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!
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:
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!
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
Now that we’re in a party mood, let's dive into Campaign Builder and explore which channels resonate best with your audience. Has Campaign Builder made you think differently about your marketing approach? Has it inspired you to do something different – and hear me out – something like marketing bingo? Heck yeah, it has!
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!
Download the Bingo card and check off any features or actions you're already doing, or implemented this week. Then, share your bingo card in a reply below.
Aaron Wesley Means ACTIVATE Business Solutions Help others find this post by giving it kudos. Note: I am not a Constant Contact employee. |
---|
@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. |
---|
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. |
---|
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. |
---|
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. |
---|
Looks like we can be doing more. Not even close to a "bingo".
That just means you have more opportunities @user781222 😉
Elevate your marketing with Constant Contact's Professional Design Services! From eye-catching email templates to custom branding and social media graphics, our professional design services are tailored to boost your business's impact and engagement. |
---|
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!
Elevate your marketing with Constant Contact's Professional Design Services! From eye-catching email templates to custom branding and social media graphics, our professional design services are tailored to boost your business's impact and engagement. |
---|
@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. |
---|
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. |
---|
Wow is what I said too. The week 4 challenge of creating an event, event ticket, event landing page, event email, and sharing/marketing that on social media (and linking to CC) really filled in those bingo spots. The others were filled from this challenge too (brand kit, industry, goals for the challenge). With that in mind - so much experience doesn't describe me - just this challenge. Industry leading mentors, experienced creators, and the other participants to learn from really sets this as one of the best ways to learn this platform.
My favorite features are that I can create an event campaign from start to finish in one spot. Creating event (auto added to calendar), event ticket, event landing page, event email, and ticket confirmation page in a workflow that takes about 30 minutes (after the first one - that one took me about a day because I was checking all the options). Being able to share that event and event landing page on social media with one click is amazing too! I also like the data metrics that come later - knowing if any emails were sent back, knowing how many were opened (and by whom), how many link clicks (and being able to compare that to actual event registrations) has really fine tuned by marketing (for the 3 campaigns I have started since this challenge began).
Thank you for this challenge!
@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. |
---|
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. |
---|
We’re here to help you grow. With how-to tutorials, courses, getting-started guides, videos and step-by-step instructions to start and succeed with Constant Contact.
Start Here