comments like "Their email build UI sucks a bit, but it's not built for IM'er as much as it is for big fortune 500 companies..."

And also: "constantcontact is the one a lot of really big guys use. They are kinda geared towards bigger business whereas aweber is more for the 'small business' crowd."

While the user type difference is interesting if true, that doesn't tell me much about what is GOOD about Constant Contact and what things we will be MISSING using Constant Contact, or WHY the user types are different. Certainly CC is on a roll with revenue growth, and they are a substantial public company now, possibly growing faster than AWeber.

As additional info, our company sells high-end computers in B2B and B2C modes. We'd like to segment our customers and have different lists for different purposes, while also maintaining master lists of customers and prospects. So, being able to tag a customer by certain attributes would be useful: prospect, big spender, XYZ application type, purchased 2011, etc. Then we could send certain emails to "all prospects," and others to "big spenders," and others to "prospects with XYZ application type," and others to "current XYZ-type customers who purchased in 2011," etc. And we might set our autoresponders followup emails differently by prospect type.

If there's a better option than Constant Contact to consider, please suggest it. Again, the most important hurdle is import without confirmation, followed by tagging and segmentation, followed by reporting. Thanks for all help and suggestions.
#aweber #confirmation #constant #constant contact #contact #gain #import #lose
  • Profile picture of the author David Keith
    i use both with some pretty decent size lists. the deliverability at constantcontact is a fair bit better than aweber in reality.

    Thats based not only on my personal experience and perseptions, but also virtually every trackable number via cisco and several deliverability services.

    CC is better than aweber, but a little harder to use for "the little guy". CC is geared more towards traditional small to medium sized business and up. Aweber is geared more for the one man show IMer.

    CC also has some other features that they offer that integrate well with their AR service. Don't worry about going with CC over aweber.

    I am a long time aweber power user and if i were starting over today i would choose Getresponse or CC over aweber.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tiger Marketing
      Originally Posted by David Keith View Post

      i use both with some pretty decent size lists. the deliverability at constantcontact is a fair bit better than aweber in reality.

      Thats based not only on my personal experience and perseptions, but also virtually every trackable number via cisco and several deliverability services.

      CC is better than aweber, but a little harder to use for "the little guy". CC is geared more towards traditional small to medium sized business and up. Aweber is geared more for the one man show IMer.

      CC also has some other features that they offer that integrate well with their AR service. Don't worry about going with CC over aweber.

      I am a long time aweber power user and if i were starting over today i would choose Getresponse or CC over aweber.
      Thanks, that's helpful reassurance. We would have several different people using the service, and we're pretty tech savvy if that matters.

      I did see the other services that CC has. For example, the online polling is pretty cool.

      I just want to verify that we won't regret using CC as our autoresponder and newsletter service, and your vote says we won't. Thanks again.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Hess
    I actually use both... one big advantage is you can import lists with constant contact without the need to reconfirm everyone provided you gained those subscribers in a proper manner.

    If you're accustomed to using Aweber, CC has a little bit of a learning curve when it comes to setting up an autoresponder and collecting leads via optin form.

    So, what I do is pay Aweber each month to collect the leads since Aweber works with lots of scripts, WP stuff, and affiliate networks that CC doesn't, then export those leads into Constant Contact for broadcasts if I don't plan on putting that list through an autoresponder series.
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