As we're getting close to the end of summer , things are gearing up here at Constant Contact. We are happy to announce our August release with quite a few new additions!
Editor's Note: Many of the changes and updates listed this month are based off of your feedback, so please make sure to keep posting your feedback through the "Have Feedback?" link in your account or by going directly to our feedback boards here.
Marketing Calendar - rolling out to all accounts! You can find the calendar on the Campaigns tab after clicking the calendar view icon next to create. This view will show you any emails, both sent and scheduled, as well as holidays in order to help you easily plan your campaigns. >Find out more here.
We've updated some of our back-end functionality that has allowed us to give you two highly requested features in the editor (see the first bullet point in the section "You Asked, We Delivered" below). With this change, it will also help us to reduce load times (this means faster editing experiences for all of our customers) and implement even more customer requested features. Take a look at the Coming Soon section below for a sneak peek of what is to come.
Donations Block for your 3GE Campaigns - You can create a donation campaign directly from your email. Once you click to add the donation, you'll be able to select the amount needed, details, and more. Take a look here for the details.
Integrations added to the navigation bar at the top. Now you can easily find top plugins and applications to connect your other systems to your Constant Contact account, help grow your list, and more!
Adjust Image Padding - You can now add or remove padding by hovering your mouse over the image and add or remove the check mark in the padding box.
Library access added to the Android app, this means it is now available on both versions of the app!
Added a Quick Campaign type. This allows you to add an image (from saved images on your device, by taking a photo with your camera, or from your Constant Contact library) and type out a text box below the image. A quick, easy, and simple campaign to send to your audience!
Facebook has made a change that limits how much you can customize posts that contain links. As a result, if you are creating a post with a link, you will be unable to change the auto-populated image. This means that for any campaigns shared through Social Share or social posts with links that are sent to Facebook, you cannot choose the image that displays in the post. Learn more here.
There is now an underline button in the toolbar so that you can underline any text that you want!
You can also indent lists (both bulleted and numbered). To indent your bulleted/numbered lists all you need to do is hit Tab on your keyboard. It's that easy! To decrease the indent on a list item, you can hold down Shift and Tab.
Ability to add Alt text to your images while editing your campaign. The alt text is important for accessibility reasons (this is the description that would be read by screen readers) and it will also show if your contact has not downloaded images in the email. While you have been able to edit the description per image under the library tab, this change makes it easier when you are getting your campaigns ready. Read more here.
You can now insert images into any email template by simply dragging and dropping them directly from your desktop or any other folder on your computer.
Ability to copy an Autoresponder Email to a regular campaign! A long-awaited feature since we have given the ability to copy an email campaign into your Autoresponder.
You can now add or schedule an email to your series while it is still running! No more unscheduling of your campaign just to add a new email.
Faster refreshing on reporting for your campaigns.
Added more stability to the app to help prevent accidental shutdowns.
Ability to add back removed contacts through the app. Please keep in mind that these contacts are removed by someone in the account and not an unsubscribed contact. If you need to add back an unsubscribed contact, they will need to sign up for your list again. Find out more here on how to add back an unsubscribed contact.
Ability to make your text superscript or subscript.
Ability to adjust line spacing in your text blocks.
Adding a 3 column block.
Can I go back to Version 2 of the Editor? Please???
I'm sorry to hear you want to revert back to the second-generation editor, but I understand if there are certain features available that you might want access to. I was wondering if you would you mind giving us some feedback on why exactly you wanted to be switched back? We are always looking for ways to improve our customers' experience with our program. Feel free to respond to this post, or if you wanted to continue this conversation privately you can also email us at social_support(at)constantcontact(dot)com with your username and a reference to this post.
The latest changes in your features seem like they would really help my business out. I currently am using but looking for an alternative service. I am thinking about trying this out. Thanks.
Are you any closer to finding a solution for the facebook glitch?
Hello @BarbaraN3. At this time, our engineers are still working towards a solution but we do have some workarounds that can help you have your desired image show in your Facebook post. We've seen that Facebook has usually been selecting the first image in the email so when creating the email, you can use your desired image as the first image in your campaign. Also, you can also copy the Short URL for your campaign and create a manual post on Facebook which will allow you to select which image you want to use. I'm sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you but I assure you that we are still working towards a solution for this.