• Home »
• Email Marketing »
• Customer Examples »
• Bella of Cape Cod

Since 2004, Bella of Cape Cod has offered quality, stylish jewelry and accessories at fantastic prices, leaving customers chanting the store's tagline: "Can You Stand it?" Started by two stay-at-home moms, Catherine Bean and Megan Murphy, Bella of Cape Cod sells its wares for under $25.

Challenge: Competing and Communicating Year Round

Catherine and Megan started selling jewelry at house parties, but soon discovered that the realities of work, family life, and Cape Cod's quiet off-season limited the number of parties they could hold. They came up with a fresh idea: "virtual" parties hosted by seasonal customers on the store's website. What they needed was a low-cost tool to market this new opportunity to their customers.

"We understood the value of customer communications. In fact, we collected our customers' email information from day one; we just didn't understand how to execute a successful email campaign," Catherine says. "When we did email blasts, they were very unprofessional-looking and the emails would bounce back because of our web provider's restrictions. We'd have to split the blasts into groups, which was time consuming and ineffective."

Solution: Bringing Seasonal Business Online with Email Marketing

After hearing about Constant Contact from another Cape Cod business owner, Catherine and Megan opened their own account and quickly learned to We have saved valuable time and money by coordinating all our communication through Constant Contact. upload photos and email addresses with the online tutorial. Within a week, they had sent their first newsletter. Soon after—and with newfound confidence in communicating with their customers—Bella sent a polished email invitation through Constant Contact's SpeakUp!^SM Email Marketing tool to introduce their electronic e-parties.

As the e-parties' popularity grew, the store's email list expanded significantly. According to Megan, "We increased our contact list with every e-party." She and Catherine are careful to protect customer privacy. They do not inundate customers with excessive emails and they also let them know about Constant Contact's one-click "opt-out" option.

Results: Email Marketing Provides Many Small-Business Solutions

Bella of Cape Cod has enjoyed many benefits from email marketing with Constant Contact. According to Catherine, the store grew its contact list from 1,500 to more than 7,000 in less than one year and increased its website hits from 1 million to 3.5 million. The service has also helped Bella deliver a more positive customer experience by streamlining communications and eliminating email bounce backs. "We have saved valuable time and money by coordinating all our communication through Constant Contact," Megan states.

Constant Contact has also provided these businesswomen with another important, "feel-good" advantage. They use email marketing to launch virtual fundraisers, from which Bella sends 20 percent of that day's total sales to a designated charity. Bella also has a cash donation button for the charity on its website. In the past year, Bella has donated more than $6,000 to charities their customers care about.

"Constant Contact has allowed our business to thrive during the off-season. We're supporting local charities, our e-parties for the 2007 holiday season were booked in early September, and we're fulfilling our mission—selling quality, stylish jewelry and accessories all for under $25," says Catherine. "Can you stand it?"