How to Build and Manage a Healthier Email List with Constant Contact

Building your business on social media is like renting a house—you've decorated it beautifully, but the landlord can change the rules anytime. Your email list, however, is property you own outright. This distinction can make or break a small business when platforms change algorithms or face potential bans.

Constant Contact product leaders Jesus Flores, Product Manager focused on audience growth; Ryan Burke, Director of Product specializing in small business growth; and Mike Crawford, Senior Product Manager responsible for the contacts experience. They discuss the risks of relying solely on social media for marketing and why building a contact list you actually own is the foundation of sustainable marketing.

"Owning your audience means having a direct line of communication with people who have explicitly shown interest in your brand, typically through an email list without a dependency on a governing social platform," explains Jesus. "It's your list, you own it. You can carry it from platform to platform."

The team discusses how businesses can convert social followers into email subscribers, introduces Constant Contact's new Lead Magnet tool, and explains how contact data helps create more effective marketing campaigns.

Whether you're just starting to build your contact list or looking to better leverage your existing contacts, this episode offers actionable strategies to help turn audience growth into business growth.

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Meet Today's Guests: Jesus Flores, Ryan Burke, and Mike Crawford of Constant Contact

Jesus Flores

👨‍💼 Who he is: Jesus is a Product Manager at Constant Contact who works on the audience growth team. His entire initiative is focused on helping small businesses and nonprofits grow their audience through multiple channels. He specializes in strategies that convert social media followers into owned contacts through website traffic, social media platforms, and in-person interactions.

💡 Key quote: "That engaged email list allows you to nurture those leads, build customer loyalty, and directly promote your products or services without the reliancy on social platforms that you just candidly don't own."

👋 Where to find Jesus: LinkedIn

Ryan Burke

👨‍💼 Who he is: Ryan is a Director of Product at Constant Contact focusing on small business growth. He helps businesses early in their journey get up and running, and hit "day zero" when they're ready to operate. Ryan has been at Constant Contact for about 18 months but brings almost 15 years of experience in product and digital marketing.

💡 Key quote: "It's a marathon, not a sprint. So I think there's trying, there's changing, there's pivoting and being comfortable with that kind of ambiguity that how you're working and how you're running and launching and growing your business, it takes time."

👋 Where to find Ryan: LinkedIn

Mike Crawford

👨‍💼 Who he is: Mike is a Senior Product Manager at Constant Contact responsible for the contacts experience since 2021. He focuses on helping businesses manage their contacts and all the data around them, working to make Constant Contact the source of truth for contact information. Mike specializes in leveraging contact data to power more targeted marketing campaigns.

💡 Key quote: "We see a lot of return on users doing a segmented send rather than just a bulk list send. They get better opens, they get better clicks. So that would be the first step I would take."

👋 Where to find Mike: LinkedIn

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