About Caitlin_M

The holidays are right around the corner, but if you don’t have a marketing plan, don't stress. We've got you covered with last-minute holiday marketing tips to help you finish the year strong.   We're taking the most popular questions from our latest webinar and expanding upon them to assist you in promoting your offers and messages using simple yet powerful strategies and learning some time-saving techniques to maximize your impact during the holiday season.   Have a question left over from the webinar? Leave us a comment below.     You can view the webinar directly through Wistia or right here on the Blog!       Our nonprofit does an end-of-year appeal. Any ideas to make ours stand out? I’d check out 11 Ways to Nail Your Holiday Fundraising Appeal This Giving Season. It’s important to acknowledge your donors on a more personal level and highlight how their contributions are positively impacting your nonprofit goals. Design-wise, there are a lot of template options to build from and make your own.     How can I encourage holiday season donors to make the leap into sustained monthly giving? The above answer covers a lot of this ground, but emphasize to your seasonal donors how their contributions have made a positive impact and how much more sustained giving would allow your organization to accomplish your goals.     How do I create and send a holiday greeting to my clients/customers? We have a ton of tutorials on how you can create and schedule email campaigns to your contacts. Plus, you can check out 86 Holiday Templates for Small Businesses & Nonprofits if you need inspiration for how your template could look.      A lot of emails that go out around the holidays are sales-related. What else can I send out that my contacts will enjoy that doesn't involve selling a product? We have lots of suggestions! Do you have any resources to share, like a handout or listicle (Top 10 Things...., 5 Ways to Reduce Holiday Stress, etc)? Maybe they will enjoy a special recipe from an employee. You can have them participate in a contest such as a Ugly Sweater Contest or enter to win a gift card. Be a resource, not just a sales pitch.     How can I talk about the holidays while avoiding using a “Christmas” theme, as to be inclusive to all employees and community members? For the actual written communication, you can simply use the word “Holiday” e.g. “Happy Holidays.” You can also use “Season’s Greetings” or use winter/snow/seasonal motifs to spruce up your verbiage. It’s the same with imagery; focusing on generalized concepts of the season like snow, lights, or warmth. Highlight the gathering of friends, peers, and loved ones as most people tend to do that in the winter months regardless of what holiday is around the corner.   If you’re communicating with your employees, you can just express appreciation for all of their hard work the past year and in the lead-up to the holiday season. Working with clients? Thank them for using your service.     What are some catchy subject lines to pique a customer’s attention? Successful subject lines are an art, not a science (well, maybe a little science). It can depend on a lot of factors, such as who your audience is and what it is you’re trying to promote or bring attention to.  The Constant Contact Blog has a lot of articles that cover subject lines, including 12 Tips for Creating the Best Email Subject Lines.      How do I bring my new customers into my contact lists? Depending on your CRM (such as Shopify or WooCommerce), there may be an integration available to automatically bring over these contacts. If you do sales outside of these programs or even in person, take advantage of our variety of sign-up tools. Create a QR code that connects to a landing page. Doing social marketing? Include a link to a sign-up form in your posts. Don't forget to put one on your website!     What marketing techniques do you recommend for SMS/text messaging? SMS Marketing is big right now, but it’s important to be mindful of the different and more restrictive guidelines that come with it. That said, there are plenty of best practices to build relationships and increase sales using SMS marketing.     Can you tell me more about the Marketing Advisor program? With the service, you get an hour a month to spend with an advisor who can help guide you through a marketing strategy. Whether you're just getting started and need to get your marketing set up or if you've been with us awhile and are looking for better results or an effective marketing plan, our advisors can work with you to meet your goals. Along with having a single point of contact at Constant Contact, you get access to priority support, so if you need to call in for technical help you can skip the line! Click here to find out more about the program. ... View more

You’ve invested time in reviewing your efforts and creating your marketing plan, and now it’s time to put your plans into action.    We're taking the most popular questions from our latest webinar and expanding upon them to assist you with attracting new customers or supporters, engaging your audience with the right message at the right time, and growing your impact and results faster with tools that streamline your work.   Have a question left over from the webinar? Leave us a comment below.     You can view the webinar directly through Wistia or right here on the Blog!       Which social media channels should I be focusing on? There are so many out there and it's a lot of work to create content for all of them. Every small business can benefit from some sort of social media presence. We recommend starting your social media strategy with one primary platform so you don't feel overwhelmed. You'll want to make your choice based on your business type, your goals, and where you’re most likely to find your customers and prospective customers. For example, B2Bs will find the most benefit from LinkedIn. If you are a business that uses a lot of visuals or video in your marketing, Instagram may be the way to go. Try them out and don't be afraid to experiment. Nothing is set in stone.   Blog: How to Use Social Media Marketing to Grow Your Business     Can I post the same thing across social media/email/blogs? We recommend using the same theme but modifying the post to suit each channel. Each channel has different features like the ability to include links and sometimes people expect to see different things on certain channels.     I'm a franchise and I can't make my own website? What can I do? It's worth contacting the franchise to see what options are available for you. If for some reason you are not able to create a website for your specific location, see if you can use social media. Luckily, we have a guide to building your brand on social media.      Some of our contacts are signing up with minimal information. How do we collect more information from them? Or possibly, is a way that allows a customer to update their profile? If you have optional fields on a sign-up form, unfortunately, those are just as they say: optional. People have their own levels of privacy and may not want to give out information about themselves so easily, especially if they are new to your business or organization. In the footer of your emails, you can include a link to an Update Profile form if they decide down the line to tell you more about themselves.     What is a good/bad frequency for sending email? There isn't a standard answer to this question. Good and bad frequency for email varies based on your business and the expectations you set with your audience upon sign-up. In short, you want to send at least once a month so your subscribers don't forget about you. But if you set the expectations appropriately with subscribers and have enough valuable content and information to share, you can send more frequently. Test out different frequencies to see what works for your organization. Watch your reporting, especially unsubscribes, clicks, and conversions to see the effect and adjust your sending frequency accordingly.     Is there anywhere in Constant Contact that shows me the best day/time to email my customers using previous data? You can find the best time to send by looking at your reporting. If you send emails out at different times, is there one that performs the best? See our Knowledge Base article on the best time to send an email.     Several of our emails are not being opened by our contacts who want to receive them. Are these being blocked by the contact’s servers? How do we address this? If an email was blocked, it would show in your reporting. Have them check their spam or junk folders. You can also view your Suspended report. If they continue to not receive your emails, you can contact our Delivery team.     You showed off a lot of integrations. I use Canva to create my graphics. How does that integrate with Constant Contact? If you create graphics in Canva, you can easily export them into your Constant Contact Library for you to use later in your campaigns, including emails, social posts, and landing pages. ... View more