Constant Contact is known for its email marketing tools, but it recently rolled out an entire toolkit including social media marketing, event planning, surveys and local deals to make its package a truly one-stop service for multiple outbound communications and campaigns.
One of the many things I like about Constant Contact is its focus on integrating with popular social networking sites. Its Facebook App is designed to boost email marketing lists, and as always, it takes care of ensuring people who sign up for an email list are clearly giving permission to receive emails. I’m hoping LinkedIn will soon open up the firewall and permit the development of a similar app as well.
Of course, people who receive an email sent via Constant Contact can share it to numerous networks through its Simple Share tool, which includes LinkedIn and Twitter as well as Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest. Sharing information is included in the reports users receive through the reporting tool.
Constant Contact Toolkit
Earlier this year, Constant Contact rolled out a Toolkit to coordinate and provide more services to support four kinds of marketing campaigns:
- Newsletters and announcements
- Sales/Promotions, which can be useful ways to attract new customers
- Events
- Surveys
The Newsletters and Announcements module is the basic email marketing tool Constant Contact made its name on.
The Save Local module is often compared to the better-known Groupon product but Constant Contact says its product is more reasonably priced.
The Event Planning module is a powerful tool that allows you to create a complete event registration and marketing plan, including email marketing and various landing pages for information and registration. This module will even allow you to charge people to attend you events and enable you to connect your PayPal account and accept credit card payments right from your registration page. From within the registration module you can create email invitations, schedule email reminders to registrants and even publicize your event on your Facebook and Twitter pages.
After your event, use the Survey module to survey your attendees and see what worked and what could be improved next time.
Every Marketing Campaign Needs Analytics
Toolkit collects and organizes information Constant Contact has focused on delivering, including statistics on the number of emails sent and opened. You can see statistics on how many of your emails were forwarded, what links were clicked on, and shares to social media. Statistics also include data on returned and undeliverable email.
Pretty much all the data you could need in order to analyze and determine the success of your marketing campaign can be obtained from the Constant Contact Toolkit.
If you want to take Toolkit for a free test drive click here. If you’d like a demo from a Certified Constant Contact Solution Provider, I’d be happy to walk you through the system.
