About Amanda-S

Customer name: New England Outdoor Center   How long they’ve been a customer: 14 years   Fun fact: Among their many offerings, the NEOC hosts annual photography workshops during peak moose viewing season.   Where you can find them: Website Facebook Instagram   Matthew Polstein's journey with the New England Outdoor Center (NEOC) began as a daring leap during his college years when he convinced his parents to let him pause his studies to start a whitewater rafting business in Maine. Little did he know, this venture would blossom into a thriving hospitality empire over the next 42 years, expanding to include 21 houses, a microbrewery, a pizzeria, and an event center.   The transition from a simple rafting business to a comprehensive resort didn't come without its challenges. Initially, NEOC relied on printed mailers for marketing, which proved both costly and time-consuming. The shift to digital marketing, particularly email marketing through Constant Contact, marked a significant turning point. "We had always struggled for space to pick what's important to show and how you're gonna show it. With email now, we can pack a lot more information into something without overwhelming people," Matthew explains. This new strategy allowed them to effectively communicate with different segments of their audience, from current guests to potential new visitors and even job seekers.   Matthew Polstein of NEOC Tallie Martin, NEOC’s Marketing Manager, has played a crucial role in crafting engaging content using the customizable email templates provided by Constant Contact. "Templates are nice because they’re similar to how AI helps us; it gets the creative juices flowing. I can just drop a different color and change the background pattern and move stuff up and down.”   Through these efforts, NEOC has not only managed to stabilize their operations but also foster lasting connections with their customers, driving growth even during the off-season. Their email marketing strategy has proven effective, with Matt proudly noting, "We've watched the statistics of who opens and digs deep into our e-mailings and we know that bookings are generated after we do an email. We wouldn't keep doing it if it wasn't generating real dollars on the revenue side, and it is."   As NEOC continues to expand its reach, particularly with the opening of a new event space aimed at attracting wedding celebrations in 2023, the future looks bright. With a solid foundation built on innovative marketing strategies and a deep understanding of their audience, NEOC is set to continue sharing their little slice of paradise with many more visitors for years to come.   Want to bring your subscribers along for your adventures? Here’s what NEOC packs in their marketing backpack:   Contact and email segmentation: NEOC specifically tailors their content to different audiences, like nature lovers in summer and snowmobilers in winter. Drag and drop email templates: Using Constant Contact’s templates, NEOC’s Marketing Manager, Tallie Martin, crafts engaging emails. "[Templates] are nice because they’re similar to how AI helps us; it gets the creative juices flowing," she says. List growth tools: NEOC works to constantly build their subscriber list, ensuring ongoing engagement. "Our email list has always been important to us," Matt explains. Reporting and analytics: The center utilizes heat map data to refine email layouts and calls to action based on how customers interact with content. ... View more

Tell us a little about who you are and what you do at Constant Contact:    I’m Tara Natanson, and I’m the Manager of ISP (Internet Service Provider) Relations at Constant Contact. My primary focus is on deliverability– making sure our customers have the tools they need to get their email into inboxes! I’ve been in the industry for more than 23 years, and I’ve seen a lot of changes and developments over the years.    I collaborate with other email and internet service providers to reduce network abuse and refine email best practices, which as you can imagine, are continuously evolving. If there’s one thing I’m really dedicated to, it’s making sure the email industry continues to hold a place for small businesses to succeed.   We heard a lot about changes that Google and Yahoo! were making at the beginning of the year. Can you explain those changes?   So last October, Google and Yahoo announced requirements they wanted to see across emails sent to their systems. Because these are pretty big email providers that a lot of people use, you can imagine this turned the email sending industry on its head for a little bit!  As an industry, we were all scrambling to see what needed to be done before February 1, which was the deadline they gave for meeting those new requirements.    As it turns out, Yahoo and Google weren’t asking for anything new or earth-shattering, they just wanted to see all senders using the authentication and unsubscribe practices that have been considered best practices for many years already.  What this really meant was that they could more easily filter out the bad mail from the good to improve the end user experience. So we wanted to make sure our customers appear as good senders.     Constant Contact already had some offerings in place to help customers with authentication, right?   One of the things we’ve always been really focused on at Constant Contact is the importance of sender domain reputation – meaning how trustworthy our customer’s domains seem when they’re sending out emails. So because of that, we’ve offered domain authentication (self-authentication) basically since its inception in the early 2010s.    We also recognized that a lot of small businesses aren’t able to easily make changes at the domain level, either because they don’t control their domain, or because they don’t have access to the right records. It can be pretty technical for people who don’t live in this world all the time. So we helped close that gap by offering our customers the ability to set up a subdomain of Constant Contact’s authentication domain so they could build their own domain reputation even without control over the technical side.   When the changes from Google and Yahoo came, how did that change what Constant Contact was already doing?   Years ago, Constant Contact gave all of our customers the ability to create a subdomain of our own ccsend.com domain so that we could DKIM sign their mail (DomainKeys Identified Mail is a way of authenticating email that helps verify the message was sent from an authorized source). We knew that domain reputation would be heavily based on the DKIM signature and that it might be difficult for customers to set up on their own domain.    These new authentication requirements mean that the domain in the DKIM signature must match the domain found in the “From:” address. Luckily, our historical focus on domain reputation and deliverability really set us up for success here.  When Google and Yahoo! announced their most recent changes, we were able to dust off that existing subdomain infrastructure, and let our customers set up addresses at their customized subdomain. We then set this as the “From:” address on their mail to meet the requirement that the “From” address match the DKIM signature domain. This means that even our customers who don’t have mail set up at their website domain are able to have their mail authenticated in compliance with the new requirements.     So what do Constant Contact customers need to do from here?   As soon as you log into your Constant Contact account, you’ll see a window explaining your options and choices, provided you haven’t already gone through these steps. It’s impossible to miss! And from there, there are three ways we’ve created to help you meet the requirements – we even talked to Google and Yahoo! about these options and got their thumbs-up, so we feel great about being able to offer them.   Option 1: You can send from your own domain and self-authenticate. To learn more about how to do that, we have an entire walkthrough on our Knowledge Base here. Sending from your own authenticated domain helps with brand recognition and is the recommended best practice.   Option 2: you can select a subdomain from Constant Contact to send from, like yourbusiness.ccsend.com. You would then create a sending address within your account such as “hello@yourbusiness.ccsend.com” When you send your campaign, Constant Contact takes care of all of the authentication work for you and you are able to benefit from having a unique authentication domain.  This method is recommended if you don’t have a domain you can send mail from or you do, but you’re unable to complete the authentication steps outlined in Option 1.   Option 3: While those first two options are the best routes to take, we know it might be hard for customers to know which option to choose, or they may not know how to take action. So we created a fallback option in which we rewrite your   “From:” address so that the email is still coming from an authenticated domain. (So for instance, john@gmail.com would become john-gmail.com@shared1.ccsend.com). This is a last resort method.  Your mail will be signed and will meet the authentication requirements, but you will be sharing domain reputation with other senders who fall into this bucket, rather than building your own domain reputation.     What feedback are you hearing from customers about this?   It really doesn’t hit home until you see it in action, and until customers talk to you about it. A few months ago, I received an email from an IT professional at a university who’s been trying to get all the individual senders across the campus to properly authenticate their email. With so many different departments using different software to send mail, this is a daunting task. As a technology professional, she was able to look at their DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) reports and immediately understand that the time and effort we put into this was making a positive difference. She specifically reached out to tell me she had noticed and appreciated it, which is just such a great feeling.   You’ve made the authentication steps sound really easy! But if customers have questions, what should they do?   We’ve got a number of resources around authentication and deliverability if our customers still have questions!    Visit the deliverability hub on the Constant Contact Community.  Check out our KnowledgeBase article about the authentication process.  If you still have questions, please contact a Constant Contact deliverability specialist to help you with your authentication needs. ... View more

Customer name:  Orange County Asperger's Support Group - Autism in Entertainment Conference   How long they’ve been a customer: 1 year   Fun fact: OCASG recently hosted their inaugural Autism in Entertainment Conference on April 5 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.   Where you can find them:  Website Instagram Facebook LinkedIn   When Orange County Asperger's Support Group (OCASG) President Judi Uttal’s son was transitioning to college, she discovered a huge opportunity for individuals on the spectrum like her son – namely gaining confidence into adulthood through activities like learning social and public speaking skills. It was this discovery and her ensuing journey that led her to OCASG, an organization that provides resources, support, and programming for individuals on the autism spectrum, particularly those with high-functioning autism.   One key initiative that the group has undertaken is Autism in Entertainment, a workgroup and conference aimed at connecting adults with autism to opportunities in the entertainment industry.   “I have a wonderful team of people working to support this conference, but one of my focuses was the marketing. I knew that the platform I had for running our business was not the right platform for meeting the goals of the conference, so I looked around at some different products and I am so grateful that I chose Constant Contact,” Judi says of the role Constant Contact has played in the conference’s inaugural year.   With Constant Contact Premium, Judi and the Entertainment in Autism staff were able to quickly grow awareness, support, and registrations for their conference, which took place in the first week of April. “The demand has been amazing,” Judi shared. “We were shooting for 120 or 130 people with talent. We are ending up with 150 and I had to turn away another 150 just to get there.”    Growing and managing a new event and a brand-new supporter base takes a lot of time and attention, so OCASG engaged the help of a Constant Contact Marketing Manager, a decision Judi hails as a game-changer. “Having that expertise available to us allowed us to conquer some technologies that might have been just a real pain had we not had Constant Contact as a partner, and it was just effective and very positive.”   In the end, the event was a huge success, attracting more applicants, exhibitors, and partners than the group had even dared to hope for, and garnering national media attention from outlets like Variety and Getty.   “We've over-exceeded our marketing goals. I know there's going to be a line of people out the door wanting to go to our conference,” Judi said of the success she’s seen from using Constant Contact. “I know I had to come up with other ways of fundraising to help pay for the overabundance of people that want to come – and part of that was having the right marketing tool behind all the efforts we were putting in.”   Given the tremendous success of the first year, we can’t wait to see what’s in store for OCASG and the Autism in Entertainment Conference in the future.   Want to grow your community beyond even your most ambitious goals? Here’s the supporting cast of Constant Contact tools the OCASG used:   Email - From launch announcement and welcome emails to event reminders and post-event recaps, OCASG did a great job utilizing email to keep their audience informed, excited, and prepared. And with an incredible 72% open rate and 23% click rate, it’s obvious their subscribers were engaged and ready for more.     Tip: OCASG made use of lists and segments to ensure their emails were reaching the right parts of their contact list.   Automations - With such an engaged and complex audience, it was important to OCASG that the right messages went out to the right people at the right time, and Constant Contact’s custom automation paths helped them handle event registrants, notifications for rejected registrants, and exhibitor information, all in a streamlined, automated workflow.   Tip: Using custom automation paths helped OCASG match up the exact triggers and messaging they wanted to send.   Social Media - With the help of Constant Contact Marketing Manager Bethany Crocker, OCASG helped grow their social media following for the event by integrating Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn with their Constant Contact account.     Events - OCASG managed a complex registration and ticketing process through Constant Contact’s events platform, ensuring the talent, employers, exhibitors, and caterers were all appropriately registered and ready for the day-of festivities.   Tip: You can set up event registrations, add-ons and more in Constant Contact.   Landing Pages and Signup Forms - How do you go from 0 to 1000 in a year? We’re talking contacts, of course. In this case, you use lead generation landing pages, registration landing pages, and web signup forms to ensure that people who are interested know how to follow you and stay up-to-date with everything you’re doing.     SMS Text Messaging - In an on-the-go industry like entertainment, it’s important to stay in touch with people wherever they are. That’s why OCASG used SMS messaging to send reminders and welcome messages throughout the event registration process.   Tip: Have you added SMS to your Constant Contact account?   AI Content Generator - Of course, knowing exactly what to say in all these channels doesn’t come easy, and Judi leaned on the content generator. “I love the AI tool. I used that quite a bit to create copy. I found it wrote effective copy for me and saved me time, as well.”   Tip: The AI Content Generator isn’t just for email. ... View more

  Download the Spring 2024 Small Business ReportDo you ever feel like you can’t find the time to really market your business, and when you do, you feel uncertain if you’re doing the right things? If so, you’re not alone. To better understand how we can help small businesses tackle their marketing challenge, we conduct regular research to dig into the latest trends among small businesses, and what we found in our most recent study is that small businesses like yours need more time, confidence, and strategic help in order to take things to the next level.   Take a look at the numbers… and what you can do to overcome these challenges if you find yourself agreeing with these stats. The Confidence Conundrum      Businesses are struggling with feeling confident in their marketing efforts, particularly while facing unpredictable economic factors. Here’s what we found:   81% of small businesses are concerned about the economy – a larger concern this year than when we asked last year, with businesses in the UK feeling the pinch the most. 73% are feeling iffy about their current marketing strategy and aren’t sure it’s working – and you’re more likely to feel that way if you’re a solopreneur or a relatively new business. To combat this, 44% state they’re going to spend more time on marketing this year, and 39% expect to spend more money, as well.  But perhaps more importantly than time and money, 82% of businesses agree that variety matters - using multiple marketing channels leads to better results.   Investing in marketing, whether it’s time or money, is an obvious choice for small businesses, and while strategic, consistent marketing can help businesses weather economical ups and downs, it’s important to remember that just throwing time and money at your marketing might not get the results you want.     Before you really decide where your efforts will go, stop and evaluate your current strategy and where you might have gaps. Is email marketing your only channel? Consider finding your next batch of new fans by trying out social media or online ads. Are you active on social but worried about the algorithm? That’s where SMS text messaging and email marketing can help you own your audience.   See how:   Integrate social media into your Constant Contact account Create a landing page for email sign-ups Add SMS text messaging to your Constant Contact account   Time Troubles     It’s no mystery that time is a precious commodity for small business owners. But it’s hitting marketing efforts particularly hard.   56% of SMBs say they have an hour or less each day to spend on marketing. It’s no surprise, then, that 34% of small businesses think efficiency is the key to achieving their marketing goals. Does this sound like you? 52% routinely procrastinate on their marketing in favor of other things on their to-do list.  The most time-consuming marketing tasks are posting on social media, planning and strategy, and figuring out what’s working.   So how can you save time but still manage your marketing?     Here’s where it’s important to take advantage of the tools that can help automate and streamline your marketing, like:   Integrations - Integrating Constant Contact with the tools and technologies you already use can save time and give you better, more centralized data and insights. Content generation - We know staring at a blank email or social post and trying to figure out what to write can eat up a ton of your day. This is where tools like our Content Generator can save the day– and your time. Marketing automation - Get the message to the right people at the right time, without lifting a finger. Automation can get routine communications off your hands and into your customers’.    See how:    Integrate Constant Contact with common tools like Vimeo, Shopify, WooCommerce, Canva, Outlook, Eventbrite, DonorPerfect, and more. Generate content with confidence with Content Generator Create an automated email series   Conclusion     You’ve got what it takes to succeed – but it’s important to make the best use of your time and resources in order to reach new customers and supporters and to continue building stellar relationships with your existing audience. By utilizing multiple outlets, like email, social media, SMS text messaging, events, and more, you can diversify your audience and stay top of mind. And time-saving tools like integrations, automations, and content generation can help you use all these channels efficiently – without spending all of your precious time.   We’re Here to Help!   Don’t forget – we’re here to make your marketing stress-free, so you can focus on what you do best – running your business. At the end of the day, whether you’re struggling with finding the time to market your business, or with figuring out what’s the right move to take next, we can help. Here are just a few of our resources to help set you up for success.   Constant Contact KnowledgeBase Constant Contact Support Constant Contact Community    And if you’re interested in reading more about how your fellow businesses feel about these and other topics, check out the full Small Business Now Report. ... View more

Customer name: House of Guitars   How long they’ve been a customer: 12 years   Fun fact: The House of Guitars’ CD & Record Shop features a “Wall of Rockstar Signatures” with hundreds (if not thousands!) of rockstar signatures, including Steven Tyler, Ozzy Ozbourne, and Nancy Sinatra.   Where you can find them: House of Guitars website, Facebook, Instagram     The House of Guitars in Rochester, NY isn’t your average music store. With vinyl records, posters, and autographs covering the walls, stepping into the music supply and record store is more like stepping into a rock ‘n’ roll museum.   The story of House of Guitars began back in 1964 when brothers Armand and Bruce Schaubroeck started the store in their mother’s basement. They didn't have much money, but what they did have was a passion for music and a gut instinct about just how much others loved music, too.    “It was perfect timing. Everybody wanted a guitar, everybody wanted to be like the Beatles,” said Bruce of their humble beginnings. Fast forward to today, and House of Guitars is known as the largest music store in North America.   They sell all kinds of guitars, amps, and other musical instruments, both new and vintage. But they're not just a store. They also host live performances, offer music lessons, and even have their own record label, making it a world-class destination for musicians and music lovers.   With famous bands and musicians like Metallica, the Ramones and Steven Tyler just swinging by to hang out, it has a storied history and a lot of credibility in the music world– but that doesn’t mean they don’t have to market themselves to keep the business thriving and the music playing.   After their inception, House of Guitars relied on traditional marketing methods like word-of-mouth and direct mail. But as the internet grew in popularity (and so did potential avenues for competition), they knew they had to adapt. So they turned to social media, email marketing… and Constant Contact.   For nearly 13 years, House of Guitars has used Constant Contact to stay in touch with their fans and customers. Their regular subscriber newsletter keeps their audience informed about new music releases, product sales, upcoming performances, and events. And with open rates higher than the industry average, it’s easy to see that it’s working!   “People don’t like getting a bunch of stuff sent to their [physical] mailboxes. So with Constant Contact, we can email more regularly without annoying them,” said Michael Schaubroeck, Manager of House of Guitars. “It makes it very easy to reach out to our customers on a weekly basis.”   Constant Contact provides them with email templates, drag-and-drop functionality, and video embedding, making it easy for them to design unique and engaging content.    “We're focusing on the Internet more than ever. whether it be texting or emailing or Facebook or Instagram, that's the way to reach people today. That’s our goal, to really focus on what we can do to get people excited,” shared Bruce.   Want to be a marketing rockstar like House of Guitars? Here are their greatest hits:   Using Constant Contact mobile-friendly templates  Keeping things efficient and easy with image upload and drag-and-drop design Including video in their emails to drive engagement and interest Including a sign-up sheet at their checkout to grow their list Using Constant Contact analytics to keep track of open and engagement rates By embracing digital marketing and continually seeking new ways to engage and rock with their customers, House of Guitars is reaching more people and providing a strong backbeat for their small business community. ... View more

Customer Name: The Rochester Lilac Festival   How long they’ve been a customer: 12 years   Fun fact: This 10-day festival features thousands of lilac bushes in 800 varieties   Where you can find them: Facebook, Lilac Festival Website   The Lilac Festival isn’t your average festival– unless your average festival includes thousands of flowers and hundreds of thousands of visitors. This ten-day extravaganza in Rochester, NY features beautiful blooms, local vendors, and more than 85 artists, so it’s no wonder it attracts an average of 500,000 attendees every year, making it the largest festival of its kind in North America.   So how do they get the word out? Well, behind the scenes, the festival team relies on Constant Contact to spread the word and keep their audience informed.   “I am constantly marketing the business. It’s number one on my list of priorities, so I use Constant Contact daily,” says Lexany Rivera, the Production Manager and Director of Marketing for Rochester Events. Calling herself the “Canva queen,” Rivera uses Constant Contact’s integration with Canva to make sure their emails portray the beauty and excitement of the Lilac Festival, and she cites segmentation as a game-changer for effectively engaging their audience.   “Given the fact that we have so many different people, it's tough for us to be able to nail down who exactly we want to hit with what messaging. But Constant Contact helps us do that with email segmentation,” Rivera explains. “It helps us know what people really want to hear from us… because nothing makes my heart more sad than seeing us lose followers!”   Lexany RiveraTo gather data and preferences from their subscribers, the festival team created a sign-up form that allows people to opt-in and select their notification preferences. This way, they can send relevant information about the Lilac Festival or other events hosted by Rochester Events based on what their subscribers want. And that level of targeted communication is working– the Lilac Festival has built a healthy email list over the years, growing their contact list by 14% year over year.   But even with such successful Email Marketing strategies in place, Rivera and the team are always innovating, learning, and looking for the next new thing, citing Constant Contact’s webinars as a source of ongoing education and inspiration. Now, they’re fixing their sights on what the next big marketing move will be for them, including expanded channels. “We will always be using email,” Rivera says. “But to be able to shoot a text? That’s going to be a game changer for us.   Rivera sums up her experience using Constant Contact with a common theme we hear among our small business customers: “I have to be quick on my feet, and Constant Contact gives me that ability.”    Want to see your list bloom like The Rochester Lilac Festival? Here’s the bouquet of marketing tactics they manage with Constant Contact:   Using Constant Contact for email marketing and segmentation Creating a sign-up form for subscribers to self-select their preferences Integrating Canva for easy email design Utilizing WooCommerce to track merchandise sales Networking with similar companies for growth opportunities Taking advantage of Constant Contact's webinars and ongoing customer education How to Segment Your Email List in Constant Contact [April, Multiple Dates Available]    With these strategies in place, the Rochester Lilac Festival team continues to foster community, promote local art, and make their festival a must-attend event for residents and visitors alike.   ... View more