Guest Author - Pamela Blackmon

If you subscribe to any electronic newsletters, chances are you’ve seen the familiar multi-colored Constant Contact(CC) logo featuring an envelope trailed by confetti. Depending on how many you subscribe to, you may even recognize the templates.

I first began using Constant Contact about a year ago for a client who issues a monthly newsletter offering tax tips for her clientele. I found the system very easy to use and began using it for other projects, including a non-profit organization for which I handle promotional/scheduling duties.

With over 100,000 customers, Constant Constant has emerged as a popular choice for many organizations ranging from small businesses to non-profit organizations and even individuals seeking to promote their hobbies and ventures. Based in Massachusetts, the company recently upgraded its system, offering easier navigation tools and more modern templates.

Its free 60-day trail is an attractive offer to shoestring marketers seeking a little bang for minimal bucks.

One plus for non-creative types are its customizable templates which let you add your own contact information, pictures & copy. You can also provide links back to your own or other helpful websites.

Here’s an overview of some of its offerings:

Templates:

One of CC’s major appeals are its many different templates that allow you to target specific events and occasions. In addition to the highly popular newsletter templates, CC also features the following:

· Promotions, such as for birthdays, personal services, bridal
and baby showers, and graduations.
· Events & invitations
· Holiday. You can send out mailings celebrating Father’s Day,
Easter, Christmas and other major holidays or events.
· Religious

In many cases, I’ve used one of the above to further promote an event initially featured in a client newsletter. Each template also features different styles such as contemporary to help you further customize your mailing.

With each template are tools to upload pictures, change the background and element colors and choose other features such as font style, size and color.


Reports:
One of the features I use at CC most often are its campaign tracking functions. Click on the Reports section and you can find out how many people opened your newsletter, clicked through to links featured in your publication and how many bounces you had. You can even see who opened the newsletter and who didn’t.


Pricing:
CC offers a free 60-day trial for which you don’t have to use a credit card to sign up. Once you reach a certain number of subscribers, however, you’ll be prompted to upgrade your account. The account remains free as long as you have 50 subscribers or less. Once you exceed that number, the cost rises to $15 per month for 51-500 contacts and doubles to $30 each month once you hit the 501-2500 range.


Help

If you’re stumped while completing an email campaign, you’ll have several options for getting any necessary answers to your questions: telephone or email support, FAQs, tutorials and even webinars. You can also access a user community for help. My favorite source of help, however, is to use the chat feature available weekdays during regular business hours. There’s usually no wait and the specialist can even go into my email campaign and fix whatever problem I’m having if necessary.

If you’re looking for an easy to use newsletter design template, check out Constant Contact as a possible option.