Free Step By Step Constant Contact Training

Getting Started With Email Marketing using Constant Contact

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Webinar, getting started with email marketing and this is a live guided demonstration. Of course this is recorded. With me earlier for the webinar, this is a copy of what we went over when we did the live webinar, so this will act as a follow-up for you to review later. If you missed my webinar and you’d like to join a future webinar, you can just go to powersellingmom.com/webinars and on that page you can subscribe to be, to sign up for future webinars that I would be presenting.

Okay, so again I’m Danna Crawford, you can find me at powersellingmom.com. I’m a certified business consultant and I’m also a Constant Contact Authorized Local Expert. So I’m very proud to be a part of the Constant Contact team because their service is amazing and I’m a true, dedicated user of the site, so it’s my pleasure to share with you what I’ve learned over the years and help you get started with your first email now that you’ve taken that first step with the trial.

If you haven’t setup your trial yet that you received in the email or you’re new and watching this, you can go to powersellingmom.contact.com where I’d have a link at the bottom of this, in the comments section you’ll see, above the comment section in this video you will see a link to go subscribe and receive your free trial.

Alright, moving right along. So today’s agenda, I’m going to give you a live guided demonstration about how to use, create your first email and I’m going to show you how easy it is to create a newsletter. We’re going to talk about color, editing the colors, how to upload photos and using different photo options, links, inserting links and we’re going to talk a little bit about inserting social because it’s important that you’re, that you share all of your emails through the social sites as well and gain followers to all of the social sites. Also there is a contact and reports, so we’re going to talk about uploading your contacts and also paying attention to the reports that you receive. Alright! And of course, this is a live demo, we won’t have time for Q&A, but if you see the comment section as this is posted on YouTube, whoops! Also the Q&A, if you see this, if you’re on YouTube, you’ll see below there is a comment area, you can feel free to ask questions there or just head over to powersellingmom.com and ask any questions that you need and I’ll be happy to answer them.

Alright! So before I log in, just a quick, I know some of you out there already have Constant Contact so I’m going to log into an account shortly but I want to, the purpose of this demonstration is when I do you may not see a screen that looks exactly like the one that you already have if you are an existing Constant Contact member, you would see a screen that looks more like this, which is an older version, and then those of you that are brand new, that create an account, you’re actually going to see a different kind of screen, but either way no matter what kind of screen that you see, you’ll notice that all of the emails that are created, the newsletters are the same. So let’s go ahead and get right to it and go to powersellingmom.constant.com. So as I’ve noticed with the two different things, the two different versions, they’re basically two different front doors but once you get in the front door, they both lead the same functions. Alright! So here we have the home screen.

So when you login, I recommend taking advantage of any tutorials or videos that they offer because it’s an awesome opportunity for you to learn and everyday should be a learning day and it helps us grow and learn new things; everyday I learn something new. So again I’m going to go ahead and close this tab. Now the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to click on create. Now this session is about getting started with basic email marketing and creating an email so, there’s all of these other things going on which I will save for other webinar presentations, but right now let’s click on send an email. And then we’re going to get right to create. Now the first thing you’ll see are all these awesome templates that constant contact has to offer; the list goes on and on with all kinds of shapes and sizes and designs and colors, you can change colors, so I suggest that you look at the different styles of templates and then you can pick and choose which one you feel will work with whatever kind of thing you are sending out.

There’s even specifics for donation, you can see there’s perfect ones for realtors, all kinds, all kinds of templates and you can click on view all templates because there’s even more additional; the list goes on. For different holidays, they’ve made it so easy for us to send out announcements for all the holidays from all over the world as you can see, there’s all different occasions, colors and events. So let’s just get back up to the top and let’s… the other thing is you can go preview any of them before you get started, so let’s start with this one and we’re just going to click select.

And once that comes up, you’ll notice that the header here is your basic, we got our fonts and color, colors and fonts are to the left, these are all of the tiles that show us all of the colors that are being used in this template and then these are the blocks, blocks are the names of all of these little areas to the right; so I’m going to scroll down a little bit so you can see every time I hold my cursor over a block, it gets highlighted and then I can decide if I want to work in that block area or not.

So the first block at the top is always the header; the header is very important and should always be adjusted according to what you’re going to send out, so we just click on the pencil and your subject line is what’s going to help people to open this email, they’re going to see who it’s from and then, they’re going to look at the subject line and they have just a few seconds to determine if they’re going to open it now, later or never, so let’s try to create an interesting subject line, for this example I’ll put…let’s see… testing, testing newsletter for the webinar. Did you attend? So you can make it not too long but you want to make it interesting, testing newsletter for the webinar. Alright! Newsletter is not really intriguing, what would make you want to open up this newsletter or this email coming out? What would make you want to open it up? Something like have you seen the new sign at Starbucks?

Take a look at what I saw. Something interesting that will work for your newsletter or your email going out and then who’s it from? You can put your company name or you can put your full name, whichever you like, just so that it’s recognizable, you want them to recognize who it’s from. And then down here you use the from address is the reply address.

You can also change that if you want to add another additional email address: one for them, who it’s from and then one for them to respond to, it’s up to you. And then, permission reminder, we’re not going to use that right now but you may want to use that later, that’s just a reminder that they have subscribed to your newsletter and that they want to make sure it’s added to the inbox, webpage version, I usually just click that so that if they can’t view it, they have the option to click on a webpage version and then social share links, I always include those because this encourages them to share the newsletter across all of their social sites and then we click okay. So this is a great opportunity for your newsletter to go viral so that people can share it.

Now you’ll see as I’m moving the cursor, let’s move the page down a little bit, to the next block and it, they make recommendations for you. Some readers see this part of your email after the subject line, and inbox, write something brief and catchy, compelling them to open the email. So this is a little intro to the email, so you can put something catchy in there, something like I stopped by Starbucks and ordered a coffee when I noticed this, when I noticed this awesome, when I noticed, when I noticed something… and then a few…save. Alright! And then the next area, we can take [inaudible 11:42] so if we say you know what, I don’t want to add a logo, I don’t want to put my image right there, I can x that out and I can delete the block.

So as I’m moving my cursor down, you’d notice that each block area is highlighted. So let’s say I want to go ahead and work in this area, I’ll click on the pencil in this block and then I’m going to upload an image, so I would just click on change because they’ve already have this image there called logo image and of course I don’t want that. So I’m going to click over to my library. Now if I had a URL of where this was at, I could put a link to the URL where I have the photos stored at, like if you have it on Photobucket, or on your website or wherever you have your photo stock, you could insert that image link or you can store like 5 photos for free, there’s also some stock images that you can use for free. I like to upload mine, so I’m going to customize it and then always make it clickable is poss… if needed, so put an http, powersellingmom.com and then always, I don’t want a caption, the caption would be words that go under the photo but I don’t need a caption this time. But I am also going to put the image description and then that’s important to always write that in there because those people that don’t accept images in their text or HTML in their email, then at least, if they see some words with a link, they’ll understand what the image said, what the image was supposed to be, so they can kind of imagine what it was and it just helps break up the email properly.

So you’ll notice there’s this slide bar, I can make it big, I can make it small, I can resize it, you can also resize it on the page and then we just click insert. Now I kind of would like this to be in the middle so I’m going to highlight it and then click on or if I can move it to the right or the left and then save. Alright! And now, here I can add something else so, the ideas are endless here.

Put a few words in there and then if I say okay I don’t want this information there, I’m just going to x it out and delete it. I’m going to delete this area and then you’ll see these little opportunities for more things, so I’m going to click on image, I’m going to change that image, this time I’m going to go at a different image and I’m not going to make it clickable but I have the laughing-eating-family inserted in there and then here’s where I could write more words and then save and then you can see how I can pick and choose how it’s going to look, what I’m going to do, if there’s an area that I don’t like I put an X in it and delete it and if I…over here I’ll see these other blocks and the spacer, that’s the… well there’s a divider.

I want to put in, say I want to put in a coupon, so you’ll notice that coupon is all the way to the bottom of this list and I just click on the plus and it will add it to the bottom, if I want I move it up, I hold my cursor over the cross and then drag it up to where I want it and then drop it and then I can fill this out and customize what percentage I want on my coupon, I can talk about the offer and then I can put in the expiration date and then save. So as you can see, I’m not going to go into too much details but you can see how easy it is to customize this and here’s something else, when you click on a block and then it…let’s see, let’s see, one with a pencil, let’s go up here, click on one with a pencil, then you’ll notice that these almost come to life over to the left.

These are other things that you can insert into your current block that you are working on. A video link is really fun. You can drag that over or just click the plus and up will come the video that asks, alright asks you for the direct URL to the video that you want to insert, and it’ll actually create an image and then save that for you. We can also go to the image library, it’d bring up your library or you can search for other images or you can go to social. Now I like to add these to the bottom. So I can just click on my Facebook one for example, and these are the options.

I already have my Facebook business page saved, I can click on like us on Facebook, like me or any of the little symbols and then insert it, and it’ll insert it there and I can actually move it if I want to drag it down to the bottom or I can put my cursor in front of it and hit the enter key, enter, enter, enter and move it down that way. And then if for some reason I don’t like it, I can just click on cancel and I’m done and boom, It’ll go back to the way it was.

So nothing’s in stone, you can go in and play around with this, then I encourage you to click on preview and when you click on preview, you can see what it’d look like in your e-mail or you can take it a step further and send it, send a test to yourself, -and when you send a test yourself I also encourage you to send it in both HTML and text version, because then this will let you see what it looks like for those people that don’t have Graphics, that they don’t accept Graphics in their email- and then just click on send a test and then it’ll say success, your test has been sent.

Close the window and then you go back to where you were. Click on save, oh! I forgot to mention up at the top left where you customize your campaign. When you double-click on this, you can give it a name, so I’m going to call it Starbucks test and the public does not see that, that is just for your records. So all you do is click on it and then change what you want and then save. It does, the system does save, you can see it last saved at 10:16pm –it’s getting late here- and then continue. Now what happens now is it will let me…you have to have saved in your address and all of your information and I actually never filled all that in. We’d do that real quick. Okay! Now we’ve got that.

Continue. Okay, so now it’s going to ask me do I want to send it now? Do I want to send it later? I’m going to send this later. Then it’d ask me what date do I want to send it and then what time of day do I want to send it and I’d like to get results with the emails so I can see what, how many people opened it, I could use my analytics here if I’d like, I just added the campaign title for my analytics, that’s another class and then I can add contacts or I can use my list, I have a list already called general interest, I’m going to add it to that list or I can add contacts, I can put their email one at a time…