Great tip by DadBlaze, that's exactly what I do. Another great tip I use is to post my status on Facebook as "Eric is finishing up his e-newsletter. Sign up here" with the link to my Constant Contact signup form. Between all my social networking sites I am active on (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) I usually get 5 new subscribers on average per month when I do this. ... View more

I would also consider in addition to joining the Women's Symposium that the local Chamber of Commerce is a great way for you to build your client base by networking with local area businesses. Maybe even setting up an employee appreciation program of your services to offer other business owners. In addition to networking in person at events in your area. I do think you need at least a basic website, otherwise people will have hard time finding you. Even if it is just a simple website or free blog which you can set up through http://wordpress.com it really is a must have for businesses in this day and age because so few people utilize the yellow pages anymore. Best of luck! ... View more

Great tip by DadBlaze above and newsletters are typically rich in content so you are already ahead of the SEO Game in that regard! A couple of more ideas to keep in mind are to use keywords in the html page name i.e. www.yourwebsite.com/search-engine-optimization-newsletter.html Also include those relevant keywords in your Page Title as well. I say relevant because if Google looks at the page and the rest of it doesn't have any related content to the document name or page title...it will discard that page from being indexed. Hope that helps! ... View more

I have done a similar campaign for a non-profit that I worked with. Using email marketing is a great way to touch base with your existing supporter base. So you already have the right idea! The hardest part is getting them to share that message unless it is a cause they themselves are passionate about. Another way to get people to share it with their friends is to also build "share with a friend" links into your web site landing page (where the email will link to on your site as well as onto the donation page. If you can't do it on the donation page consider plugging the share with a friend link on the redirect page on your site where the donor will be taken after making their donation (usually a thank you page or a successful transaction page of some sort). Yet another way is by including a ShareThis (similar to the version on this page) or AddThis button ( http://addthis.com/ ) which allows the end user to not only share your fund-raising campaign through email but also to share it with anyone they may talk to online on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. At any rate best of luck with your fund-raising campaign and hope these ideas might be helpful!! ... View more

I just thought I'd add onto this forum string with a little further information I have developed through my own list research about integrating video into your email marketing campaign. I have done a few seminars with Constant Contact in New England about how best to integrate email marketing with online video. When I read these fantastic statistics Ron posted from the Email Standards Project where their research showed that a “…screen grab was clicked on more than 5 times as often as the text link.” Of course being a video production company I latched onto these stats and used them to my benefit in these seminars.…but then I wondered…what would my own research find if I did a similar test? Well I conducted my own version of this test and while I didn't come up with a full 5x as often; I did find that including video in our campaigns led to a very significant 175% increase in click-throughs or almost 2x as often. Another really interesting fact is that our open rate remained virtually the same which basically means we had a 64% decrease in the number of click-throughs on our e-newsletter when we do not include video. I should point out that my list was accustomed to receiving an email with a video included every month for over a year as opposed to adding a video as a new feature on one or two monthly e-newsletters. This may explain the difference in the click-through rate ratio between my test and the one done by the Email Standards Project. I wrote a full blog post regarding my own statistical findings if you would like to delve deeper into the numbers but I just thought I would share my own findings with the Constant Contact User Community as well. ... View more

Hello Connect Up User Community! This seminar will be held on Thursday, October 23, 2008, 10am – 12pm in Mansfield MA called Viral Marketing: The Power of Combining E-Mail Marketing & Online Video. You can also view this description on the Constant Contact New England Local Events Schedule with Zak Barron. This interactive seminar will provide you with valuable information regarding using video as a marketing tool, including best practices and winning strategies in email marketing. Watch our movie about the seminar. Registration for the event is $10. You can register on the SmartMarket Movie website. Feel free to invite a friend and we hope to see you there! ... View more

Hello, First...do you have a website? This would be the best way to put up a gallery with the 50 or so different photographs. This is the best way because then the person is linked back to an image gallery that is branded to your business. If you do not have a website, you should definitely get one :d In the meantime though you could set up an image gallery at FlickR which is an online photo management site and community. You will be able to host hundreds and hundreds of photos here. Just make sure you make your profile public and brand it to your business so others can find you. Another option you may want to explore is Etsy. Etsy is an online marketplace for buying & selling all things handmade which may get you an extended marketplace for your aromatherapy products. Just a couple ideas. Ideally you will want your the images hosted on your own website and use sites like FlickR and Etsy to drive additional traffic from these online communities to visit your website and join your e-newsletter. Best of luck! ... View more

Hi Ally, Depending upon who your market is that is where you should get involved and list the web address of your archived newsletter where applicable. I create online marketing videos for companies so what I usually do may not apply to you. 3 days after sending out our monthly e-newsletter (I wait so there is value to signing up to be on our email list because you get the information first rather than just putting it online immediately) I post the e-newsletter to our archive on the website called "Reruns". Then I post the message that the newsletter is available with a link to it on a few online social media accounts I use including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and a few other sites, even the Constant Contact User Form when applicable. If you are not familiar with these sites you should check them out, what they allow you to do is build a community of friends, business relations & co-workers so you can share information for free and let them know what you are up to. So every time I archive an e-newsletter, write a new blog post or have a new event - I let everyone of my friends following me on these sites know. This can also leads to a number of new e-newsletter sign ups because it they like what they read it they want more and want to be among the first to know. These sites may not be applicable for your purposes but I imagine that Facebook and Twitter would be good places to start. I hope this is helpful and I wish you the best of luck! ... View more

We are focused on "Green Marketing" and are working solely business to business. We create online marketing movies for businesses and help our customers with their email marketing programs. Basically one of our big pushes is why spend money doing a direct mail print campaign when you are only going to get less than 2% return, all of those printed pieces will end up in a landfill somewhere (which ultimately is also like throwing your money away) and if you want to run that direct mail campaign again ALL of your costs repeat. Using email marketing that is linked to an online video is not only more effective but it can be reused endlessly so it is also far more cost effective. When you combine this with actively participating on social networking sites you have the ability to expand your campaign even further. Sites like Greenopolis.com might be very helpful for you to interact in the online green community. Here is a link to my profile there http://greenopolis.com/myopolis/members/eguerin. Glad to know there is another "Green Business" active on the ConnectUp! Forums and feel free to contact me at any time to discuss anything further. All the best! ... View more

I highly recommend DreamHost All of their packages start with 500GB with 5 TB of transfer per month. I've been using their services since 2002 and have had no problems. I transfer many of my customers to use their services (several of my customers were also having problems with bluehost.com as well) Their package options are below: 1. Month-To-Month - $49.95 Setup / $10.95 per month 2. One Year Pre-payment - No Setup Fee / $119.40 for the year (works out to be $9.95 per month) 3. Two Year Pre-payment - No Setup Fee / $214.80 for two years (works out to be $8.95 per month) 4. Three Year Pre-payment - No Setup Fee / $286.20 for three years (works out to be $7.95 per month) All options include one free domain name registration, each additional domain name and domain name renewals are $9.95 each. If you choose to use DreamHost please use this link http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?45702 (they also have a great referral program :d ). All the best! ... View more

Nice catch...I didn't notice the extra http:// I'd agree with redlineryan's assessment that the charts and graphs are particularly hard to read. It kind of looks like they were a large graphic that you placed into the newsletter and then sized it down. I say this because the pixel interpolation when you do this generally affects text the worst and that appears to be what is happening here. I would recommend resizing the chart as an image to EXACTLY the size you need in the newsletter in some sort of image manipulation program like Photoshop first. Also make sure you aren't compressing the image too much as this will appear to make the charts blurry also. I'd also consider "branding" that top image to reflect more about GEA consulting, if that is the first image the user sees it doesn't necessarily reflect your business or company identity. Other than that, my only suggestion is more of an aesthetic preference to change the main body area to be lighter background with dark text as large areas of text are more difficult for users to read when they are on a darker background. Don't take this constructive criticism the wrong way, the content is fantastic and with a few tweaks I think your newsletter could really become even better! Best of luck! ... View more

Well you caught my attention as green advertising is something that my company is passionate about but the link you provided didn't seem to work? Can you try to repost it? ... View more

Do you already have a web site designer you are working with to develop your e-commerce site? If you are, he/she should be able to handle your e-newsletter/promotional needs for the website. If you are looking to work with someone "face-to-face" and develop a long term working relationship with, I'd suggest checking your local Chamber of Commerce for a directory of qualified designers in your area. Another source are BNI groups which have local chapters internationally. Make sure during your selection process they have been in business for a while and can handle your e-newsletter/promotional needs. As for hiring over the web and/or using Elance for designers, I and a few of my customers have had mixed results as some of the projects are farmed over seas and something frequently gets lost in the translation. The other problem some of my customers have run into is an eager designer on Elance who underbids on a job, does it well but then "disappears" when you have more work of a similar type. Just make sure you can check references, find someone who has been in business for a few years and find someone you can work with for the long haul. All the best! ... View more

Hello, If you haven't had the chance to attend a seminar in person offered by Constant Contact, I highly recommend it. They offer some great tips and pointers in addition to those listed here by Ron. The regional speaker for New England is Zak Barron and he does a fantastic job working with the audience to solve their problems. You can check his schedule to see where he is speaking next and how to sign up from the Learning Center on your Constant Contact home page. ... View more

What you can do (if you created the .swf and know what you are doing in Flash) is export an animated gif which CAN be emailed. If it is a longer form video .swf containing video, audio or a slideshow presentation you can grab a still from it and embed it in the email content with a link to the website where the .swf is hosted. Post 2281 on this forum has a lot of good information you'll need if it is a longer form .swf containing video content. Best of luck! ... View more

Hello, If you create a link and add the text "mailto:" before the email address it will automatically open a new email address with the email address you specify. Using my company as an example I would create a new link (using the "Insert Link" button, write the email address "info@smartmarketmovie.com" in the "Link Name" field and in the "Link URL" field I would put "mailto:info@smartmarketmovie.com". You can also get a little more technical if you want and pre-populate the subject line. You would do this by adding "?subject=YOUR SUBJECT HERE" after the email address. So the line you would put into the "Link URL" field would look something like "mailto:info@smartmarketmovie.com?subject=YOUR SUBJECT HERE" Best of luck! ... View more

If it is just ONE gif file that you are having problems with, you followed the instructions in the FAQ that Ron posted on 4/21 and you have uploaded gif files before...chances are it is how this particular gif file is saved. I would try going back into your image manipulation program (i.e. Photoshop) and resaving the gif file again (or even try saving it as a JPEG). Best of luck! ... View more

Hi Jack, No fault in trying to set it up yourself...that's how you learn. You may learn that you love to do web design and then again... Since you are already setup with the SiteBuilder software all you need is web hosting. I personally really like DreamHost. Their plans are incredibly affordable and the site admin area is simple to use and navigate. Their customer service department is also incredibly helpful and quick to respond. Best of all they are one of the first carbon neutral web-hosting services which may or may not be important to you. If you are looking for a step up from SiteBuilder, many of my customers use FrontPage. Like any Microsoft program it has it's limitations but generally does a decent job and is a serviceable entry level web design program. It functions in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) mode so it is easy to work with. If you are looking to go for the gusto...Adobe Dreamweaver is my pick for the best web design software on the market. Best of Luck! ... View more

Obviously Ron types faster than I do :d ... View more

Hi Tom, Ron Blaisdell aka "DadBlaze" (who is a Constant Contact ambassador on the forum) had a great post on this about a month ago. You can read all of his statistics and information on thread 2177. As for my own experience marketing to a B2B crowd about using web-based marketing movies...I've found Wednesday mornings around 10AM to give us the highest open rate and click-through rate of any day or time of the week. You'll probably have to experiment though (or speak to other florists who have been using email marketing) and find out what works best for you. Best of luck! ... View more

Great, glad that worked out! I was hoping it was something simple. It's always nice when the easy solution solves the problem :d Best of luck! ... View more

Hello! In the edit mode there is a button on the left hand side that says "Preview" with a little magnifying glass on the button. If you click that there is a field on the left that says "Email Address(es)" where you can enter any email address to send a test email to. You can also add a personal note to that person which will appear above the email body and you have the option to send both the HTML and Text versions of the email if you wanted to preview them both. Then just click the "Send" button and your test email is on the way. If this is what you are doing, try just sending it to one address rather than several. If there isn't a proper break between addresses it could be reading it as one long email address as opposed to several different. Good Luck! ... View more

Hi Joey, I use Adobe Dreamweaver it generates much cleaner HTML code...but of course my business is web development and web-based movies so I need to have a program with this kind of robust flexibility! You may have better luck with Microsoft FrontPage (as that is Microsoft's web authoring software so it produces marginally cleaner HTML code) if you have that installed but I can't make any promises on that definitely working for you. I usually just recommend to my customers who use Constant Contact to pick a template that works for their content (for size, columns, etc.) and then just customize it from there. Seeing how you have some technical expertise (I'm assuming since you were importing custom HTML into CC) you can easily take one that has what you are looking for and then customize the images, HEX color value, fonts,etc. That way you can avoid any annoying hiccups like this that outside HTML being imported can sometimes generate. Many times I find this easier than creating an email in Dreamweaver and then importing the code only to find that it needs more tweaking once it is imported anyway. Best of luck! ... View more

Hi Joey, Outlook 2007 blocks images by default. The user needs to physically allow images from a sender and has to go into their options setting to configure for allowing images. This is especially the case if they are running dual spam filters (such as MS Outlook's "Junk Mail" which comes installed and Norton AntiSpam). IE 7 can cause problems with images when trying to view a page offline (on your desktop) or if the users security settings are set too high (particularly when viewing webmail) but it doesn't sound like that is what you are doing. Just because I have had a ton of problems in the past with code created by Microsoft programs, I would recommend just grabbing ANY template on Constant Contact, upload your images and drop them into the email template. Don't worry about formatting...this is just a test. Once you have dropped the images into the template, send yourself a test email and see if the images work. If they do it is probably an error being created by the HTML code in Microsoft Word. If it STILL doesn't work, try sending the test to a different email on a different computer to view the email and see if it works on that one, it may be a security setting on the computer you are testing on. Stranger things have happened to me with HTML code created from Microsoft programs so I think it would be a good idea to at least eliminate these variables. Best of luck! ... View more

Hi Ron, Great post! I'll just add a few other helpful tips to what you've put together here and I will provide a few links to our archived e-mail newsletters as well as links to the actual videos we sent out on those campaigns. We have had extraordinary results using Constant Contact as a vehicle to help deliver our movies. Here are a few ideas to help people if they are thinking about incorporating video in their email campaign: Entice your audience - Let's face it people like to watch TV...letting them know they can click a link or an image to watch a video could increase your click-through rates by as much as 600% over a standard HTML static page link. The link to our monthly movie release always has the highest click-through rate of any link on our entire e-newsletter we send out. All we use is an interesting screen-shot from the movie and save it as a JPEG image in our Constant Contact email. Keep it short - People aren't going to want to sit through a long video. When creating a video we try to keep all of the movies we create under 4 minutes in length because peoples attention span starts to wane after that. An ideal online video campaign should be between 2 and 3 minutes. If you are creating more of a viral video you could even go as short as :30 seconds. Follow it up - People have just seen your movie. They think it was interesting and you have piqued their curiosity...now what do you do? When you got people's attention you need to act, and one the best ways of doing that is to give them more - make sequels. This could be a new movie that follows up on the first one, a blooper real or even a follow up email through Constant Contact about the process of creating the movie. We also include a call-to-action page at the end of the movies we create which prompts the viewer to take the next step whether that is to pass the movie on to a friend or to contact you directly. Be Funny - There's nothing worse than clicking on a video expecting to be entertained and having to sit through a boring sales pitch. You can still push your product or brand...you just need to do it in a way that is more entertaining and creative to keep your customers attention and get them to take the next step. Know your customers - This may sound silly but if most of your customers are not computer savvy or are on (gasp) dial up...waiting for a video to download may not be right for them. Fortunately most people have at least DSL or faster so a short movie can download in just a few seconds. You need to create the content that works to the demographic you are marketing to. If getting a monthly email from you is a stretch for your customer base then sending them a video is probably out of the question. Finally here are some links to samples of our original Constant Contact archived e-mail, link to the web-based movie that was sent out with that original email and the corresponding statistics for that mailing (our list is about 200 people): • Constant Contact E-Mail October 2007 40 Under Forty Movie Stats: 55.3% Open / 57.7% Click-Through • Constant Contact E-Mail November/December 2007 Holiday Special Movie Stats: 46.7% Open / 76.6% Click-Through • Constant Contact E-Mail January 2008 Alternatives Non-Profit Movie Stats: 43.8% Open / 59.7% Click-Through • Constant Contact E-Mail February 2008 Worcester Business Journal Movie Stats: 46.5% Open / 32.9% Click-Through • Constant Contact E-Mail March 2008 Waste Management Movie Stats: 40.6% Open / 44.9% Click-Through I will post April's links and statistics here after they come out (we send out our e-newsletter on the last Tuesday of the Month). All the best! ... View more

Hello, I frequently use istockphoto.com for myself and my customers image needs. They are really inexpensive and you have the option of downloading multiple file size options so if you wanted to use the image in a printed brochure, on your website and on your Constant Contact e-mail you have the versatility to download the largest size you need and then resize it. Using the same image across multiple marketing formats will also help you increase your brand recognition. Most images are inexpensive (they have options for as little as $1) which makes them quite affordable. Best of luck! ... View more

Hello, The easiest way I have found is to save them in a MS Excel (.XLS) file, make sure the column heading in the first line is Email Address. Then just drop all of the email addresses into the column below that heading and you shouldn't have any problem importing them. Since you don't have (or don't need) the first and last name this should work fine. If you did want to import first and last name you could simply add columns with the headings First Name and Last Name and enter the information in the appropriate column prior to uploading the XLS file. Best of luck! ... View more

Hi Zak, I attended your "Power of Email Marketing" event about a month ago and the biggest idea I took back with me was the concept of how to greet people at networking events and ask them if I can sign them up to my e-newsletter. I will meet 20-30 people at a chamber event and send them a single e-mail about my web-based movies, but I never took that next step of the process in asking them AT THE EVENT if I could sign them up for my e-newsletter. It was always a follow up email. Great idea, I just never thought of it...I always asked on the email I sent the next day. Now by asking in person and asking on the follow up email I am getting a better response for my opt ins (too soon to tell the exact statistical improvement yet). To any New England Constant Contact Users - I was so impressed by the presentation content, that as a business partner with Constant Contact I have asked Zak to do a seminar in my area of Central Massachusetts and we are in the process of working on this content now. If you haven't had the chance to go to one of Zak's presentations it is very engaging and he presents a lot of information without getting overly technical. I work on internet marketing concepts for my business and I was very impressed with this presentation. No matter what your skill level with Constant Contact, there is something for everyone to learn and take home from this presentation from the beginner on up to the savvy marketing expert. You should definitely plan to attend one of Zak's seminars soon! ... View more