This Century-Old Bookstore Runs on Poetry, Community, and Constant Contact

What if a bookstore felt less like a store and more like a community hub? That’s the big idea behind the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, Massachussetts.

“We don’t just offer a retail experience, we offer a community experience,” says manager James Fraser. “People feel free to just to come in and browse and not necessarily walk away with the book, but rather just to come in and read, to meet someone, to have a conversation.”

Located in Cambridge’s famed Harvard Square, the Grolier is the oldest continuously operated bookstore in the country that sells poetry and only poetry.

At 99 years old, it’s a landmark packed with history. Legendary poets like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Elizabeth Bishop were once regulars.

“The Grolier was instrumental in creating many poets’ careers,” Fraser explains. “They met other poets here. They went to readings here. They got books here that were foundational in their development.”

Keeping a legend alive

When James started as Grolier’s manager back in 2018, both the store’s events and its stock had waned, and the business was losing about $50,000 a year.

“There was a time when there weren’t very many books on the shelf,” he recalls. “People would come in to look for Robert Frost or Sylvia Plath. None of their books would be here, and they’d be told to go next door or even sent to Amazon.”

James wanted to bring back the shop’s weekly poetry readings and restock the shelves with books from both classic and new poets. He was ready to bring the energy back, and he knew revitalizing Grolier’s events was key to creating a stable future.

That presented a new challenge: how do you get the word out about a new event every week? And how do you give people an easy way to sign up, whether they want to come in-person or tune in online?

It was time to bring a historic bookshop firmly into the 21st century and find new ways to connect Grolier with its community.

Bringing a historic bookshop into the 21st century

He found a solution in Constant Contact. “We use Constant Contact for both our email list and our events management, both of which are instrumental to the success of the Grolier,” he says.

James needed a system that could do it all: let people sign up for events both in-person and online, sell merch and process donations, and give Grolier an easy way to stay close to its community while continuing to grow it.

With a reliable system in place, the shop now hosts readings about once a week. And because the events are hybrid, poetry lovers can show up in person or tune in online from anywhere, helping the Grolier bring in crowds of up to 200 people at a time. This new approach didn’t just grow the community — it also created a vital source of income.

“The thing that’s most helpful about Constant Contact is monetizing our events. That is a great source of revenue for the business,” James says, noting that the Grolier is now profitable.

In addition to helping them grow their revenue, events are also helping them grow their email list and in turn, their community: 30% of the Grolier’s new contacts now come from events.

Building a community through email

Beyond events, email became a critical tool for nurturing the Grolier’s growing audience. Before, the process of contacting customers was manual and cumbersome. “Without Constant Contact, we would probably be working in an Excel spreadsheet or something and copying and pasting emails that way,” James says.

Now, the process is seamless. The shop sends weekly emails announcing new readings, curated book lists, and merchandise updates.

“Constant Contact helps the business grow by reaching new audiences,” says James. “When we can stay connected with these audiences through email, it allows us to create this long-term relationship of returning customers.”

And this strategy has led to big-time growth: In 2025, the Grolier’s email list grew by 31%. Their emails see an average open rate of 55%, significantly higher than the 36% industry average. Their welcome email automatically sent to new subscribers is particularly effective, boasting a 71% open rate.

Having hundreds of ready-to-use design templates at his fingertips is a big help, too. “Constant Contact has many great templates that we use,” James says. “It allows us to have a consistent brand, presented in a way that looks state of the art.”

The shop also now has better insights into its business that ultimately lead to smarter decision making. “Constant Contact provides analytics to see where our emails are landing, who opens our emails, who unsubscribes, who subscribes at what rate?” James explains. “It also allows us to track which events are more successful than others, which helps us to plan a roadmap for events in the future.”

For James, a self-described “book person, not a technology person,” the platform’s ease of use was a huge benefit. “Constant Contact has wonderful customer service and is easy to use, especially for someone [like myself] who isn’t as technologically fluent as some other people in my generation,” he says. “

Looking ahead to the next 100 years

With the Grolier’s 100th anniversary coming up in 2027, James is looking ahead. “We’re hoping to stay in business for another hundred years after that,” he says. “We will sell a lot of books, we’ll hold a lot of events, and we will continue to provide space for our community.”

Now that the shop has well-oiled processes for communicating with customers and managing events, James can’t imagine going back to the old way of doing things manually. “It’s hard to imagine not having Constant Contact around. I don’t know what we would do,” he says.

For him, it all comes back to the three pillars that make the Grolier so special: “Books, community, and poetry — they’re all so beautiful and vital to the life we live,” James says. “And without them, I think we wouldn’t have as full of a life.”