For years we have produced exclusively custom html e-mail campaigns for our clients and, if we had control over the selection of the service provider, we used Vertical Response.  When responsive e-mails became essential, we looked at what was available in pre-made templates and decided they look and perform badly, so offered our clients custom html responsive e-mail campaign, or what we called mobile-friendly campaigns.  Most of our clients opted for mobile-friendly as they were attractive, fast for us to produce, and functioned well in all devices and views, although not technically responsive.  (See a sample here.)

The two of us have developed and launched thousands of e-mail campaigns since 2003.  We have many clients on Vertical Response Classic which we loved and recommended for years before responsive took over.  We have one client on Constant Contact Old and one on Constant Contact New.  Sadly, we also have a few clients on MailChimp, but are not including this in this post as it’s not at the level of our two leaders.

Vertical Response Classic is no longer an option as the form design and processing features have not been upgraded since launch of New VR.  But most of our existing clients have their accounts here simply because there’s no better option available to which to upgrade them.

Vertical Response New is not ready.  Currently, if we have a new e-mail campaign client, we are going with Constant Contact New.

Constant Contact New made us angry as they launched far too soon and used us as beta testers.  Back in June we opened a new account for a new client and CC still has not fixed the issues they said they were working on.

Constant Contact Old is no longer available.  We mention it, however, as they had some great features that we wish CC New would develop – in fact, in our comparison below, this now obsolete platform got the highest score.

We know we expect a lot from an e-mail campaign provider, but in this high-competition field, we don’t think that too unreasonable.  Here are some of the features we look for and how the available options respond:

BILLING

Pay as you go pricing option (not just subscription.)  This is so crucial for clients who do not have monthly e-mail campaigns in their marketing plan.

Vertical Response Classic – Yes

Vertical Response New – Yes

Constant Contact Old – No

Constant Contact New – No

Address list billing on the account level, not individual list level, meaning that each e-mail address – even if it’s on multiple individual mail lists – is billed just once.

VR Classic – Yes

VR New – Yes

CC Old – Yes

CC New – Yes

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

Same time-zone, phone customer support from reps who know the product and care.

VR Classic – Yes

VR New – Yes

CC Old – Very much – Yes

CC New – Very much – Yes

Short hold time for customer support and no horrible phone tree.

VR Classic – Mostly

VR New – Mostly

CC Old – Sometimes

CC New – Sometimes

The entire e-mail stream gets included in customer support e-mails, rather than just the last one from the rep.  (Incredibly frustrating and un-helpful.)

VR Classic – No

VR New – No

CC Old – No

CC New – No

DESIGN INTERFACE

Has two views: html and design.

VR Classic – Not applicable as we only used this for custom html e-mail campaigns

VR New – No

CC Old – Yes

CC New – No

Intuitive campaign development.

VR Classic – Not applicable as we only used this for custom html e-mail campaign

VR New – Yes

CC Old – Yes

CC New – Yes – this one is the best

FORMS

Embed-able, modern, easy to use, responsive sign-up forms.

VR Classic – No

VR New – Sorta

CC Old – No

CC New – Yes

Option to allow us to select which address list a signed-up e-mail address is added to, rather than requiring one address list per sign up form.  We really need to have several forms that drop addresses into one list.

VR Classic – No

VR New – No

CC Old – No

CC New – No

FUNCTION

Choose the “to” address lists after the campaign is ready, not before.

VR Classic – Yes

VR New – Yes

CC Old – Yes

CC New – Yes

Seed lists for testing (pre-set testing lists so you can test with one click versus typing in each testing e-mail address one at a time for each test.)

VR Classic – Yes

VR New – No

CC Old – No

CC New – No

Can migrate account information and all lists from old version to new.

VR Classic – Not applicable

VR New – No

CC Old – Not applicable

CC New – Yes

Text and graphical links in e-mail campaigns can be coded to open in a new browser window (target=”_blank”) so the browser version functions as a well-coded web page should.

VR Classic – Not applicable

VR New – No

CC Old – Yes

CC New – No

Forward to a friend feature.

VR Classic – Yes

VR New – Yes

CC Old – Yes

CC New – No – ridiculous

Share to Facebook in launched e-mail puts a graphic into Facebook post.

VR Classic – Fantastic, but only because we custom coded it

VR New – Unknown

CC Old – Yes

CC New – No – fail! 8/1/16 they told me they were fixing this

Share to social media which allows us to select the graphic which is posted.

VR Classic – No

VR New – No

CC Old – No

CC New – No

Ability to set text styles so any new copy added to a template is consistent.  This is really important – who has time to set each section of text to font, size, colour, line height, etc, individually to typed in text, or pasted in text?

VR Classic – Not applicable

VR New – No

CC Old – Yes!!!!!!!!!!

CC New – No

Ability to create the landing page (browser version) of a campaign when it is scheduled, rather than after it launches (another benefit to custom html templates.)

VR Classic – Not applicable

VR New – Unknown

CC Old – No

CC New – No

LISTS

Allows for multiple address lists and the ability to mail to any number of address lists per campaign.

VR Classic – Yes

VR New – Yes

CC Old – Yes

CC New – Yes

Address list management on the account level, rather than list by list (so that if someone unsubscribes from one list, that unsubscribe is noted throughout the account no matter how many lists that address is on.)

VR Classic – Yes

VR New – Yes

CC Old – Yes

CC New – Yes

Recognition of duplicated addresses so that if an address is on many lists, and an e-mail is sent to all those list, the recipient will receive only one e-mail

VR Classic – Yes

VR New – Yes

CC Old – Yes

CC New – Yes

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