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The holidays are the biggest spending season of the year — are you prepared to claim your piece of the pie? With all of the holiday promotions out there, it can be difficult to get your audience's attention.    We recently hosted a webinar where we discussed how to set up an online marketing strategy for your business to prepare for the busy holiday season. A few highlights from the webinar included: How to prepare your marketing for the holidays How to execute your holiday plan How to prepare for ongoing success after the holidays In this post, you can watch the webinar in its entirety and read some of the questions asked by our attendees. Interested in our free, future webinars? Sign up here to stay informed!     Resources mentioned during webinar: Holiday Marketing 101 Holiday Planning Worksheet   Holiday Marketing   Do you have any holiday marketing tips for those of us who are in the service business other than discounts or special offers? As a service business, you can still offer something to your audience over the holidays. You can share your expertise or hints & tips and even position it as a holiday gift. You can even share simple "Happy Holiday" messages that keep your business top-of-mind.   This was a great webinar. Will there be another one for Black Friday or Giving Tuesday? We don’t have a specific webinar planned for these events but you'll find some great posts over on our Blog which might provide some inspiration for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But we will have another free webinar in November called Last-Minute Holiday Marketing Ideas which you can sign up for!   I see some businesses updating their cover photos frequently on social media. What are some best practices for utilizing Facebook and Twitter cover photos for holiday promos? It is a best practice to switch cover photos up with regularity. On Facebook, unless you turn it off, it sends a notification to your followers that you've updated the image, which is a way to gain exposure, especially if you are highlighting something special for the holidays.   How far in advance should a business send out holiday event emails?  We usually suggest starting two weeks out and then send the reminder emails as well. But this might also be something to test with your own audience to see what works best, especially if you are in an industry where holiday planning for your customers is critical such as restaurants or retail.   Where might I find free content or downloads relevant to current trends for the holidays? It can really depend on your industry, but you can find information that helps you to create downloadable content in a variety of places. You can find some great information on holiday trends through the National Retail Federation*.    Giving Tuesday is really important for our nonprofit. How often should I contact a potential donor in the days leading up to it? Unfortunately, there's no black or white answer to this. Ultimately, you'll want to use a variety of email, social media, and maybe even offline messaging. The thing to note is not everyone will see every message. In terms of email, many organizations send two or three messages a month. You can get away with more if your subscribers are expecting it. On social media, you can get away with posting more frequently. Just make sure you're not posting the exact same message on all of your channels. Check out our Giving Tuesday Playbook for more information on creating a fundraising strategy.   Do you have a Small Business Saturday email template? What about Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Giving Tuesday? Yes, we have all of these templates available. When you are in your account, search for the holiday in the template picker.       Online Marketing   I am new to Constant Contact. Is there a guide book on how to use Constant Contact along with my online marketing? Yes, we have a great free resource called The Download that is perfect for those who are starting out or are looking for an additional resource to keep on hand.   If you are posting to a website, promoting on social media, and sending an email, is it okay to do all three on the same day? Should I stagger this information to avoid donor fatigue? Ideally, your message should look slightly different on all of these channels to match the intended audience. Not everyone will see every message, but you can always stagger them out just in case.    Is there more to Constant Contact than just email marketing? One of my favorite things to do is Facebook Live to show behind the scenes videos but I would love to have my 40,000 followers join my email list too. Yes. In addition to email, we offer websites, social media, and other online marketing tools to help you reach your intended audience. You can easily share a link to a sign-up form in your Facebook Livestream.    I use social media a lot for my business. Do you have any tips on how I can get followers to join my list? We have a couple of different tools to help with this. You can create and share the link to a landing page or even use Facebook Lead ads to target your audience to get them to sign up. Don't make it about the email list, make it about the benefit they'll receive when they join. One great tip is to create a landing page where a new contact can be directed to a webpage or download a file after they sign up.   Does Constant Contact integrate with Shopify? I use them for my online store. Yes, we have a great integration with Shopify! You can segment contacts based on their activity, add products from your store right in your email, and send abandoned cart emails to bring customers back.  Email   Does Constant Contact have the ability to automatically send an email to a new email customer? We have lots of options for Automated emails which we discussed a bit in the webinar. Depending on your package, you can make use of Welcome Emails and Automated Series. The Welcome email allows you to choose from a handful of templates, and will only send to new contacts. An Automated Series is more robust; it allows you to use any default template, or copy an existing email into the series.    Do you have any tips about how many times a week you should send to your email list and at what time during the day? This can vary quite a bit based on your industry and audience but a very broad, general answer is usually between Tuesday and Thursday, preferably in the morning. We have an article on our Knowledge Base about when to send your email that compiles the latest industry data, and it's updated every few months.  *Note: Any links we provide from non-Constant Contact sites or information about non-Constant Contact products or services are provided as a courtesy and should not be construed as an endorsement by Constant Contact.   ... View more

In the busy inbox, you have just a few milliseconds to convince someone to open your email. Beyond the relationship you’ve been building with your contacts, your subject line must capture their attention and entice them to open and read your email.   We recently hosted a webinar where we discussed how taking a few moments to create an enticing subject line can help to improve your open rate. A few highlights from the webinar included: The basics of a good subject line Trends for writing great subject lines Tips for getting creative with your subject lines   In this post, you can watch the webinar in its entirety and read some of the questions asked by our attendees. Interested in our free, future webinars? Sign up here to stay informed!     Subject Lines and Preheaders   What is the difference between the subject line and the preheader? I thought I only needed to include a subject for my emails. The subject line is like the headline on a newspaper article, whereas the preheader is the subheading that can expand upon your subject a bit more. The subject line (other than the From Name) is the first thing your recipients see when your email lands in the inbox.   Do all the templates include the preheader option? I've come across one that I couldn't add a preheader to. All templates except those created under our Event tool include the preheader option.   How can we be sure the preheader shows on all emails? Some email clients don’t display preheaders so there's no way to force one to show but it's worth including some preheader text for those who are able to view it.   What punctuation or special characters can you use in subject lines? What about using all caps so it stands out? You can use most punctuation and special characters in the subject line but it’s important to note that excessive usage of either of these can cause the email to be marked as spam. This is also the case with using all caps when creating your subject line. We have an article about optimizing the subject line that contains a lot of great tips.   Can I include my contact’s first name or other personal information in the subject line? What happens if there is no name under their contact details?  Yes! This is called subject line personalization. This lets you add in contact details such as a first name or other information you have saved for the contact. While editing the personalization, you can choose an optional, secondary text to go in its place (such as “reader” or “friend”) in case the contact doesn’t have a first name saved.   What are the spacing guidelines so the body of your email doesn't appear in the preheader text/email preview? Different email clients and mobile devices have different character limits and ways of displaying the subject line and preheader so there isn’t one solid answer. Some not only display the preheader but also the first sentence or two from your email. Generally, most email clients will truncate - or cut off - subject lines with greater than 60 characters.   The emojis provided in the editor seems limited. Is there a way to add more? While we have our own selection of emojis to choose from, we understand that our customers may be looking for something more unique. You can copy and add emojis into your subject line. We recommend Emojipedia which has a great selection!   Do we need to upgrade to a different plan to use emojis? Nope! This is available for all users of our Third-Generation Editor.   Do emojis display in the resend to non-openers email? Great question. At this time, emojis and special characters (such as a trademark or copyright symbol) do not display in a resend to non-openers email so it’s worth keeping it in mind if you decide to use this feature.     Resend to Non-Openers and A/B testing   What is A/B testing? Where do I find it in my account? Subject line A/B testing is a tool that allows you to compare two subject lines in a small group of contacts to see which is most effective. After a period of time, the “winning” subject line will be sent to your remaining contacts. Once the test is complete and the email has been sent to all contacts, you can review the reporting for your A/B test and use it to make future decisions on how best to entice your readers to open your email.   Why should I use the Resend to Non-Opener feature? As much as you’d love to hope your email is always opened and read by every one of your contacts, it’s understandable that it might get lost in the shuffle or contacts might not have found it of interest to them that day. That’s when the Resend to Non-Openers feature comes into play. You can choose to have your email resent a few days after the original send (we recommend three days but you can choose something different) to those who didn’t open it the first time. The best tip is to make sure you update the subject line so it doesn’t get marked as spam.     Open Rates and Reporting   What's considered a good open rate for email campaigns? There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to this question but we understand our customers look for a number to strive towards. Generally, 30% is a very good open rate but for most accounts, we see the number average between 10-15%. Our Knowledge Base has an article that lists out the average industry rates, including open and click rates.    If our email is viewed on a computer, will viewing the email without clicking it count as an open? If it's in a preview window of the email client, then no, unless the images were downloaded or a link was clicked. See our Knowledge Base article on how opens are tracked.    Do you have a way to track emails that may have come back as undeliverable or if it’s an invalid email address?  Yes, you can view the bounce report for each email that is sent out. From there, you can delete the bounce, which is suggested to keep your contact lists clean.   How do you know if an email you send goes into a spam filter? The short answer is you do not. Unless you're marked as spam, Constant Contact can only tell you whether your email was delivered or not. You can always try sending test emails to different email clients ahead of time to see where they end up, to be safe. We can provide some information about ways to improve deliverability rate.   Do too many images or too many links make it more likely to go to spam? It's possible! Try to balance between your text and images. Too many images will increase the chance of going to spam. A good rule of thumb is one image for about 20 lines of text. Other   Is there a recommendation to how often you send emails to your customer or distribution base?  How much is too much, or too few in any given month? It varies from business to business and industry to industry. Set the expectation with your contacts on how frequently they expect to receive emails from you. Maybe create multiple lists with contacts that want to receive emails at a certain frequency and then send campaigns accordingly. Our Blog has an article that explains more about how often to send emails.  What are the best days and times to send the email? Just like other industry rates for opens and clicks, there isn’t one answer for everyone. We have a list of suggested best times to send based on your industry but you can also review your own reporting to see when your contacts are most likely to open your email.    --------------------   We had so many great questions from our attendees that we had to come back do to another quick video and cover even more topics, including a deeper dive into A/B testing, best practices for emojis and special characters, and how to engage with contacts before they even open your email. Check it out and let us know what you think.   ... View more