They say that the best things in life are free. That may be true for love, friendship, and sunsets, but in business, things don’t work that way.
The era of free AND good software is gone. So when you see a free software product (not a freemium or a free trial), you shouldn’t expect much from it.
I know, you’re thinking this is a blatant self-serving article, a thinly-veiled pitch for the SyncApps integrations. You’re half right.
The other half is where the gold lies, though: the native Constant Contact and Mailchimp integrations for Salesforce have been growth levers for us, not direct competitors. So this article isn’t a thinly veiled pitch (we’re pretty transparent about those) as much as it is a look into the world of SaaS/iPaaS and a primer for choosing your providers wisely.
They compile, and they do some things right — roughly half of what they promised to do. And it’s perfectly normal for things to be this way.
Neither Constant Contact nor Mailchimp makes money directly from these integrations. To them, they are add-ons that they built because they know a lot of their customers also use Salesforce.
So, adding new features to these integrations, offering support for them, or investing anything more than the bare minimum doesn’t make business sense. If they get a passing grade on the “project,” they’re fine with it.
A real iPaaS business, like SyncApps, lives and dies by the quality of its integrations. We have dedicated 24/7 support, a constant flow of new features and updates, as well as a user-friendly interface with brand-new AI capabilities.
All because SyncApps is an integration business, not an email one. This is our core competency; it’s been this way for 15 years, since 2009.
Our clients know it, too. Here’s how one of them discovered the value of using integration solutions that are created by integration experts, not email experts.
The National Speakers Association, which is now our client, found this out the hard way. They signed up for the Constant-Contact-created Salesforce integration, and they soon found out they couldn’t use it.
Why?
Because it cannot manage field mapping or unsubscribe data back to the Salesforce Email Opt Out to Salesforce Person Accounts.
This is Salesforce Integration 101 and one of the key features or half the reason you need an integration in the first place.
Check out what it looks like in the SyncApps dashboard:
Another reason why they switched to the SyncApps Salesforce and Constant Contact integration is that the native app cannot filter from Salesforce Person Accounts to create new lists in Constant Contact.
Again, this is segmentation 101. Any marketer worth their salt relies on this feature to properly target the right people at the right time.
The National Speakers Association marketers saw that right away, and they made the switch.
When our team talked to them, we also discovered that they like:
It’s not that. Both Constant Contact and Mailchimp have been our partners for years, ever since we’ve been in business.
They are both excellent email marketing automation platforms and you can’t go wrong with either of them.
Moreover, they too know that their integrations are not their main selling proposition, so I’m sure the users’ feedback doesn’t surprise them.
We’ve spoken before about the MC4SF integration (offered by Mailchimp) in the same vein. The reason? To caution you to choose your iPaaS provider based on their core competence.
You may find this surprising, but these native integrations are good for our business (not yours, though!).
Why?
Because many clients who may not know that they can integrate Salesforce with Mailchimp or Constant Contact discover them through their ESPs. When they realize they’re not what they were expecting, they start looking for better alternatives — that’s us.
In a way, the native integrations do the educational work for us.
The National Speakers Association’s story above is just one of the dozens of nearly identical stories we’ve heard so far. If it sounds familiar, we encourage you to give SyncApps a shot.
It takes less than one hour to set up your integration and you have dedicated 24/7 support — not just for the setup but to make sure you leverage it to the fullest.
It costs $0 to try and it comes with 0 obligations. Try the Salesforce and Constant Contact integration here and the Salesforce and Mailchimp integration here.
