Because digital marketing is constantly evolving and developing, small business marketers are presented with a unique opportunity — the opportunity to level up their marketing game and add new, impactful strategies to the mix. Solid, ongoing email, social, and text messaging strategies can help build relationships and create success — but what’s out there to help you understand your customers, personalize your messaging even further, and reach them in their preferred online locations?
Get on Your Customers' Level
So once you know and understand your customers, what’s next? Understanding them doesn’t matter if you don’t communicate with them in a way that demonstrates that understanding. One-size-fits-all marketing can feel inauthentic and fall flat. By adding personal touches to your email and text messages, you can build relationships at scale — quickly, easily, and without having to create dozens of custom emails each time you reach out to your audience.
Here are ways to take what you know about your customers and turn it into something that speaks to them personally.
Dynamic Content
What is dynamic content and how does it work in email?
Every business wants its content to be dynamic — that is, energetic, stimulating, and progressive. But in digital marketing, dynamic content is content that changes based on the user before they ever interact with it at all.
This means you can create and send all your contacts a single email, but by adding Dynamic Content blocks, you can hide or show specific elements based on the details you’ve collected from your contacts.
How it works: While editing your email, you can select any block—text, images, events, or calls-to-action—and toggle it to "dynamic." You define the criteria (e.g., "State is NY" or "Job Title is Designer"), and only contacts who meet that criteria will see it.
The Default Block: You can easily set a default block for anyone on your list who doesn't meet the specific dynamic criteria, ensuring there are no awkward blank spaces in your layout.
Testing & Previews: Before you hit send, Constant Contact's preview feature allows you to view the email exactly as a specific contact would see it, ensuring your logic is flawless.
How does this help me take my marketing to the next level?
Personalizing your outreach ensures you’re reaching the right people with the right message. For example, if you hold events in multiple cities, you can send one newsletter containing all your upcoming events, but dynamically only show contacts the events happening in their local area. It saves you from building multiple campaigns while making the recipient feel the message was crafted solely for them.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
What is search engine optimization (SEO) and how does it work?
SEO is the practice of optimizing your website so that search engines (like Google) can easily understand and rank your content, helping potential customers find you organically.
How does this help me take my marketing to the next level?
If you’re not an SEO expert, looking at your website and knowing what to fix can feel completely overwhelming. Fortunately, the Constant Contact SEO tool takes the guesswork out of it.
Site Optimization Score: The tool scans your site and gives you an overall score based on technical health, mobile readiness, and content.
Actionable Site Audit: It provides you with a list of tasks broken down into easy-to-follow steps. You can optimize individual pages by assigning target keywords, and the tool will tell you exactly what metadata or text to update to reach 100% optimization for that page.
Track Competitors & Backlinks: You can actively monitor how many sites are linking back to you (credibility) and track how your chosen keywords are performing against your competitors.
Unlike email personalization, SEO ensures you’re speaking to the right audience before they ever reach your website, boosting both their knowledge and their perception of your business.
Ecommerce Segmentation & Automation
What is ecommerce segmentation and how does it work?
Custom segmentation is the practice of creating more advanced groups of customers based on their interactions with your business. For retail and online businesses in particular, this segmentation is based on buyer behavior.
By connecting your online store (like Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, or Squarespace) to Constant Contact, you sync vital shopping data directly into your marketing platform.
Purchase Activity Segments: You can filter and group contacts based on their specific purchase habits—like how much they spend, what specific products they buy, or if they haven't ordered in a while.
Automation Path Builder: You can set up automated email and SMS communications triggered by behavior. Send a welcome series for new buyers, request reviews, or deploy Abandoned Cart reminders tailored to the customer's cart value.
Product Action Blocks: When designing an email, you can seamlessly drag and drop a "Product block" that automatically pulls in the description, price, image, and purchase link directly from your synced store.
How does this help me?
Loyal customers are the backbone of any retail business. Talking to your customers based on how they buy, what they want, and what they need ensures future purchases and lets your customers know you’re paying attention. Better yet, syncing your ecommerce data allows you to check your Revenue Reporting to see the exact sales generated directly from your emails, proving the ROI of your segmented campaigns!
Get on your customers’ level and you’ll find they’ll want to stay on yours, too!
Have questions? Let us know below! If you have any experience with dynamic content, SEO, and ecommerce segmentation we'd love to hear your success stories!
