Constant Contact vs. Yahoo Native

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.

As I've alluded to before, Yahoo Gemini! is particularly well-suited for that extra bit of marketing spend and those last few needed leads and MQLs to get you over the hump. We definitely find that the ROI is well worth it, but it's also not the type of channel that we're gonna drop half of our budget on. The scalability is limited to an extent.

Incentivized

• 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

• Similar interfaces compared to Bing and Google -- if you've operated one, you can operate any of the three.
• Proactive Customer Support -- Yahoo was diligent about having contact with us about the platform.
• Limited but strong ROI -- Gemini spent maybe a 10th of our Bing and Google budgets, but always performed well in terms of ROI.

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• Sometimes some software provides outdated and useless features and functions, but this email marketing tool gives advanced kinds of functionalities with modern features.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

• More robust and sophisticated reporting capacity: front end metrics are available with different granularities, but lacking in insight to guide optimization strategy
• No display/programmatic buying options as yet.
• Audience targeting could be improved and audience / lookalike modeling could be improved. That said, geotargeting capabilities are very good.

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

One of my main pain points with yahoo gemini is that the product is very difficult to use and the UI seems like they took a skeleton of a similar product and made it bare bones functional for the purpose of generating ad spend. It is a huge barrier for new customers and I feel one of the main reasons they have new customers at all is all the free trial dollars they offer.

Incentivized

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.

They were always super helpful during training and demoing and would answer any questions we had. We didn't have a direct account manager, which would have been nice, but I just don't think their size accommodates for that type of set up. They are very knowledgeable and help guide you through a set up for each particular client.

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

Yahoo Gemini is a more robust version of Outbrain and Taboola. It does offer mobile search, which they do not, and you have more control over your targeting, ad formats, and platform preference. Difficulty of campaign setup is pretty minimal on any Native platform, but Gemini does seem to have the least strict approval process, which is nice with both Facebook and Twitter making it difficult to target and run ads for certain products/topics.

Incentivized

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.

• For high volume topics in consumers electronics, Yahoo! Advertising does well driving awareness to product pages and generating interest.
• In B2B sector, Yahoo! advertising does not perform as well drive volume of sales due to niche user profile.
• For impression based results, MMM has credited Yahoo! Native as a top performer on bottom line ROI results.

Incentivized