Constant Contact vs. kvCORE

Constant Contact is great when trying to target specific market segments. We typically like to segment our master list by region, but also have product segments, as well. They do provide pre-made segments to start you off too. We don't usually use their email builder, we find others to be more flexible, intuitive, and have more variety. We do prefer emailing from Constant Contact, however.

I can't name one thing I like about using kvCORE. It has so many moving parts. This was what was offered by my brokerage & the training is all via long online prerecorded training sessions. I gave them many hours before I decided it would be more advantageous to take my leads & not use any part of kvCORE.

• Constant Contact allows the users to send unlimited emails and just pay per list size.
• The software does welcome emails pretty well and allows you to set up all sorts of automation.
• The branded templates and starter templates are very useful and look good.

Incentivized

• Effortlessly keeps me in touch with my leads- kvCORE automatically sends texts and emails to my leads when they favorite a property, begin their search again, or sign up on my site. It also calls me to directly connect to any new leads that I haven't yet contacted. I don't even have to think about it or schedule it, kvCORE automatically does it all for me.
• Effortlessly generates leads for me- with the squeeze page feature, all I have to do is copy and paste my customized direct link into my ads and kvCORE does the rest for me. It prompts the person for their contact info, sends them homes in the area and price range that is similar to the ad they clicked on, lets me know that I have a new lead, and automatically texts them from "me" thanking them for visiting my page and letting them know they can contact me with any questions. If they don't respond, kvCORE then calls me to automatically connect me with the lead to make sure that no one falls through the cracks.
• Helps me to effortlessly stick to a daily schedule- kvCORE keeps me on schedule by giving me tasks to complete each day to be sure I'm staying in contact with my leads. All I have to do is login, click on my notifications at the top and follow the instructions. Call this lead....add a search alert for this lead.....add a market report for this lead....it makes it so easy to stay on task!

Incentivized

• Sometimes some software provides outdated and useless features and functions, but this email marketing tool gives advanced kinds of functionalities with modern features.
• I like the ease of use of this platform also appreciate its professional customer support team.
• I am no longer desperate after getting this tool at my work.

Incentivized

• Literally everything. I think their free websites are terrible. Good luck getting it to pop up well on a google search.
• In my experience, their campaigns are useless on their own.
• In my opinion, Support is terrible
• Emails lack options to add attachments
• System doesn’t remove duplicate clients
• In my experience, when you transfer a lead, they will keep getting the previous agents campaigns. I think this is super confusing for consumer and terrible for agents since you need to constantly babysit kvCORE.

Incentivized

There is no doubt that we are going to renew Constant Contact. We have not just invested a lot of time in learning and creating a great looking product but we have developed a strong database of information that allows us to track how we are doing for each newsletter. This supports our goals of creating products that residents desire and are excited to receive.

There is always room for improvement. I don't know how they test their systems, but they should invite not-so computer savvy people to test it. If I, as an expert have problems, they need to think like the technophobe. Since I've used Constant Contact in the past as part of my former employment, I have not viewed any of the tutorials and just jumped in to work on my client's newsletter. With that said, I found some areas easy and some a bit cumbersome

It doesn't deserve a zero because you can access contacts and get reminders to contact them. In my experience, you can not use the system for proper communication with both prospects and their spouses.

No major problems in sending out the email campaigns and accessing the analytics

Incentivized

The system seemed quite slow sometimes. Specifically, there was sometimes a delay in sends if it was during a high traffic period. There were time-outs when uploading new code for an email, and a lag in reporting analytics which was sometimes as long as 72 hours

I think the overall support for Constant Contact has always been incredible; I have nothing negative to say. Our customer support representative was attentive, easy to understand, and very knowledgeable. I never felt like I wasn't a priority of his and my issues, while very small, were fixed in a very short time frame.

I have not used support for myself, but my team has to upload contacts into the Smart CRM. Since there are specific categories used in kvCORE, the template is very important to make sure they match and can be reconciled. The team members who used support were very excited to have their help.

Incentivized

Implementation is very easy for someone who wants to send out the “batch and blast” type newsletters. If you want to use their templates with no customizations, the product works fine. However, the more customizations you get into involving link color, etc, that’s where things can get tricky for someone who may not be familiar with coding

We selected Constant Contact due to pricing constraints. However, if the pricing were to increase, we may look at alternative products that offer more features. We are looking for a product that will allow us to stand out from other organizations like ours that are appealing to the same customers—a product that will set our company apart from the others.

Incentivized

kvCORE has a better looking IDX website and claims to have many more features and customization options. In my opinion, the problem is that the kvCORE system doesn't function well, if at all, and as far as customization in reality you can't even get it customized enough to make it function at the most basic level. Firepoint was far superior in all functional aspects and they never took our website offline over 5 years time where kvCORE seems to do so every month or so.

Very reliable in sending email campaigns and controlling the recipients so that no contact is sent the same email more than once, even if they are on a resent list

Incentivized

• I can't report hard numbers, however, being able to execute sales and marketing campaigns led to a noticeable increase in brand awareness in our industry.
• We were able to offer white-labeled email communication services to clients, which is not something that other administrators typically offer. This helped us win and retain business.

• We haven't converted any leads yet, out of about 800 total leads. But it's a tough market. And FB leads just suck in general. The reported cost per lead in kvCORE is artificially low since the number of leads it tracks is much higher than actual conversions. Their support says this is due to duplicates, but I consistently track about a 30% overreporting due to duplicates, which is unreasonably high.
• Super high perceived value to our agents. They love kvCORE and love that we 1 on 1 help them set it up and use it. I think this 1 on 1 support is the key, but it wouldn't be possible without a great system.
• The efficiencies of the system have dramatically reduced our operational time to onboard new agents. We used to go through a long process to create and set up new websites for agents. Now it takes about 5 minutes to get a new agent going with kvCORE, and a website live!

Incentivized