Constant Contact Best Practices Blog

How to Automatically Know what New Prospects Want

John Arnold — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:56:28 -0500

There are only two ways to know what your prospects want - you can guess or you can ask. When people join your email list for the first time, it’s a good idea to find out exactly what they want so that you can send promotions that emphasize their preferences.

Here’s a 3-step way to use the new free auto-responder feature and the survey feature in Constant Contact to find out what your new prospects want before you send them your first promotion.

Get More Out of Your Events with Online Surveys

Caroline Shahar — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:17:13 -0500

Effective events take time, they take money. Wouldn’t it be nice to know in advance that your investment will really pay off? Online surveys can help you get the seats filled, have satisfied attendees, and give you a bigger return on your investment. Here are three simple event surveys to help you achieve this:

1. Send a Pre-event Survey to find out what will really drive registration and attendance before you put time and money into it. Ask your audience what topics interest them. Often it will be a topic that you didn’t think about or one that is much more popular than you realized. Is there a particular speaker of interest? A particular venue that people prefer? What day and time is going to be the best for the majority of your audience? What food or beverages do registrants like? You can find out all of these things ahead of time with these pre-event survey questions.

Year-End Tips for Retailers, Services, and Non-Profits

John Arnold — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:07:08 -0500

Capturing sales or donations during the end of this year is going to be more challenging than you’ve been used to in the previous few years. There’s no such thing as fool-proof recession marketing, but there are reliable ways to sustain your business and help ensure a strong recovery. Here are a few tips to get you thinking about ways to sustain and grow.

If you sell products
Focus your promotions on products with up-sell and cross-sell potential. That way you can gain sales early next year with add-on promotions. Make sure you track clicks and purchases so you know which customers own which products.

If you sell services
Focus your promotions on a-la-carte services instead of big service packages or long contracts. When money is tight, people don’t like to pay for anything they think they don’t need. Even one unwanted option in a package might cause hesitation. If you end up selling more a-la-carte services than usual it might impact your margins, but you’re more likely to keep your cash flow up and gain new customers who will purchase higher margin offerings sooner or later.

If you’re a non-profit (on purpose)
Focus your promotions on the specific rewards related to a donation. For example, when asking for a $50 donation, offer a choice of a tax-deduction, a free gift, a public acknowledgement, or an anonymous thank you. Don’t take the focus off your cause too much. Just remind your audience that you want them to feel even more special about making a donation while money is tight.

Three Easy Steps to Increase your Holiday Sales Using Online Surveys

Caroline Shahar — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:27:36 -0500

The oh so familiar holiday shopping dilemma is here: endless possibilities. I’m sure you’ve experienced it. You search for that perfect gift, and there are so many choices of what and where to buy that it’s a real process. You compare product descriptions and prices and after more time than expected, sigh of relief, you finally pick and purchase a gift. With so many options during the holidays, are you giving shoppers a reason to buy from you instead of the competition?

Beat out the competition by providing shoppers with ratings, reviews and testimonials from your current customers. Customer ratings and reviews minimize the risk prospects may see in buying from someone new. You can alleviate their concerns by offering input from your customers about their experiences. Here’s an example of how ratings and reviews can strengthen your holiday communications.

Reviews and rating are becoming more and more common; so give your business that ammunition against the competition and start building your library now. You can collect ratings and reviews from your customers easily with online surveys. Here’s how:

Your Recession Marketing Lifeline: Repeat & Referral Business

John Arnold — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:01:36 -0400

If this recession is prompting you to look for a lifeline, don’t lean too heavily on marketing tactics that require you to turn complete strangers into customers.

Consumers don’t engage in as much impulse buying or social shopping during a recession, and they are more likely to hesitate before a purchase decision because they tend to more cautiously examine the risks and rewards. That’s not good news if you’re trying to acquire new customers because people view the purchase of products and services from unfamiliar businesses as a larger risk than purchasing products from businesses they trust.

When you’re sending periodic emails to your own in-house list of customers, make sure your messages help to overcome purchase hesitation by demonstrating that you have a relationship of trust, and explaining why the benefits of an immediate purchase outweigh the benefits of holding on to the money. It’s a good idea to ask for a referral somewhere in your offers while you’re at it. Professional-looking emails also set you apart from your competition and make you look healthy and prosperous to your customers. Don’t let up just because your customers seem distracted.

If you don’t have an in-house email list yet - or if you’re just a little short on familiar faces - focus a healthy portion of your marketing strategy on building your email list. That way, you’ll gain a low-cost way to educate your audience so your business is familiar enough to overcome purchase hesitation no matter what’s going on in the economy.

Getting a Good Response to your Surveys, 2 of 2... Know your audience

Caroline Shahar — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:20:13 -0400

When do you care enough to complete a survey? For me it’s when I believe giving my opinion will impact my life. If I get a survey about a product I don’t use, I wouldn’t think twice about not completing it. The same goes for getting a survey about a newsletter I don’t read or about a company I do very little business with.

The more you know about your audience, the more you can target your surveys and get a better response. Do they come to you for a particular product or service? Are they a regular customer or do they come to you only once in a great while? Maybe you have information on their buying behavior with you. If they only buy in the retail store, don’t bother sending them a survey that deals with their satisfaction for the online buying process. From what you know about your audience, bucket them into groups with similar interests. Then send your surveys only to those who will actually have knowledge and a stake in the survey topic. Take a look at this free online workshop to help you better understand how to segment your audience.

Getting a good response to your surveys, 1 of 2 ... Get Noticed!

Caroline Shahar — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 11:14:01 -0400

You survey with the hope that you will get a lot of helpful feedback, right? Sure, the more information you have to base your decisions off of the better. So you may be wondering - what kind of a response rate should you expect and how do you get it? These are the two most common questions I get in my survey webinars, so let’s talk about them.

First, a slice of reality. Expect about a 10% response rate. Ten percent is a good response rate across all industries. Get your survey noticed, and you can expect more of a response. Here are two great ways to do that…

1. Use your Website
Too often I see survey links at the bottom of a webpage. People don’t typically scroll to the bottom of a page. Do you? I know I don’t. So put the link right at the top of multiple landing pages on your website so it gets noticed by visitors. This should increase your response rate.

If the number of visitors to your website is low, drive more traffic to your site by making sure your site is optimized to be found by the major search engines. Research shows 85% of website traffic comes from search engines like Yahoo and Google. If you want to learn more about how to optimize your site, attend a free webinar about Search Engine Optimization.

We’re Responsible for Billions and Billions Served

John Arnold — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:39:35 -0400

Remember the McDonald’s signs that said “Billions and Billions Served?” I wonder how many French fries and Happy Meals that amounts to. Constant Contact can make the same claim -- without the deep fryers or toy surprises -- because more than a billion people receive an email on behalf of a Constant Contact customer every month!

Referrals – how do you stir them up?

Caroline Shahar — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:52:40 -0400

Tired of spending money on leads that turn into a whole lot of nothing? When it comes to getting new business, your existing customers are your best customers. It’s proven they spend more, and are less expensive to keep than gaining new ones. How much did you spend last year acquiring new customers? Existing customers bring their family and friends – providing free business for you.

So what do you have to do generate the almighty referral? Make your existing customers extremely happy! Go beyond their expectations so that they want to tell others about you.

Okay, sounds great on paper. But how do you exceed expectations to get those referrals? It’s just a survey away. With just a few key questions to your customers you can find out what their expectations are and what you can do to exceed them. Click here to see the key customer satisfaction questions to send to your audience.

Want Some Money? Ask Your Marketing Tools.

John Arnold — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:36:17 -0400

If you visit the U.S. Small Business Administration’s website and click on the Most Requested Items link, the #1 question is, “How do I get a small business loan?” In fact, 5 of the top 11 most requested items have to do with finding monetary assistance.

There’s nothing wrong with a little capital infusion when it comes to running a small business, but before you agree to an easy payment plan make sure you have a good answer to the next logical question: “How do I find enough customers who will buy from me so I can pay back my small business loan fast and live the life I want to live?”