About Elizabeth_K

Anytime, @Chris-S!   ... View more

Hi, @CFTEA!  So you've got a giant list of just names and email addresses. You're not alone! Let me see if I can act as Virgil and guide you through at least a couple of those circles...   I think when you see stats like "10x a day," they immediately make you feel like you're doing something wrong. If you were to send 10 emails to one person in a day, they'd most likely mark you as spam and block you! Organizations that do that may be sending lots of emails, but they've probably targeted each email to a different audiences (using segmentation), so the same contacts are not receiving all 10 emails.  Segmentation can also help with the contacts that think you're sending too often. They may not be seeing value in the content you're sending. This could be too much info packed into one email where the important parts (to them) get lost. Segmentation helps you group contacts by their interest, letting you shorten your emails. You end up sending more emails overall, but they're shorter and targeted for a specific audience. For the nuts and bolts of how segmentation works, check out this article. Ok, that being said, how do you do it? There are an infinite number of ways to segment, so hopefully this will help you get started and make some changes to better segment your contacts moving forward. Let's start with your current contacts... If you're only working with names and email addresses, you can segment them by their opens and clicks behavior, or by their engagement level. Your contacts provide all this info themselves just by opening and interacting with your emails, and you just have to "ask" for these contacts by creating a segment.  This article can get you started.   Next, start using click segmentation in your existing email format. It lets you add contacts to a list based on the links they click in your email. It's an easy way to gauge interest. (This article explains it all.) Then you can create a segment and send only to the contacts on that specific list.   Another quick thing you can do is to make sure the "Update Profile" link in your email footer is enabled and customized - if your contacts click on it (and you can absolutely get creative and draw attention to it in the body of your email), they can tell you which lists they want to be a part of and enter in missing contact details. This article can show you how. And finally, there is also a way to "bulk update" contacts using a spreadsheet - there is a little data entry involved but it can be done over time. It works like this: You export all of your contacts into a spreadsheet. You create new columns based on the contact information that you have and start filling it in. When you're ready, you import the spreadsheet back into your account as if you're adding new contacts. It will update existing contacts with additional contact details and custom fields as long as the email addresses match. Then you can start segmenting by those things. For instance, you can create custom fields for the branch and send a message only to a specific branch.   Now let's tackle new contacts. A great place to start segmenting is with your sign-up form. All of our sign-up forms let you choose which contact details you want to collect so that going forward you're building segmentable info into your contact records from the start. If I haven't bogged you down, read this article for more details.   It's a lot of information, but take it one step at a time. Good luck with the new branding! Let us know how it goes! ... View more

Email engagement is built on opens and clicks, so your content needs to be interesting enough to get the open, and your call-to-action needs to be enticing enough to get the click. When you're trying to get your contacts to engage with you, pay extra attention to the call-to-action! Make sure that it stands out as the focal point of your email, and that the supporting content is both persuasive and has a sense of urgency.  This article has some helpful tips. ... View more

Great point, @ACTIVATE!  One thing I love about the automation path is the conditional split - it lets you specify what happens when a contact takes action or doesn't take action so it's easier to change the messaging! It's so flexible that you can either build a complicated path that takes care of every scenario or simply add a contact to a list or add a tag to them once they make a purchase and set up a new path that triggers when the tag or list is added. ... View more

Great tips, @Chris-S!  It's a total change of mindset when you approach content that way. I think at first glance it can seem daunting to sit down and create multiple paths for different audiences, but when you tailor the content to a specific audience and cut out the non-essentials, the content is SO much easier to create. ... View more

They look so happy!  I used to work near a store that sold Bonsai trees, and I bought and killed two of them.   They sent me home with instructions that I followed, but they were so fussy that I swore them off forever. I also like to kill air plants. ... View more

I want to see your plants too, @Caitlin_M! I'm very good at spider plants, and I have a couple plants that seem to be happy without frequent watering, which are perfect for me because I tend to forget to water them.  ... View more

I love being on the water! I'm also ready for some volleyball. 🏐 ... View more

I love board games! I like to buy them for my daughter, but we all know it's really so I can play them. Lol! This was my favorite board game as a kid, and I still play it now. ... View more

Hi, Cally!  Thanks for sharing your email!  I'm loving your brand colors and you have lots to work with! I have a couple of suggestions I can make to you, and they're pretty minor because it's more for desktop viewers (mobile stacks content).    The first is for your first section where you have the three-column layout. The buttons look like stairs, but with a couple of spacers, you can even them out a bit. I'd place one in between the content and the button in the middle column, and one above the content in the third column. (You pretty much want the top of your text to line up, and the bottom of your buttons to line up, and you have wiggle room everywhere in between.   The second suggestion is where your Headlines, Initiatives, and External Resources content is. I'm thinking that using a layout where the image is to the left and the content and button are on the right for all of them will make it easier to match the image sizes. When they're side-by-side like that, the taller images throw off the smaller images next to them, making it look out of alignment.  When they stack on top of each other, you only have to worry about the images being the same width. Then the last suggestion is in the bottom where the social icons are. You can decrease the space between icons so that your LinkedIn icon is on the same row.  The spacing controls are in the Social follow toolbar at the top of the editor when you click anywhere on that icon bar. I hope this helps!  If you make changes, please come back and share them! ... View more

Hi, @AdrianB3!  Thanks for sharing your newsletter! (Thank you for also sharing your feedback about moving a block too!)   Looking over your email, I can see you have lots of info you need to share. You also have your own brand to work with, which is great!   The first thing that jumps out to me, that I think will make the biggest impact, is that each of the sections are formatted a little differently. If you add a headline block to the top of each section, and then put your image, text, and call-to-action button below it, it will make your email look more consistent overall. Since your buttons are white, I think you can get away with using the dark purple of your logo with white text (for good contrast) as the section headline.  (In the Layouts section of the email editor, there is a "Section heading" block that would work well - all you have to do is drag it in and choose the color.         Once the headlines are uniform, you can use different layout blocks below them to suit the content. You can also find them in the Layout section of the email editor. Some of them have background colors or borders around them so you can highlight different parts of your content as necessary. I wouldn't worry about trying to be too uniform with these, because the headlines will go a long way with making your email formatting more consistent.     Then the second thing that I think will make an impact is reducing some of the content in the areas where you can link off to a website with more information. We have a "Read More" block that is perfect for this - when you add the URL it pulls in content, which might save you some time in having to write it. You can edit the image and text content too, so you're not stuck with it. (Just a note that not all URLs are compatible, but they will link the button for you and all you have to do is add the image and text.) Otherwise, if you want to add the content yourself, pick out the things that will entice readers to click, and then leave the website to do the work with the rest of the content.  You have a "More info & sign up" button that is exactly the kind of wording you can use to tell the reader what they can expect when they click.   Then the last thing is to make all the fonts more uniform. If you copy and paste text, use Ctrl+Shift+V to paste it into the editor. Then you can use the global fonts to choose the font, font size, and color. If you want to use different font styles, a good rule of thumb is to make your headlines one font, and your body text another font. Consistency with the formatting makes it easier on the reader. I hope this helps!  Let us know if any of these suggestions work for you!   ... View more

Hi @COSAdministrator!  Thanks for sharing your template with us!    Looking this over, I can see you have a ton of information to cover! I like how each topic is easy to identify because you have really well defined dividers between them. I also think the way you've ordered each section flows nicely. You're most of the way there! If I can make one suggestion about the look, I think it would be to experiment with some of our templates.  If you search "faith" or "religious" in our template picker, you'll find several templates that are designed with multiple sections in mind.  All of the placeholder images, background images, and colors can be replaced, so you really want to look at the style of the sections. (Clicking the preview icon will show you the full design before you select it!) The sections can be copied and used multiple times in your email, pretty similarly to how you're already doing it. Using the templates just frees you up from having to figure out the style and the content. A few templates that stand out to me are "Community News" because it's designed to look like a bulletin board, "Inspiration" because it has a nice header image while you're figuring out your branding, and "Christmas" because it has a styled feature block that you can use to make your top announcements stand out.  Here are some examples:     Hope this helps! Let us know which one you try - we'd love to see what you come up with.   ... View more

Hi, @JenniferB369! Thanks for sharing your email!  As a parent, I get lots of school emails, and I appreciate when they're easy to read! I like your use of dividers between each section. They're clear and consistent. I also like the way you ordered the content where the registration call-to-action is at the top, followed by the school-specific updates, and then the resources for parents. Your branding looks great too!    I have two recommendations for you. The first is for the two sections with the QR codes, which I'm assuming are both images. If I'm viewing your email on my phone, I can't scan the QR code. A simple fix is to add the URL to the image to turn it into a clickable link. Then if the image is tapped, it opens up the page. A second option is to add a link or a button below the image with some clear text that says "Register online," or something similar.   The second recommendation is for the text link as the call-to-action in the kindergarten registration section. It looks great when I view your email on my computer, but on mobile it's a little more subtle and looks a little more like a subheading than a clickable link. My suggestion would be to turn it into a button to give it a little more weight. Overall, your email looks great! I hope this helps! ... View more

That's a great and concise formula, @Nick_S! There's also lots of room for variety in it.   You're reminding me of that old saying, "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." 😆 ... View more

You're welcome! Happy to help ... View more

Hi, @user41717! Each email you send has its own Email Details page that gives you a breakdown of the opens, clicks, bounces, etc. To access the page, you click Marketing > Email, and then select "Sent" from the Status drop-down menu. From there, just click on the name of your sent email. This Knowledge Base article covers everything you'll find on the Email Details page. Hope this helps! ... View more

You're welcome! Good luck, and let us know how it goes ... View more

That's fair! The work doesn't stop!  I agree that the follow-up is important. I like to know if a goal is met (or even better, exceeded!) ... View more

Hi @Chuck_Tipton!  Thanks for your question! I think your best bet is to create a new list each time you upload your contacts from the Excel file. The reason is that when you upload to an existing list, it adds new contacts and updates existing contact info if their email address is already on your list, but it doesn't delete contacts that are already in your Constant Contact list but not on your spreadsheet. You can use a naming convention that includes the date you upload it so that you know you're using the most current version, and you can always rename or delete an outdated list.  Hope this helps! ... View more

Thanks for sharing @user13965! Events are great because there is so much energy around them. Do you mind if I ask what you do in between events to keep up momentum? ... View more

I love when a retailer supports local makers! ... View more