Dealers Using Constant Contact for Email Marketing

[ryant]

Has anyone ever used Constant Contact for their Email Marketing campaigns. I've heard some good things about them but nothing auto related.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

I used Constant Contact before for dealer newsletters. It's a great out of the box product. You can be up and running in a short time. Customer service was really good when I was using them. I would even get friendly phone calls from their support team just to see if I had anymore questions...

Overall it's priced right for what you get and it looks as if they have improved even more since I last used them.

Deliverability was very high, templates needed some improving (though I'm sure they have added to the library) and the UI was easy.

Looks like they currently have a 60 day free trial, so you don't have much to loose other than your time loading all your email addresses.

Two things to think about then going with a vendor like Constant Contact for your dealers email marketing.

1. Many of these vendors will allow you to upload your database of emails addresses BUT will send out a verification Opt-in email to each address before adding. To some, this could be alarming because they don't want to risk having that customer NOT opting in and greatly reducing their number of "valid opt-in" customer emails. Others would view this as a "scrubbing" process while getting rid of customer emails addresses that are highly unlikely to respond to your marketing email campaigns anyways.

2. Stream line process for getting your new/potential clients into your email marketing solution. Many times you will need to have a process for exporting your email addresses from your CRM into a spreadsheet to then import into your email marketing (Constant Contact) solution. This again (with many solutions) will trigger another opt-in email to the customer.

There could be a way of having your CRM vendor run a script to automatically export a customers email into your email marketing solution. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is highly unlikely.

If this is the route your dealer is going to take, I personally would use a solution that allows me to upload my already opt-in customers without sending them another opt-in email address.

 

[Jarrett]

Never had any experience with Constant Contact. However we became engaged with Sales Genius (Genius.com). Although this product was not developed for retail automotive it is very successful for us. This may not be right for everyone but wanted you to know it was out there.

 

[KristiA]

I'm setting up Constant Contact at this very moment! I've used it before and it is great for professional looking newsletters and other mass email communications. The hardest part is getting your email addresses in the system. With autobase, I've had to export to excel, then delete anything other than email addresses, then copy and paste in to Constant Contact. Tedious when you have almost 10,000 addresses. With this system, the emails are sent out directly with an "opt-in" box located at the top of the newsletter and an unsubscribe or opt-out option at the bottom. My favorite part is the tracking system. Make sure to pay for the upgrade to the image library. Good luck!

 

[ryant]

I have a few dealers that would like me to send some mass emails to their database with promotions etc; Not something I'm looking to make very much money off of just helping some friends. I'm going to get them to email me their contact list and I will save its as CSV and import it into Constant Contact.

I 've heard amazing things about the customer support from the dealer. I will use the dealers requested email address as the sender and email them the report. The dealers I'm working with do not even have CRM's so we're taking it Old Skool....

Keep you posted on my experience.

 

[joe.pistell]

Great Thread!

I've just begun looking into this area. MailChimp.com was on my radar, I totally forgot about Constant Contact, ty!

 

[Jerry Thibeau]

I've always liked IMN myself.