Compare Vertical Response vs Constant Contact for Email Newsletters

Vertical Response is the winner if the two are compared. Using Vertical Response after using Constant Contact is like a fresh summer day. Vertical Response vs Constant Contact lets you breathe easy while doing formerly complicated emailing procedures.

To Compare: Vertical Response vs Constant Contact:

Designing a custom newsletter design
Hands down, VerticalResponse. They offer a super easy editing canvas, where you can access the code, easily create tables, and more. Last I checked, Constant Contact did not offer an editing canvas, so you needed to already have your HTML built in another content editor, and paste it into their HTML area. That, or you have to be a Super Coder and be able to visualize what your code looks like as you type it up, which is a series of letters strung together. Good luck.

Or, you can pay Vertical Response or Constant Contact to build your design. But, if you are a do-it-yourself coder, Vertical Response provides the easiest platform to work on.

Reports and Stats - tracking click throughs
Both Vertical Response and Constant Contact give you access to which links were clicked on. Vertical Response breaks it down so that you can see how many clicks happened on which images as well as text. In order to know which image is which, you'll have to be familiar with what the URL is. The report gives you the actual number of clicks, plus the overall percentage compared to the rest of the links in the email. The list of links is presented in a chronological link list. Could Vertical Response develop something more visual? Maybe they will! But right now they are busy unveiling surveys.

Newsletter Design Templates
I tend to stay away from stock Templates. Customizing templates at Constant Contact could get messy, and be possibly easy to break, or corrupt, requiring you to build it all over again. If you are using a Constant Contact template as is, with no altering, you'll be fine. Both email companies offer programming services to create a custom newsletter template for your brand, where you can submit a design to them and they will build it for a fee. If you have used Vertical Response templates, and tweaked them, please chime in below.

Opt-in Sign Up Forms
A cinch with Vertical Response to make a straightforward, not too ugly email opt-in form. However, I've custom designed my own sign up boxes. See the newsletter signup form at Katie James and at Mugi Pottery. However, the generic opt in form design is not to shabby. (Sorry Vertical Response...I need to put the link back into you on those pages!)

Because the Vertical Response code for the email sign up form is so easy to work with, I was able to copy and paste it into a Facebook Page! Here are the details: how to put an html box on your Facebook Page.

Surveys
Constant Contact has offered the ability to send surveys for a long time. Vertical Response has just released their own survey service. I have not tried it yet. Have you? If you have experience with the survey tool at either Vertical Response or Constant Contact, please chime in below in the comments.

Cost
Yes, Constant Contact beats Vertical Response for cost (maybe, unless you're a non-profit). Constant Contact offers a monthly service, where you can pay $15 for a list size of up to 500, for example. Monthly cost goes up from there. Hopefully Vertical Response will go this route (because more of my clients would go with them). Either way, I personally do pay the per email price with Vertical Response because sending a successful newsletter is that much easier and enlightening with Vertical Response. If you are a 501 (c) 3 non-profit, they have special pricing. And 501 (c) 3 non-profits can even get up to 10,000 free emails a month!

So what are you going to do now? Sign up to send campaigns with VerticalResponse. So easy.

Vertical Response is My Favorite Email Marketing Newsletter Tool

It's true. I can't get enough of Vertical Response. I read their blog and am even a member of their Facebook Group. Every time I go in to make a newsletter for a client, I think: "Sigh. Thank goodness for Vertical Response."

I've been through some pretty tough times with e-newsletter programs including custom built email tools and Constant Contact (ugh), and Vertical Response is just the cleanest, most helpful, easy to use environment I have used to date.

Here's why I like them:

• Newsletter Stats: Their stats for tracking how your newsletter did are amazing. Not only are they comprehensive, but they tell me what words worked, and what didn't. Like, did people respond to a graphic of "Donate online" or did they click the words that said "Give online today" (it was the latter). Now I can make better newsletters for the next time for all of my clients.
• Friendly Code Environment: I'm not a programmer...I'm a designer who can code into a website page to do nice-looking things. For clients who don't want to pay to have Vertical Response program a custom template that I've designed, I just set up the design, which I try to make as simple as possible with two columns, and make the edits. Tables, fonts, links, floating images, it's all fine.
• Easy Sign Up Box: Another simple and cheap solution to getting an email sign up form on your website. If you want it integrated onto a special page, like a Contact Us page, you might need to involve a programmer, but getting a basic box with your website colors is do-able for a normal person. You can pay a programmer and a designer (both available through me at Katie James Pixelated), but the quick and dirty is not that dirty.
• Blog: Do check out their blog for enewsletter tips. Here's a post about how to not write a subject line, for example.
  

Check them out for your email newsletter!

Wierd Formatting in Newsletters - Vertical Response Fixes!

Vertical Response wows us again. Just saw this note in their newsletter, explaining how Word can cause formatting problems, like inserting a ? where an ' is supposed to go. If you didn't know that, now you do. If you paste copy from a Word document, or from copy you were sent in an email, there is code behind the lines that you can't see. When it's from Word, it sometimes inserts strange symbols and often messes up the apostrophe and the quotation mark.

When you are creating an email in Vertical Response, and if you only have Word to work with, you can insert your copy and press a button to clean it up. This little button cleans your copy, and you've got safe content to work with that won't turn into gobbledegook.

Get the details here:
http://blog.verticalresponse.com/verticalresponse_blog/2008/03/avoid-weird-for.html

If you're on a Mac, you can paste your copy into TextEdit, which also leaves clean content (but doesn't resolve all spacing issues if something is weirdly spaced). Windows people can use Notepad.