Anyone using Constant Contact or another service instead of eTapestry's built in mass email?

Tiffany Mathisen
Tiffany Mathisen
Tenth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 Loyalty Badge
in Blackbaud eTapestry® General Discussions

I'm wondering how many organizations out there use eTapestry's mass mail vs. Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, or something else, and how it's working for you. We have stuck with what's in eTap for years but struggle with the lack of features, and the expense/hassle of having to buy extra ‘advanced emails' every year, among other things. If you changed to another service, what problem(s) did you solve by switching? Is it worth the trouble of keeping two systems updated? Constant Contact seems like the obvious choice since there's a built-in integration. For those that use it, does that integration get what you need back into eTap? Thanks!

Comments

  • Torey Johnson
    Torey Johnson
    Third Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 Blackbaud Certified

    @Tiffany Mathisen
    I personally have never used eTap, but I have used Constant Contact and Raiser's Edge's built in email tool. Out of the two of these, I found Raiser's Edge to be most useful. It keeps track of which constituent clicks which button(s), which constituents unsubscribe from future emails, and which emails bounced. I like tyhat it is directly integrated with my database, so I do not have to do any global imports or adds.

  • Marilyn Field
    Marilyn Field
    Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary

    @Tiffany Mathisen, sorry, I don't have the answer but we are also experiencing problems using the eTapestry service. Am very interested if anyone else knows the answer as we will be likely switching to another mass email service.

  • Tiffany Mathisen
    Tiffany Mathisen
    Tenth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 Loyalty Badge

    @Marilyn Field thanks! We haven't gone forward with another service yet, but if we do I will report back. What problems are you having? Our main issue is with delivery - once an account is in unsubscribe or held status (and we have thousands of these), there is no easy way to manage/fix, except one at a time.

  • Marilyn Field
    Marilyn Field
    Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary

    @Tiffany Mathisen We have a few issues.

    • People receive multiple emails from us as each time someone donations or uses a fillable form in eTap, and if they enter their details slightly differently, they will receive several emails. For example, I donate using one personal email and have my address as a PO Box, but want a newsletter using another email and list my home address instead of PO Box, and then there are further complications when business info is added as well. We are a small team and don't have someone dedicated to clean the database on a regular basis so we are finding people are opting out of communications due to the same message multiple times. Using another platform will eliminate the challenge of the multiple emails.
    • We also find that newsletter formatting through eTap isn't as functional as we'd like. It's difficult to make it “pretty” in the ways that work with our branding and other materials.

    I know parts of this are due to a lack of complete training and resources in staff, but we need to work with what we have and if there's a simpler solution that isn't too costly, it's worth changing in the long run.

  • Kristina Lange
    Kristina Lange
    Facilitator 1

    We got rid of the eTapestry mass email component years ago because it was so antiquated. We switched to Mailchimp, which produces much more modern-looking emails and has a lot more functionality. However, the data flow only goes one way (unsubscribes, etc.) and that has become an issue for us. I'm trying to find out if the eTapestry email component has been improved at all, as it would be much better to have everything in one solution, but I can't get anyone on the phone or via chat to answer the question.

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