AdStage vs. Constant Contact

We've increased conversions by 25% through budget optimization with AdStage. This was the first time we saw tangible returns on an ad monitoring service and it has allowed us to spend smarter over time by reviewing the ads, seeing what worked, and adjusting on the fly. At the end of the day, the goal is more conversions or at least more information on win/loss. AdStage makes it easy to see all of that in one cute little place

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.

• AdStage has a great onboarding process. We have a dedicated support rep who walked our entire team through each of the three major sections of AdStage, talked about use cases and even recorded the training so we could provide it to other, future team members.
• The real power of AdStage for us is in the Automation. You can set up rules for when to do things like increase budget or raise bids on certain ad channels. If something is doing well, push more money to it without ever logging in. Likewise, if something is tanking it gets turned off without you having to be at your computer. It frees up our team to focus on more strategic, creative endeavors by handling the "grunt work".
• The ability to create custom metrics is a real plus. Sometimes, even with systems as advanced as Google and Facebook are, they just don't understand how to set up what you want to measure. Maybe I want to know the cost for all purchases across apps and my website? AdStage's custom metrics let me design that, and then use it in my reports, dashboards or rules.

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

• More reporting options
• More export options
• Saved templates per user or oganization

• Sometimes some software provides outdated and useless features and functions, but this email marketing tool gives advanced kinds of functionalities with modern features.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

AdStage has been great and the only reason we wouldn't renew is if we decided to build this all out internally for API access. But, customer services is great, the product is great and I'd definitely recommend it.

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

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

AdStage had great support. They got back to me quickly every time, they always had or found an answer for what I was looking for, they took my feedback well, and they were knowledgeable with the platform and any issues I had. I have worked with a lot of other companies that are slow and AdStage definitely isn't one of them.

Incentivized

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.

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've used tools like Companion Labs and AdEspresso before for Facebook Ads, or Optmyzer or WordStream for Google Ads, and AdStage has so many features that these systems don't. True, it's drastically more expensive than most, but the feature set is leaps and bounds above. From automation to reporting to even campaign monitoring being in a single platform with this level of customization, it's playing at a different level than anything else we've used off-the-shelf.

Incentivized

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

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

• We haven't been using it long enough to have a positive ROI, but I'm confident we will as we optimize our campaigns based on the data we receive from AdStage.
• AdStage saves myself and my team hours of time each week that we would normally spend preparing reporting or doing ad analysis in excel. This was the reason we purchased AdStage, and it's really living up to its promise.

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.