Experiencing issues with your email marketing platform can be incredibly frustrating, especially when it directly impacts your ability to communicate with your audience. One user encountered significant problems while using Constant Contact to manage their contact lists, highlighting concerns about the platform’s reliability and efficiency.
The user attempted to manually add individuals who were already subscribed to their mailing lists to a new list. Out of 14 contacts, they received an error message for three, stating, “Please review the fields below and correct any issues.” However, no fields were highlighted, and no specific errors were identified. This lack of clarity compounded the frustration, leading the user to describe Constant Contact’s performance as “pretty awful.”
This user manages large-scale events, including a major annual event with over 14,000 attendees and several smaller events. The immediate issue arose with a list of just 153 upcoming event participants. It took a significant amount of time – 90 minutes – to compare two lists: one generated by Constant Contact and the CSV file used for uploading new contacts. This manual comparison was necessary to identify discrepancies.
The comparison revealed that 29 people from the uploaded CSV were not added to the new list. Further investigation into these 29 contacts showed the following:
- Unsubscribed: 3 of the 29 had previously unsubscribed, which is an expected outcome.
- Actively Subscribed but Not Added: A concerning 14 of the 29 were already actively subscribed to other lists. Despite this, the system failed to add three of these 14 subscribers to the new list, even when done manually, due to the unexplained review error.
- New Contacts Not Added: 12 of the 29 were new contacts who were also not added from the CSV upload.
Quantifying these issues based on the 153 contact list:
- New Contacts Skipped: 8% (12/153) of contacts were new and not added.
- Existing Subscribers Skipped: 9% (14/153) were existing subscribers not added, with 21% (3/14) of these encountering an additional unspecified error preventing manual addition.
- Unsubscribed (Expected): 2% (3/153) had unsubscribed.
- Total Contacts Not Added: Overall, 19% of contacts from the uploaded CSV were not added to the list. Alarmingly, 41% of those not added were new contacts.
These findings raise serious questions about the reliability of Constant Contact, especially when managing larger lists. The user questioned the scalability of the platform, asking, “What happens when I create a new list with 2,000 people on it, or 14,000 people? How can I trust that Constant Contact is actually adding all of my contacts correctly, without me doing HOURS UPON HOURS of manually checking up?”
Extrapolating the observed error rates to larger lists paints a worrying picture. Maintaining list accuracy would become incredibly time-consuming, potentially requiring dozens or even hundreds of hours of manual verification for lists of thousands of contacts.
The failure to add new contacts is particularly problematic. In this case, these were individuals who had paid to participate in an event. Not being added to the event list means they would miss crucial information, directly impacting their event experience.
This user’s experience serves as a critical comparison point for anyone relying on Constant Contact for contact list management, especially for important event communications. The lack of transparency in error reporting and the potential for significant contact omissions raise serious concerns about the platform’s suitability for businesses that require dependable and efficient email list management.
