Posts

How to Recruit Brand Ambassadors To Fast-Track Your Marketing

Image
Whether you’re a restaurant or a real estate agency, you’re bound to have some passionate fans. These are your most loyal customers; the people who will go the extra mile for you because they love you so much. Getting these customers to take the extra step and serve as your brand ambassadors can be a great added boost to growing your business. When your best customers help you with marketing , they can provide you with extra brains, an extra pair of hands, and a new network of potential customers. But how do you recruit these customers and what exactly should you look for in a brand ambassador? Here are the key steps to recruit a core group of people to serve as the brand ambassadors for your business. Where to Recruit Ambassadors There are some well-known places you can look for potential brand ambassadors: 1. Use your email list. You can send out some information about your new ambassador program to everyone on your email list or you can select a group of peopl

How To Get Your Best Customers To Do Your Marketing For You

Image
  As a small business owner, you’ve got a lot on your plate. With so many different hats to wear, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get your best customers to do your marketing for you? If only it were that easy, right? The truth is your customers may be more likely to get involved than you think. Consider what their reaction would be to a brand ambassador program . This may sound complicated, but in reality, it’s just a simple way to get your biggest fans to contribute in small ways to help your business succeed. This could involve something small like having customers tell friends about you or talk about your business online. Or could be something more involved like having customers write posts on your blog or participate in upcoming events. If you’re still thinking an ambassador program sounds like a lot of work, check out   how one small business did it . And to help you get started, here’s a five-step breakdown of how to start a

[Infographic] The What, When, and Who of Successful Emails

Image
Here at Constant Contact, we’re always uncovering new data to help you create effective email campaigns . Whether it’s providing the best time to send emails based on the industry you’re in, or taking a look at what types of content result in the best click-through rates , we work hard to ensure that small businesses and organizations are getting all the best information possible. In the infographic below, we take a look at the “What, When, and Who” of successful emails. Specifically, we reveal interesting data around: What email subscribers click on When is the best time to send emails in order to maximize open rates Who’s opening and clicking your emails We hope you find the data points in the infographic as interesting and revealing as we did!

When is the Best Time to Send Your Email Marketing Campaign?

Image
  Drumroll please. The best time to send your email is… There’s nothing we’d love more than to tell you a magic time and day that would give you the absolute best results for your email campaign. But while we can’t give you exactly that, we do have more than enough data and proven best practices to offer you something more satisfying than the generic ‘ it depends’ answer. Use these 5 steps to find the best send time and day for your business: 1. Look at the trends Industry trends are a great starting point when you’re first thinking about the best time to send your email. At Constant Contact , we regularly analyze customer email results to collect industry-specific data to help you know where you stand. In addition to updating you on the average open, click-through, and bounce rate each month, we also have this helpful chart that identifies prime times to send an email based on general trends by industry. Based on the data, a clear trend across many industries is th

10 Things You’re Missing Out on by Using a Personal Email Account to Do Your Email Marketing

Image
  If you’re like a lot of small businesses and organizations, you may be using a personal email account — like Gmail, Outlook, AOL, or Yahoo — to communicate with a group of your email marketing list contacts. Chances are you’ve also noticed some limitations in what you can and can’t do with a personal email account. One of the biggest limitations of using a personal account for email marketing is in the design of your emails. If you’re not a professional designer, it’s tough to create email campaigns that actually match your brand and make your business look professional. Other limitations include: Problems getting messages delivered: Has anyone ever told you they didn’t receive your email? Sending mass emails from a personal Gmail, Outlook, etc. account can result in more emails being sent to the spam folder of your subscribers . Difficulty keeping track of your email contacts: Manually keeping track of each new email address on your list and people who have asked t

Why Website Visitors Aren’t Joining Your Email List (And What You Can Do About It)

Image
  When it comes to growing your email list , it’s hard to beat the exposure your website can provide. Think about it — why do people visit your website? In most cases, it’s to learn more about you, your business, and the products and services you have to offer. Many of these people will navigate to your website directly, but others will come through different channels — like a link you’ve shared on social media or through a piece of content they discovered through a search result. This is the perfect opportunity to catch their attention and encourage them to stay connected with you through email. But here’s the problem: even if you’re providing a way for people to join your email list from your website, there’s no guarantee they’re going to sign up. In fact, if you’ve already tried collecting email addresses on your website then you may have noticed that only a small percentage of your website visitors are signing up. If you want them to take the next step of join

How to Engage New Email Contacts, Right from the Start

Image
  Derek Gerber, senior account executive at Tallega Software had a goal to reshape the way his software company communicated with its audience online. “We’ve been in business for almost 10 years, and are constantly on the lookout for new technologies to help us grow,” Derek explains. “We’ve been using email for the last few years, and have seen some great results. But we really wanted to take things a step further.” With over 8,000 email contacts, Tallega Software, which offers solutions to help clients store documents and keep their business running smoothly, had already seen the power of email to generate new and repeat business. But Derek also knew there was one opportunity Tallega had been missing out on. “My goal was to create a system to help introduce potential clients to our company when they join our email list,” Derek explains.  “I had learned a lot about nurturing leads and what I really wanted was to find a way to introduce people to our business right fr