For those of you who missed Week 2, allow me to reintroduce myself! I’m Aaron Wesley Means, founder of ACTIVATE Business Solutions, based in Asheville, NC. ACTIVATE has served clients of all shapes and sizes from local to national for 12+ years, has trained thousands of businesses through seminars, webinars, and conferences, and is a multiple award-winning solution provider.
In this week’s Ready, Set, Send challenge we’ll address the value and impact of a multi-channel marketing strategy. Instead of thinking of your marketing as a single approach using a single channel, you’ll want to use different channels together (think email + social + texts) to create a coordinated plan that greatly increases awareness, visibility, interest, engagement, and sales.
How you use these channels together can be explained by what we like to call the “party principle.” And who doesn't like a party? Plus, at this one, you’ll have help from Constant Contact’s own party planner Campaign Builder. So let’s dive into week 4 and discover how to use multi-channel marketing to your strengths and own the party principle to become campaign connoisseurs!
Throw a Multi-Channel Marketing Bash
You’re not always in your inbox, are you? Well, neither are your contacts. Using multi-channel campaigns is a smart strategy that reaches your contacts where they are and offers several benefits:
- It increases reach by catering to different channel preferences
- Improves engagement by building trust and familiarity
- Ensures consistent branding across all touchpoints
- Provides better data for informed decisions
- Drives higher conversion rates
- Enhances the overall customer experience
- Optimizes marketing spend for better ROI
So how can we leverage all of this information and make it work for you and your customers? We throw a party! *Not literally* but at Constant Contact we have what we call the party principle. The goal is to foster a positive, enjoyable, and memorable connection between your brand and your customers. There are three different types of parties to the party principle: The big party, the after-party, and the VIP party.
Social Media - This is your “big party” where you may not know everyone because friends of friends of friends may have been invited. But, this is an irreplaceable channel for marketing your business: it allows many people to discover you. Use this channel to engage your followers and nurture them to become true fans of your product or service.
Email Marketing - Think of email as your “after-party” where the people you know will hang with you after everyone else has left. You know who these people are because you have their email address – and you can see what they like based on what they open and click on. (In Week 6 we’ll talk about how you can reward these fans with segmented offers).
Text (SMS) Marketing - Text marketing is your “VIP party.” It’s typically a smaller list than your email list, because people only give out their phone number to businesses they trust. And it’s a channel that delivers a 98% open rate. This is an opt-in list, so be strategic - share only the most valuable updates or incentives to keep your subscribers feeling special.
Once you throw your first party, you’ll see the results in real time - in increased awareness and email subscribers, more engagement with your emails and texts, and more of what you set as your goal in Week 1. So let’s try it out by using Campaign Builder!
Work Smarter, Not Harder with Campaign Builder
Constant Contact's most impressive feature to date is undoubtedly the multi-channel Campaign Builder. When paired with BrandKit (which we introduced in Week 1) it creates entire multi-channel campaigns for you - from copy to the different templates. Obviously you’ll want to choose the channels that make the most sense for your business.
Take Campaign Builder for a spin
Let's have some fun!
Each square in our marketing bingo sheets challenges you to create multi-channel campaigns that work best for you, such as enhancing your email (think back to Week 2), creating a landing page (hey, we also did that in Week 3!), hosting an event, or scheduling a post to your social channels.
So, what are the rules? Well, this isn't your typical bingo, this is ~marketing~ bingo. So technically, there are no rules when it comes to creativity, but I suggest starting by selecting squares of actions you already do in your marketing day-to-day, and then challenge yourself by choosing squares you’d like to try. Mark off five squares in any row, column, or diagonal and you win!
Your Assignments
- Use the Bingo card and mark off what you’re already doing and try to implement a few more, for good measure! Bonus points if you get BINGO!
- Be sure to use BrandKit, if you haven’t already. This is like getting the décor for the party you’re about to throw!
- Create a multi-channel campaign with Campaign Builder.
How you’ll earn your badge
Resources
- Handout: Multichannel Marketing
- Blog: How to Create a Marketing Campaign: A Step-by-Step Guide
- Community: Broaden Your Marketing Mix
TL;DR
- Use multi-channel marketing (email, social media, SMS) to increase awareness, engagement, and sales.
- The "party principle" involves three types of parties: social media ("big party"), email ("after-party"), and SMS marketing ("VIP party").
- Multi-channel marketing boosts reach by appealing to diverse channel preferences, enhancing engagement through trust and familiarity. It ensures consistent branding, elevates the customer experience, and drives higher conversion rates. Furthermore, it delivers better data for informed decisions and optimizes marketing spend for improved ROI.
- For your assignment, use the Bingo card to mark which strategies you use in your everyday marketing and try a few new squares to really see the benefit of multi-channel marketing while using our Campaign Builder.
Aaron Wesley Means ACTIVATE Business Solutions Help others find this post by giving it kudos. Note: I am not a Constant Contact employee. |  |
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@JenniferS7 love it, thanks for indulging me!
Aaron Wesley Means ACTIVATE Business Solutions Help others find this post by giving it kudos. Note: I am not a Constant Contact employee. | |
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Pretty close! Looking forward to taking advantage of these additional actions.
@user065571 good job - yeah you are doing great on multiple columns! I think you may actually have BINGO down the middle because if you used Constant Contact's event system to make an event invitation email, create an event ticket, create an event landing page... that likely means you "created an event" which is at the top of the middle column. 🙌
Aaron Wesley Means ACTIVATE Business Solutions Help others find this post by giving it kudos. Note: I am not a Constant Contact employee. | |
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https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/QrPuL0y
Here is my lead magnet that connects with my campaign, but I have a question. Why is there a delay when you click it? I feel like this is a deterrent. Thanks for any help!
Also, even though I set up the brand assets, they aren't auto-loading into every campaign that I generate. Not sure what's up with that. It's amazing, but there's still a lot for me to learn, even with the automation.
@RebeccaW7558 awesome job getting BINGO! A few more squares you'll have it in more than one row. Regarding your lead magnet question, I'm not sure because when I click it, it opens for me pretty quickly!
Regarding your brand assets and BrandKit auto-loading into campaigns you generate, be sure you are going to create an email and then choosing the tab for "Layout Templates". Feel free to DM me directly on here for more help!
Aaron Wesley Means ACTIVATE Business Solutions Help others find this post by giving it kudos. Note: I am not a Constant Contact employee. | |
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Almost there with Bingo — I'm confident I can shore up a few of these this week. Also, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to brand the card 😂!
@user14914 awesome job on being that close to BINGO! You'll have it bagged in no time. And extra credit for the branding 😎🙌🏻
Aaron Wesley Means ACTIVATE Business Solutions Help others find this post by giving it kudos. Note: I am not a Constant Contact employee. | |
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Looks like we can be doing more. Not even close to a "bingo".
That just means you have more opportunities @user781222 😉
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I... did not get bingo. Green highlights are what I do or have implemented, and orange is something I will do or look into doing!
Lots of chances for you to take advantage of!
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@user625032 that's ok! Like @Chris-S says lots of opportunities there. And guess what? If you have made an event in Constant Contact, it likely prompted you to make an event TICKET which means you can likely go ahead and claim that middle block and then you are one away from that horizontal roll being 🎯
Aaron Wesley Means ACTIVATE Business Solutions Help others find this post by giving it kudos. Note: I am not a Constant Contact employee. | |
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Bingo x 2!
@AmyC32 🎃😯 wow! This card is STACKED. Amazing job is all I can say! Since you have so much experience, I'm curious... what's are your favorite features and strategies?
Aaron Wesley Means ACTIVATE Business Solutions Help others find this post by giving it kudos. Note: I am not a Constant Contact employee. | |
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@AmyC32 amazing - love that breakdown of your experience within the Ready Set Send Challenge, it's so great to hear all that... as well as your description of your favorite feature with Event Build. You get tons of credit for being so open and enthusiastic to learn! Way to go and please hang with us in the community here regularly - we are here to keep helping and guiding and giving feedback to support you in your success.
Aaron Wesley Means ACTIVATE Business Solutions Help others find this post by giving it kudos. Note: I am not a Constant Contact employee. | |
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No BINGO for us - a bit more difficult because we don't do events.
Awesome job @tjstrauss! And that's okay, you're still doing amazing work. Keep it up!
Abigail St Jean Community Program ManagerHelp others find this post by giving it kudos. | |
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@tjstrauss still a great job and glad you are open to exploring all the options! Looks like social media column is your best bet and you only have two small tasks to knock out BINGO there!
Aaron Wesley Means ACTIVATE Business Solutions Help others find this post by giving it kudos. Note: I am not a Constant Contact employee. | |
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