Slowness navigating the website and delays sending campaigns
 

Let's Talk About List Growth with Evan Globelnik

Evan_G
Employee

ListGrowthBanner.jpgHi everyone! My name is Evan Globelnik and I’m happy to be returning to the Community for this special event. If you’re a frequent flyer on the boards, you may have seen me around as Evan_G, taking feedback and answering questions. Nowadays, I’m a Support Team Lead with Constant Contact that specializes in our list growth initiatives.

 

 

I have worked at Constant Contact for the last 7 years. In that time I have helped support our customers through many channels, including phone, social media, and here on the wonderful Community! 

 

No matter where or what your business is, Constant Contact has a signup tool to help grow your list of contacts, which in turn can help grow your business.

 

I’ll be hanging out in this thread from March 19, 2020 to April 2, 2020 to answer any questions about list growth you may have. Occasionally, I’ll spend time with my family, so if you don’t get a response right away--don’t worry! I’ll be back before long.


Nick Sermuksnis, the Social Media & Content Manager for the Community, is with me today to get the proceedings proceeding. Hi Nick!

14 Comments
Nick_S
Administrator

Hi Evan! I'm very happy to have you back with us on the Community for the next couple weeks.

 

List Growth is a frequently asked about topic here on the Community and around Constant Contact and email marketing in general. Businesses want to grow and they need the buy-in from their customers and clients in order to do so. Email marketing is still one of the best ways to reach your audience and update them about your products and promotions.

 

Let's start with any easy one. First, can you tell us about the types of tools Constant Contact provides to help our customers grow their lists? 

 

And to our fellow Community users, do not hesitate to jump in and interrupt our chat. Evan is here to answer your questions.

Evan_G
Employee

Thank you so much for having me back, Nick!

 

Great question! We have popup forms, inline forms, landing pages, text to join, Facebook JMMLs, lions, tigers, bears! The list is long, but what signup form is right for you and your business is the true question.

 

Let’s take the Facebook JMML for instance. As we all know, Social Media is a huge player in today's digital marketing space. There are a number of businesses that do not have a website and do all of their online marketing on Facebook. Constant Contact has an app that you can add to your Facebook business page to collect signups. This helps funnel your Social Media followers into your Constant Contact email campaigns. You can create a specific list within your Constant Contact account so that you know your Social Media segment, and follow up accordingly.

 

Click Here for our support article that goes over the Facebook JMML

Nick_S
Administrator

Very nice! I want to expand on the point you made regarding how the right list growth tool is dependent on the needs of the business. As you mentioned, Constant Contact provides multiple tools to grow contacts. Can you provide quick blurbs on each one and maybe examples of businesses (not necessarily a specific business, but a type of business) that have utilized them successfully? 

Evan_G
Employee

Sure thing!

 

I’ll break this into two chunks; online businesses and brick and mortars.

 

For online businesses where most of your sales take place through your website or online store we would suggest using a popup or inline form. We’ve all seen a popup form. I think the primary benefit of this specific signup tool is visibility. You can easily get the attention of your visitors by offering some type of incentive. You can add this form to your homepage or store page and customize the timing that’s right for you. We’ve had List Growth appointments where we suggest adding something like “5% off X for joining our list” or “signup to get the latest offers straight to your inbox!”. We’ve heard a lot of positive feedback on adding these types of incentives to signup forms from businesses that we’ve worked with! As for inline forms; we’ve found that these types of forms go great on your website's “Contact Us” page!

 

Next, let’s talk about brick and mortar store fronts. It can be difficult to get signups during a face to face sale. Do you ask for your customers' email address right after they have purchased an item? To make these conversations easier on you and your customers, what I would recommend is setting up a text to join form. This gem of a signup tool allows you to create a keyword that your customer texts to a specific number in order to join your Constant Contact mailing list. We’ve had a number of store front businesses post flyers with the keyword at the door and at the cash register. We all have phones, leverage that fact and get more signups!

Nick_S
Administrator

It does make sense. There is never a one size fits all to any approach. So, let's say a business gets their form up and running and the contacts come pouring in (because they want to receive communications!). How should someone manage all those contacts?

 

What are some best practices for when you have multiple channels for growing your lists and you need to keep everything straight?

Evan_G
Employee

That sounds like a great problem to have!

 

I was mentioning earlier that you can create specific lists on your Constant Contact account for any signup form that you use. For example, you can create a list that’s called “Popup Form” or “Facebook JMML” or even “Text To Join”. Once they sign up they will be assigned to the list that you designate. I’d highly suggest creating lists that are specific to the form that they are assigned to. That way you know all of the contacts in this list came from X signup form. This will help you organize your new contacts so that you can start sending targeted emails based off of where they came from. You can then segment these contacts further based on the information that they provide or the actions that they take with the campaigns that you are sending to them.

 

Click Here for some more information on creating and managing lists!

Kyle_R
Administrator

Hi Evan,

 

Thanks for doing this. Do you have any best practices around the frequency and timing of pop-up sign up forms? It seems like there is a fine line between too soon and not soon enough that gets tricky to navigate.

Evan_G
Employee

Hey Kyle!

Thank you for your question! There are so many options when it comes to the frequency and timing of popup forms. Do you want your form to pop as soon as someone visits your site or do you want to give them time to peruse the content before being presented with the option to sign up? You can set the frequency from once per 30 minutes to once per week. Finding the timing and frequency that is right for you and your visitors may take some experimenting. That said, we have found that setting your timing to 10-15 seconds and your frequency to once per hour has the highest conversion rate. If you are not getting as many conversions as you would like to see, try enabling the exit intent! This makes the form pop one last time while your visitor is exiting your website. 

Nick_S
Administrator

Hey Evan! I hope you had a restful evening, but we're not ready to let up yet! 

 

Following a similar line of thought as far as frequency of pop-up form, let's say you have the contacts rolling in. What's the best way to engage new contacts? Constant Contact offers automation tools. Would you say that is the best way to go?

Evan_G
Employee

Keep them coming, Nick!

 

It is super important to contact your new subscribers as soon as possible! We make this easy! Every account has access to our Welcome Email. This is a basic automated email that you can trigger to go out immediately after someone signs up. If you want a blanket welcome message no matter where the signup came from, the Welcome Email is the right solution. It’s best to use this email to thank the contact for signing up and give them a taste of the information that they will receive from your organization. Also, if you created some sort of incentive on your signup form, you can deliver on that promise with the Welcome Email. A number of our customers will include an exclusive download or coupon on this email.

 

Let’s say you want a catered message to go out your Social Media contacts two days after they signup. Then you want a series of emails to go to those who signed up on your inline form that you added to the "contact us" page of your website; this is where automation comes into play. Users on our Email Plus plan have the ability to create an Automated Email Series. The Automated Email Series is a string of emails that go out at a specific time depending on a trigger that you select. These tools make communications with your new signups easy as pie! This is super helpful if you want a “set it and forget it” line of communication with your new subscribers. Check out our Automation Tips for some best practices!

TrudyW9
Brand Visionary

Hi Evan. Interesting reading.

I just tried to install/connect the FaceBook App for list sign ups and the rotten thing keeps showing an error connecting with CC. Says to refresh browser. Nothing improves. I have turned the app off in FB because it doesn't go anywhere and would really appreciate a solution so I can build my list further. Looks like others in the community have/are experiencing the same problem.

Thanks

Trudy

Evan_G
Employee

Hey @TrudyW9 thank you for your question! 

 

I'm sorry to hear that you are running into this error when you try to connect the Facebook JMML. I have a couple things that you can try. First, try using a different web browser when connecting the app. If that does not work, try using a "private browsing" session on your preferred browser. In the past, when customers have ran into this issue it is usually due to a browser add-on/extension. 

 

I hope that this helps to fix the issue but please let me know if the issue persists after trying these steps. We would be happy to give you a call to troubleshoot further and find a solution!

TrudyW9
Brand Visionary

Thanks Evan for your speedy reply. I tried 'private browsing' with no success and then changed to Edge from Chrome. The change to Edge worked and now I have my sign-up button over at FaceBook. Thanks. Trudy

Evan_G
Employee

Hey @TrudyW9 ,

 

I'm so glad to hear that helped! I hope you start getting a bunch of new signups from your Facebook page! Please let me know if you have any other list growth questions. 

 

Have a great day and stay safe out there! 

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