Constant Contact Best Practices Blog

Last week, we had another of our Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing book launch events. This one was in Washington, D.C., at the Inox Restaurant in Tysons Corner. It was a terrific event where we got to spend some quality time with more than 70 customers and business partners.

After the event, we (the Constant Contact contingent) retired to the main dining room of Inox for dinner. The dinner was outstanding, and as a bonus, I saw in action one of the best ways for a restaurant to make the dining experience extend beyond the restaurant.

One of the most important tasks for email marketers to perform is to respect their customers’ wishes with regard to receiving email marketing messages. If a customer updates his profile to change his subscription preferences, or requests to be unsubscribed from a list, then it’s incumbent upon the email marketer to honor that request. This helps to build a trusting relationship between sender and recipient.

The challenge for many small organizations is that they have their subscribers’ contact data, and perhaps associated preferences, in multiple places. Typically, the data will exist in Constant Contact, as well as in a business management application, customer relationship management (CRM) system, and perhaps also in Outlook. Constant Contact can make organizing all this information a little easier by helping you manage the unsubscribes. But what if your CRM also needs to know about a customer who unsubscribes from your marketing list, or perhaps updates her preferences or contact data?

Would you be interested in reading an article called “Great Time-saving Tips?” What about an article called “7 Great Time-saving Tips?” Which of those two options would you be more willing to read?

You may dismiss using numbers in a headline as just another attention-getting trick used all the time by glossy women’s magazines, but I’m guessing that when presented with the two headlines above, you chose the option with the number in it, right? It’s amazing what adding something so small to a headline will do to attract us.

Now put yourself in the shoes (and inbox) of those on your mailing list. When faced with so many email messages and not enough time to read them all, a subject line with a number in it will usually be more attractive than one without.

Saturday is Halloween, one of my favorite holidays. It’s a day for dressing up in costume, being someone else for a change, and of course, eating lots of sweets. Looking back on my younger days, whether I went out dressed as Darth Vader or the Incredible Hulk (true stories), I always hoped for Nestlé Crunch bars or Kit Kats — actually, I still prefer those — and was disappointed whenever I’d get a Sugar Daddy or Snickers bar.

Are you thinking about your email marketing like a dressed-up kid thinks about trick-or-treating on Halloween? The most popular house is always the one giving out what everybody wants (in this case, the best candy), and the one with the least traffic is the one giving out something lame that nobody wants. The same holds true for email: The businesses and organizations with the most people on their mailing lists (and the highest click-through rates) are the ones that give their subscribers exactly what they want.

Look in your inbox. Chances are good that many businesses and nonprofits are already attempting to harness the holiday spirit to boost sales or get donations. With all the offers competing for your subscribers’ attention, don’t just be one of the many. Here are the two tips to help your organization stand out from the crowd this holiday season.

So you’ve decided to host an event. Maybe it’s for educational purposes, brand awareness, networking, or entertainment. Whatever the reason, you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to it, but you want to appear professional and minimize the time spent managing the event details. In the past, you’ve promoted your events via emails and phone calls. Maybe you’ve even sent out a registration form you created in Microsoft Word that attendees had to fill out and fax back.

Now you’re doing the same thing for your latest event. At first, you receive a few phone calls for additional information. Then the email responses start to arrive. You find yourself spending lots of time answering phone calls, returning messages, and playing phone tag. You receive faxes with the registration form filled out, but you can’t always read the person’s handwriting.

You’d like to pull all this information into a single spreadsheet, but you begin to realize the labor-intensive problem of tracking registrant details. You definitely don’t have the time to dedicate to this task.

Wouldn’t an online registration system solve the above problems and make you look professional at the same time?

More great content was shared on day two of MarketingProfs’ Digital Marketing Mixer. The day’s highlight was easily Dr. B.J. Fogg’s keynote address on why Facebook and Twitter have succeeded. For example, Facebook’s “hot triggers” — those emails that alert us when someone’s sent a friend request, commented on our status, or tagged us in a photo — have helped create ritualistic behavior, and they keep us visiting Facebook, not because Facebook tells us to, but because we want to.

“Email enabled Facebook,” Fogg explained, adding that texting paved the way for Twitter. “Today’s platforms enable tomorrow’s rituals, and winning rituals become the behaviors of tomorrow.”

Most inspiring was Fogg’s suggestion to start small and not to get frustrated if things don’t go well the first time you try something. “Everything big started small,” he said. Fogg made many in the room smile (including me) when he said that small businesses and startups have an advantage versus the bigger companies because of necessity; smaller businesses simply don’t have the resources, financial and otherwise, that bigger businesses do. Thus, because smaller businesses tend to focus on smaller wins, and can be more agile, they’re better positioned to succeed.

Here are some other highlights from day two of the Mixer:

I’m here in Chicago for the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer. No surprise, the main topic this week is how to use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to expand the marketing reach of businesses and organizations. But rather than echo last week’s Wall Street Journal article about social media's growth signaling the end of email, on day one, some of the marketing world’s leading experts were talking about how email and social media can work together.

In one session, Harvey Morris, from the Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau, explained that if your customers are more engaged, they’ll want to participate in social media with you and give you their email address. Less engaged customers may only participate in social media and won't give you their email address. He added that social media should be used to spark customers’ interests in what you have to offer, and email marketing should be used to maintain it.

Later, at Wednesday’s keynote session, Scott Rosenberg, a co-founder of Salon and the author of Say Everything, explained that new forms of media don’t kill off “old” media like email — they just redefine them and how they're used. It's similar to how people thought the movies might kill live theater, or how television was supposed to kill off the movies. Email will continue to evolve as social media continues to evolve. It's not going away anytime soon.

Suffice it to say, it was a great day for fans of email marketing. Here are some other takeaways from day one of the Mixer:

Ever since the Wall Street Journal wrote on Monday that email is dead, the blogosphere has been buzzing. Gail Goodman, Constant Contact’s CEO, wrote an article about this very subject on Entrepreneur.com in July. “Let me tell you in the strongest terms: This is not the case,” she wrote. To read Gail’s thoughts about why the inbox is still the most important communications tool in a marketer’s toolbox, click here.

Sometimes, making connections can be exhausting if you’re a customer. Case in point: The other day, one of my family’s cars needed of a new set of tires. It turns out they are a fairly unique size and are only made by two manufacturers.

To replace them, I first turned to a company that my father had used when I was younger. It was one that I had previously associated with high quality. I reached out by phone and spoke with an individual who told me he had to check with a supplier and would get back to me later that day. No call came.