My First Email Campaign with Constant Contact - Request for Feedback on LBG Print Shop Relocation

[Shafika_Khan]

Hi,

I hope you’re doing well.

I’m excited to share that I recently joined Constant Contact in August, and I’ve just launched my first email campaign to announce the relocation of LBG Print Shop. I would greatly appreciate your feedback on the campaign, as well as any advice on how to achieve our goals of increasing awareness and driving visits to our new location.

Here’s the link to the campaign: Exciting News: LBG Print Shop Has Moved!

Additionally, if you have any thoughts on our website or broader marketing strategy, I’d love to hear them. Your insights would be incredibly valuable, and I’m eager to share what I learn with the rest of the Community.

Thank you so much for your time and support!

Best regards,
Shafika Khan

[Chris-S]

Thanks for sharing @Shafika_Khan, I’m happy to offer feedback. 

 

Strengths:

The notice about the move is highly visible and explicitly communicated, ensuring customers are well-informed. I appreciated the addition of an enhanced services section that can be found at the new address. Services are comprehensively listed, promoting customer awareness of your variety of offerings. The announcement of a grand opening event with enticing prizes is a great incentive for customers to come and visit!

Suggestions:

1. Ensure that the call-to-action button is prominent and encourages prompt engagement, for example, "Visit Us Now" or "Explore Our Newest Store".
2. Including a map or exact directions to the new store may also be very helpful. This will make it easy and quick for customers to get to the store.
3. To further generate excitement, you may want to add testimonials or enthusiastic reviews from customers. Let these be clear proof of the amazing quality and great service that make the new location stand out as a place of excellence.

In my opinion, your email design is quite effective, and I’d like to extend my congratulations on the opening of your new store. I wish you all the best in your endeavors.

[Shafika_Khan]

Dear Chris,

Thank you so much for your thoughtful feedback and kind words about the announcement! 

I appreciate your suggestions and will definitely consider them for future communications. Enhancing the call-to-action button and including a map or detailed directions are great ideas that could further improve the customer experience. I also love the idea of adding testimonials to build excitement and trust in the new store.

Once again, thank you for your feedback and well wishes. Your insights are invaluable as we continue to refine our approach.

Best regards,
Shafika

[Nick_S]

Congrats on the big move, @Shafika_Khan! Chris made some great points. I'll note that I did notice that you made the address clickable to Google Maps but I may have only noticed because I was actively guiding my cursor down looking to see what was clickable and what wasn't. I think reformatting it to emphasize that it is clickable, like making the text underlined or showing the address but then maybe putting an emoji/emoticon of, say, the earth  with Google Maps hyperlinked, would make it more obvious.

Speaking of links, even though the primary message is that the new location is open, I'd still put your logo at the very top of the email and make the image clickable, so people can go straight to your website. I'm a big believer in always having the logo at the top.

I also noted that you're using three different font styles across the email, is that intentional? Ideally, I'd recommend keeping it to one font style.

I might also consider putting in 2-4 more images, showcasing the interior of the new store if you feel it is worth showing off. There's also multiple points of interest in the email, but they aren't separated so it kind of runs together. For example, I might put dividers above and below the "Visit us soon at" verbiage as one section, and dividers before/after the "Our expanded services will include" section. Maybe use banners, as well, for something like "What's Coming Up?" And I would suggest removing the yellow highlights on some text. Yellow does not appear to be one of your brand colors. Instead, I'd probably use red for emphasis like you do with "Big News" towards the top, but not as a highlighter.

At the bottom, you tell people to connect with you and click the big red button, which says "Stay Updated." I think this might send mix signals. If they're receiving the email, they're already on your mailing list, unless it's a specific segment of contacts and you have a separate segment that you promote other initiatives with. And the link itself goes to the contact page of the website, which lets them reach out or submit their contact info, but it doesn't indicate that they're staying updated with anything. I might change "Stay Updated!" to "Contact us today!" or something along those lines.

Overall, though, I love the enthusiasm that emanates from the email and the excitement over the new location and the new services it makes possible! I realize some of this advice might not apply now that you've already sent this announcement, but hopefully the advice can still be useful for future endeavors!

[Shafika_Khan]

Hi Nick,

Thank you for the detailed feedback—I really appreciate it!

I agree that making the address link more obvious and adding a clickable logo at the top would improve the email. I'll also streamline the fonts and adjust the color usage to align better with our brand.

I’m planning to send a follow-up email next week with interior images and your suggested improvements. Do you think that’s a good idea, or could it be too soon for the same contact list? In your experience, is once a week or twice a week more effective?

Thanks again for your insights!

Best regards,

[Nick_S]

Send frequency is one of those topics I wish I had a magic bullet answer to, but unfortunately is highly variable depending on industry and your own audience. If you haven't already, I recommend adding your business industry in your account so we can compare reporting with other users that are in the same industry. You might find reviewing the average industry rates interesting, to see how your industry compares to others, too. As you're just getting started with your account, you might not have enough data to make well-informed decisions, but we do recommend looking at the send history and comparing open rates to find when the best time to send is.

There might be a couple of ways you can approach this. If you're worried about alienating people who already opened the first email, you could copy the email, make edits, and resend to a list of contacts that didn't open it the first time. Otherwise, I don't necessarily see anything wrong with a follow-up email a week later that specifically is about highlighting the interior of the store and the expanded services again. I think it depends on your audience, but 2x/week might be too much.

I'll note that I was just on your website and I was thinking how you could link directly to said services (i.e. link directly to the T-Shirts page), but I noticed that if you click on any of the options under specific sections, it only goes to one item. For example, if I go to Clothing and click on Jackets, it takes me to Women T-Shirt. If I go to Promotional Items and click Tote Bag, it takes me to Photo Mug. You might already be aware of this, but if not, I just wanted to point it out!

[Shafika_Khan]

Hi Nick,

Thank you for your detailed feedback and suggestions. I'm actively working on the website and aim to have it completed within the next 7 days.

Regarding the send frequency, I completely agree that it's a variable aspect and largely depends on the industry and audience. I'll make sure to add our business industry to our account to get more relevant insights. It's a great idea to compare our performance with industry averages, especially as we're just starting and gathering data.

For the email strategy, I appreciate the advice on potentially resending the email to those who didn't open it initially. I’ll definitely consider a follow-up email that highlights the store's interior and expanded services, though I'll be cautious about the frequency.

Thank you for pointing out the issue with the links on the website. I'm aware of it and working on resolving that as part of the current updates. Once the site is fully functional, I'll ensure that each section correctly links to the intended pages.

Your feedback is invaluable, and I’m excited to implement these changes. I'll keep you updated as the website progresses and would love to hear more of your thoughts. Your insights are like lightning bolts—they're helping me improve and get better with each step!

[Nick_S]

I'm so glad my feedback is resonating with you! I always strive to be constructive. I would love to hear about any updates to the website and please share future iterations of your email templates. Thank you for being a part of our community!

[ACTIVATE]

I agree with the great commentary above and I think with some adjustments to the sections (breaking them apart for easier visual cues), adding more photos, and some layout adjustments you are well on your way to a much more engaging and professional style email!