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The Top 10 Reasons
You Need a Good
E-Mail Communication
and Marketing
Service
E-mail is one of the most powerful tools
available for communicating and developing
relationships. But e-mail can only be
that powerful when it’s done well.
Using your standard e-mail client to send a
BCC text or HTML message to your list is not
doing e-mail well.
Why not? Because your standard e-mail client
is not designed for mass e-mail communication
and therefore has significant limitations
that can actually undermine, instead of
aiding, your e-mail communication efforts.
The good news is — Constant Contact, a
web-based e-mail communication service that
is inexpensive and designed to make e-mail
communication simple for the non-technical
user. By using Constant Contact e-mail
service, you can easily avoid common mistakes
and truly get the most out of your e-mail
communication efforts.
Here are the top ten reasons why we use and
recommend Constant Contact e-mail service.
1. Constant Contact Is Approved as a
Bulk Mailer
Many e-mail clients and most ISPs limit the
number of e-mails that you can send at one
time. Further, most ISPs guard against
bulk e-mailing, as it is often spam.
Legitimate services, such as Constant
Contact, have strong relationships with ISPs
and are able to send bulk e-mail.
With Constant Contact, while your e-mail
address is listed as both the
“from”, and
“reply to” address, the e-mail is
actually
being sent by the e-mail service’s server
which is recognized by the ISPs.
2. Constant Contact Follows
Professional Mailing Practices
For those using other e-mail clients,
mistakes can happen. Perhaps the most
common mistake is exposing your entire list
in the To: line, which violates all of your
list members’ confidentiality and exposes
their e-mail addresses.
In addition, failure to include unsubscribe
instructions, an unsubscribe link or a
physical mailing address is now against the
law. Constant Contact provides an
automatic unsubscribe that is effective
immediately, and requires inclusion of a
physical address in every e-mail.
In addition, Constant Contact provides
continuous education on e-mail communication
and marketing best practices through free
newsletters, Web seminars, tutorials and
in-product guidelines.
3. Constant Contact Provides List
Hosting and Management
Constant Contact hosts your e-mail list and
automatically performs critical list
management functions. These functions
can include signup for new subscribers,
editing capabilities so that subscribers can
change their own addresses, and the ability
to unsubscribe.
Because you are required by law to process an
unsubscribe request within 10 days, the
unsubscribe functionality alone is critical
to successful e-mail communication and marketing.
In addition, Constant Contact handles the
bounced e-mails for you. If you are
using your e-mail client, you probably are
overwhelmed by the bounces that you receive
in your e-mail box. Constant Contact
will manage bounces, differentiating between
reasons for the bounce (including full
mailbox, vacation message, nonexistent
address or blocked).
Managing these critical list management
functions using your standard e-mail client
is almost impossible.
4. Constant Contact Requires No
Technical Skill or Support Staff
Whether you are using your e-mail client (and
going it alone), or using a bulk e-mail
software package, you will find that Constant
Contact can save you precious time and money.
With Constant Contact, the bandwidth, power,
and flexibility are
“built-in. ” You do
not have to worry about the technology or
infrastructure required to send your
e-mails. In addition, services include
HTML templates and a simple, wizard driven
user interface.
Constant Contact does not have set-up costs,
and provides free ongoing support, so that
you do not have the expense of the logistics
of e-mail marketing.
5. Constant Contact Creates Great
Looking E-Mails
If you send only plain text, you’ll be
missing out on response rates of up to 35%
higher with HTML.
Constant Contact provides professional HTML
templates to make e-mail creation easy by
eliminating the need for any HTML
skill. Templates are pre-formatted to
help you organize your content. They
include appropriate fonts, colors and
placeholders for graphics and company logos
that are easily customized to create a look
that matches your organization or company’s
Website or brand.
For the technically savvy marketer, Constant
Contact allows for complete customization of
an e-mail in HTML or XHTML.
6. Constant Contact Gets Higher
E-Mail Deliverability
Constant Contact maintains strong permission
policies and has an active anti-blocking team
working with receiving ISPs on your behalf to
ensure that your e-mail is delivered.
Constant Contact delivers your e-mails with
proper protocols, develops relationships with
ISPs and is white listed to be sure your
permission-based e-mail gets through.
Constant Contact monitors all outgoing e-mail
to ensure that all major ISPs and corporate
domains are successfully accepting your
e-mail. If you are using your e-mail
client, you may not know if your e-mail is
being delivered. Often ISPs will
just “drop” e-mails without sending
a bounce
message.
With Constant Contact, you will know which
e-mails were delivered (or not) and why, or
why not. If there is a “blip”
on the
receiver’s end when your e-mail is being
sent, Constant Contact makes continued
attempts to send your e-mail while quickly
addressing the problem with the ISP.
7. Constant Contact Delivers
Measurable Results
Constant Contact enables you to measure the
response of each e-mail.
Reports also show new subscribes,
unsubscribes, bounces and formal spam
complaints. These reports help you
track and measure your success, target more
effectively, and improve your results over
time. By understanding the e-mail
results, you will know your subscribers
better, and build more effective future e-mails.
An important note: What you don’t know can
hurt you. If you send your e-mail from
a standard e-mail client and it generates
spam complaints, you won’t know about
them. To follow, if your e-mail is
perceived as spam by ISPs, you run the risk
of having your entire corporate e-mail server
blocked. Businesses need to go through
e-mail service providers that can help them
stay on the right side of the ISPs.
8. Constant Contact Includes
Frequent Updates and Enhancements
Constant Contact guarantees that you will
always have the most current tools available
to meet the changing requirements of the
industry without having additional updates to
install — as required in the case of
most purchased bulk e-mail software.
It is critical to keep up with e-mail
marketing legal compliance and new technology
on the spam elimination front. Most new
technologies that are being employed by ISPs
to eliminate SPAM will require changes in
both how you send e-mail, and what you
send. Constant Contact provides regular
updates and new features to enhance
functionality, comply with the law, and
optimize e-mail delivery though ISPs.
In addition, Constant Contact is a member of
The Email Service Provider Coalition
(ESPC). The goal of the ESPC is to
provide unique and effective spam-fighting
solutions that will optimize your e-mail
delivery and response and minimize the spam
in your subscribers’ inbox. New
technologies like e-mail authentication (e.g.
Sender ID, SPF and Domain Keys) will be
integrated into Constant Contact’s offering
with no effort on your part.
9. Constant Contact Complies with
E-Mail Laws
As e-mail marketing matures, so do the
laws. Constant Contact will ensure that
your e-mail campaigns are compliant with
legislation. For example, the U.S. CAN
SPAM law that went into effect in January of
2004 required that every e-mail campaign sent
include the physical address of the sender,
and that unsubscribes be honored within 10
days of the subscriber’s request.
Because Constant Contact is responsible for
ensuring their customers’ compliance, they
worry about the law and ensure that their
services are up-to-date on compliance.
10. Constant Contact Costs Less!
When you add up the costs of your current
method of sending e-mails, you may find that
Constant Contact is less costly in terms of
the resources and time required, and in real
dollars.
If you are spending your time trying to
format your e-mail for delivery, or handling
bounces in your inbox, time may be your
biggest savings.
The technical resources to support in-house
e-mail operations can be expensive.
Constant Contact allows you to use e-mail
marketing without technical resources or an
infrastructure to support it. And
Constant Contact charges only a small monthly
fee, without set-up or support costs.
This keeps your investment small.
For any organization or business that uses
e-mail to communicate with members,
customers, and prospects, following e-mail
best practices, following the law, and
keeping your e-mail practices up-to-date with
changing standards, is of the utmost
importance because this is the only way you
can realize the true power of e-mail.
Let Constant Contact help you solidify
existing relationships, initiate new ones,
and convert your one-time visitors, (buyers,
members etc.) into repeat business and
long-term customers.
The Teaching Home Uses and Recommends
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