MightyMerchant and Constant Contact: A Powerful Partnership
By Vanessa Salvia, 6/12/07
More and more business owners are using email to promote their services and positively impact sales. There are quite a few companies out there who specialize in managing email campaigns for small to medium sized businesses, and after searching extensively, MightyMerchant found Constant Contact to be the best.
Constant Contact allows users to create and send professional looking, high quality email newsletters and promotions with no technical expertise and a little bit of set-up, which MightyMerchant takes care of. Constant Contact provides subscriber list management and live customer support at an attractive price point. Constant Contact also tracks and reports to you who opened your emails and what links they clicked on.
Constant Contact offers a free 60-day trial provided your subscriber list remains under 100 names. When you're ready to send your first email, there are more than 100 templates to choose from that are fairly easily customizable. Modules for things like text blocks or promotions can be inserted into the email, so you can fine-tune a template you like. A formatting menu allows for color changes, inserting pictures, logos, PayPal buttons and links back to your website. Once the email is composed, you can send test emails to addresses you specify, allowing you to preview it in different email clients. (Testing emails in several different email clients is an important detail; it not only shows you what your recipients will see but also how spam filters will treat the email.). Sending the email is easy, too; simply select the subscriber list you want to send to, then select a date and time for sending.
Constant Contact automatically collects email addresses from your web site, and can increase traffic to your site through newsletters and promotional campaigns. Constant Contact provides you with a subscription form to add to your web site, and allows you to assign an interest category for each subscriber, which allows you to target your efforts.
The Templates
Constant Contact has templates for newsletters, promotions, cards, event invitations, and templates with holiday and seasonal themes and industry themes. Let's take a look at some of these.
Newsletters
Here is an example of the "Modern" newsletter template:
All of Constant Contact's templates can be modified to your liking by deleting or adding sections, changing text and background colors, and adding your own business banners.
Promotional Emails
These types of emails are great for quickly letting customers know about new products or a special sale you're having. You can include photos and link your site directly to PayPal.Here is an example of the "Modern" Promotional Template:
Email Cards
Email cards are similar to a postcard. These are short, visually appealing ways to send out a quick message. You can also include a coupon code or use a holiday theme.
Following is the "Creative" email card template:
Customize
Once you are logged in to your account, navigate to "Create an email". Next, choose an email wizard. The New email wizard allows for drag and drop and one-page editing, while the Classic wizard did not have these features. Once you select a wizard you can select your template. Once in the template you choose, you can cut and paste your copy from another text document, add images, add links, and rearrange the order of your articles by dragging and dropping the text boxes. A menu on the left lets you easily choose fonts and colors or different text boxes to insert, for instance.
Clicking on any text box brings up a different editing menu on the left, containing options for adding images or text links, and personalizing the emails with different fields, such as name, date, or contact city. For those who are comfortable with HTML, a "Code View" button lets you access the HTML.
Reports
Once you send out your first email, you can begin looking at reports of the campaign's results. Log in to your account, then click on "Reports."You can see who opened the email, who bounced, who unsubscribed, who clicked, and what they clicked on. This information tells you what worked and what didn't, so you can improve your next campaign. "Comparative Metrics" reveals a comparison between the most recent email sent out and other emails sent within the last three months.
Pricing and Support
Prices for Constant Contact's service vary according to the number of subscribers you have, and starts at $15 a month for up to 500 contacts. Using email marketing is an easy and cost-effective way of reaching hundreds of potential customers every month.Constant Contact also offers easy to customize surveys, which are a great way to get valuable information about what your customers expect from your business. At MightyMerchant, we value good, fast, and friendly customer support, and we think Constant Contact does, too. They provide free, live, 24-hour support through phone or email. Let us know if you are interested in Constant Contact and we'll get you started!
About MightyMerchant
MightyMerchant specializes in developing e-commerce and database driven, content-rich websites for small business customers across the US. The company as listed as one of Practical eCommerce Magazine’s “Top 100 Notable Shopping Carts” in September/October 2007. Hundreds of site owners use MightyMerchant to manage their online stores. For more information visit www.mightymerchant.com, and for ecommerce knowledge and tools visit the MightyMerchant eCommerce Blog.
