Melanie
Welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast for all decision makers and action takers. Take it away, Esther.
Esther
And welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today we're joined by Erika Robinson, who is the head of Constant Contact in the UK. Erika is here to tell us more about Constant Contact and about why you should be using it. But we're going to talk to her about all aspects of business because she even launched her own business before going into Constant Contact. So welcome, Erika. It's so good to have you here with us today.
Erika
Thank you, Esther. Thank you, Melanie. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
Esther
So let's kick off. Where did your business prowess start?
Erika
Well, I mean, yeah, I'm in my 40s now, so I've got a long, long history of working in different businesses. But let's kind of start back to go back to when I set up my own business, which is now five years ago. Yeah, five, five years and two months ago I set up a business. It was October 2019 and I had two young children at the time. I think I did what many mums did, which is desperately want to get out the house on a regular basis with my two young children, had nowhere really nice to take them and thought I want to create some a nice, comfortable, safe space for children to play that's educational but also just as nice for the adults as well, somewhere that serves nice coffee and nice food. And so I decided at that point to set up my own business and I set up a children's play centre in Kingston upon Thames, so southwest London. And yeah, yeah, I made a point of when I set up the business because that's quite important because I think.
Esther
We can all remember what happened in 2020.
Erika
Exactly. The business like was doing really, really well initially. I mean, there were some teething problems, but it was, yeah, the first few months we were busy, every play session, full most play sessions and then suddenly people started talking about COVID and it got a bit scary and we were forced to close our doors with no idea when we'd open again a very new business. So didn't. Hadn't built up big reserves and only had enough cash in the bank to last two weeks of closure and ended up being closed for the best part of 12 months. So it was a pretty scary time and you know, we got through it. Fortunately, there was a support out there through the government, through loans and grants and things like that. I furloughed all my staff. So we got through it. But it, yeah, I Mean, it taught me loads. It taught me a lot about running a small business and the pains and pressures for small business owners. Which is why then I decided to focus my career on supporting small businesses. And I've done that through a number of different roles. But now at Constant Contact, which our core target market, the people that we are here to support are other small business owners just like myself.
Melanie
So as you've segued beautifully to Constant Contact there, what excites you most about the role that Constant Contact plays in supporting businesses today?
Erika
Oh, there's loads of things that excite me. But I think what's most exciting is most small business owners, like myself included, are not marketers, they're not experts in marketing, and Constant Contact just makes it really easy for them. All small business owners know that they need to be speaking to their customers, that they need to be marketing their product or service or whatever it is they do. And a lot of the time they don't know where to start. So the fact that we can put the, the tools that they need that previously were only available to the larger businesses, make it really easy for them and, and give them tools like AI as well, because AI is embedded into everything we do just to make their life so much easier. I think that's what really excites me.
Esther
And so you mentioned tools, but can you broaden that? What sort of tools? What are we talking about here? You know, is it all singing, all dancing, or is it, you know, one thing and then go somewhere else for the rest? What tools does Constant Contact offer small businesses?
Erika
Yeah, I mean, for your typical small business, it is all singing or dancing. It's. So initially we were pioneers in email marketing. We've actually, we're celebrating our 30th birthday, birthday this year. So we've been around 30 years, a long time. So, yeah, really early days when it came to email marketing. But now we offer a whole suite of functionality. So social media management and scheduling, SEO, events, contact management. Yeah, all stop shop, really.
Esther
Okay. And that's, that's really interesting because a lot of places, you know, like you said, you've been around for 30 years now and a lot of businesses might not have heard of Constant Contact. So why is it, you know, that we hadn't heard of you guys before?
Erika
Yeah, well, we're one of the biggest players in the us but international expansion hasn't been high on the agenda. I think you'll know that we officially launched in the UK at the end of last year, so 23rd of October, and so hopefully if you haven't heard of us yet, you will definitely hear more about us soon. But yeah, UK is a core market for us, but also Australia and Canada we're expanding into at the moment as well.
Esther
Okay. And some of our listeners are in the Republic of Ireland. What about there? Are you covering there as well, or is that a tbc?
Erika
Yeah, we haven't been kind of purely focused on Ireland as a market, but the product is absolutely available in Ireland and it's. It's on our roadmap. Absolutely. So. But anyone in Ireland can download the software, give it a try and subscribe as well.
Melanie
So thank you for giving us a good background explaining how the businesses become more familiar to the Europeans. But let's go on to what's in it for the people who are potentially your customers. So can you explain the biggest takeaways that people can get from this particular product and why they should buy it over their competitors?
Erika
Yeah, so I'll go back to the use of AI, I think, because we've got a brilliant tool that's embedded into the product called Campaign Builder. And what that allows customers to do is, you know, they don't necessarily know what they want to say, or maybe they do, but, you know, I don't want to stereotype at all, but, you know, they know they need to speak to their customers regularly. So what Campaign Builder allows them to do is think, right. What. What is the key message I want to get across? What's my. What's my goal? Do I want to market a product or service? Do you want to just inform my customers? Just whatever that is. You can choose from a list of options. You can choose what platforms you want your campaign to be available over. You can just write a brief description, just a few sentences, choose a duration for your campaign. You can embed or build in events too, if you want to build events into your campaign. And then you just. There's just a few clicks to go through and then you just watch AI do its thing. And it basically creates that entire campaign for you. It schedules your emails. So it's not just one email, it's multiple emails, multiple social media posts. Like I say, events if you need it, and then it's there all ready to go. And so you can approve it, you can edit it as much as you like and tweak it, but then at the click of a button, you can then schedule everything to send out.
Melanie
That actually is quite a big plus.
Erika
Yeah. I mean, what before would have taken hours and hours to do now just takes a few minutes.
Melanie
Kudos.
Esther
Now, you said that Constant Contact started out as an email marketing platform. Do you think that email marketing is still as important now as it was when the company was started and that's why they focused on it? Or do you think that because they're expanding into the different areas, then email marketing is secondary or tertiary to the social media management and the, I don't know, landing pages, etcetera?
Erika
That's such a great question. I think email marketing is really still front and centre of what we do and we still send a lot more emails for our customers than we do social media scheduling and posting, for example. We are like, it's just so, so important. I think that the key differentiator is that you own your contacts when they, and they've signed up, they. No one can kind of take that list away from you. And I mean, there's some great stats and I, I know McKinsey did a study that said for, for every dollar you spend in email marketing, you get around $40 back, but the return on investment is so much higher through email marketing than it is social media marketing. So absolutely, I think it's definitely alive and here to stay for the long term.
Melanie
I've got to ask, what do you see as the emerging trends in email marketing that customers and businesses in general should be leveraging right now.
Erika
Oh. It's hard for me to answer that without giving anything away of what we've got on the roadmap. So I've got to be careful what I say because I've got some ideas, but I won't be able to share them yet.
Esther
Come on, it's just between us.
Melanie
Can you just like give us like a trailer, like a cinematic trailer of what's to come?
Erika
I don't think I can. It's really difficult how to answer that because I've just got such a clear answer in my head and I know I can't say it.
Esther
Okay, so we'll bring you back whenever you do have them sorted. Well, that cover.
Erika
Yeah.
Esther
We'll cover that. So you talked about email lists being very important, but what's your advice for businesses struggling to grow their email lists?
Erika
I think there are, well, there are tools that constant contact can help with, with that. But the key thing is you want to get a bought, engaged audience that are willingly giving you their email and want to hear from you. So there are different ways to go about that. One is to make sure that you give them the content that is valuable to them. Not just trying to sell all the time, but keeping them informed. And up to date. There are also ways to take your social media following and turn that into marketable email list. And we've got a tool that's embedded into our product called Contact Capture that allows you to do just, just that. And it creates again using AI, it creates a simple survey for you with just a, you know, five or six questions and you can then put that survey anywhere you want. You can put it on your social media platforms. You can also print out a QR code and use it at events, or if you've got a bricks and mortar business, you can include it there as well. But then you're effectively asking your social media following if you use your platform that way, a few questions get this gets them engaged, but then you're capturing their email and potentially their telephone number at the end as well and they're then signing up to hear from you on an ongoing basis. So, so that's a great way to, to build a list. I think it's a, you know, kind of lead magnet tool.
Melanie
It does sound like it's very much an all singing, all dancing tool. But is there some way that you've been able to track what the biggest mistakes people have made in the past when they're building their email campaigns and that's why you've ended up, you know, building the platform the way you have?
Erika
Yeah, some mistakes that people make, I think, I mean, I've made the. I'm terrible at making the biggest mistake, which is just procrastinating too much and holding off and thinking it's a bigger deal than it really is. And you have to spend hours and hours as creating this perfect newsletter before you're willing to send it out and then be scared to send it out. So I think that, yeah, I don't think I'm the only one. I think a lot of people feel like that. And so the key thing is a newsletter doesn't actually need to be that long because most people open it and they skim read it. And we did some research that showed that people read the first three points and that's it. No one takes any notice of anything beyond that. So there's no point in having more than three points in a newsletter. Keep it short and sweet, to the point, start with the thing that you want to get across most and it's better to keep it more frequent, send them out more regularly than focus on just one and getting it so, so perfect. But then knowing someone's only going to spend five seconds reading it as well.
Esther
Yeah. Now you talked about time and you know, people taking time to send their emails, etc. But when it comes to setting up constant contact, how much time does that take? Because that's also a thing that small business owners, you know, they don't have time. That's why they stick with the platforms that they already know and that they've already got set up, because they're already there. So how long would it take for a business to set up on constant contact?
Erika
Yeah, I mean, I don't think I can say exactly how long it will take because every small business is different, depends on how well established they are, etc. But it's a simple step by step process, so it's not difficult at all. And we hold your hand throughout that process to make it as easy as possible. So there's always somebody at the end of the phone. We have support available no matter what package you buy, what product you buy with us. And that's quite rare actually. I think we're the only software provider in our category that does that, where you can have unlimited telephone support in UK hours and get the support you need to guide you through it. But yeah, it's all step by step. You know, the key thing is that upload your contact list first of all, draft your first newsletter, get it sent out, link all your social media platforms and that's the key to it really. Once you've done that, you're really up and running.
Melanie
Now. One of the biggest issues I've experienced in the past myself with emails is I go to all the trouble of making it less than three points and, you know, send it either frequently or infrequently, depending on the type of email that I'm sending. But how can I stop my email from ending up in spam?
Erika
You're just setting me up really nicely to say all the best bits about Constant Contact. Thank you. Planned, but I-.
Esther
We don't know. We like, I personally haven't used constant contact yet, you know, I'm just. We don't know what they have and what they don't have. So these are just literally questions that we know people will be asking.
Erika
That's. I mean that is one of our key differentiators and what makes us stand out from all of our competitors. We have the best in class email deliverability rate. So yeah, 97 of all emails sent end up in the primary inbox and not in spam.
Melanie
That's pretty high.
Erika
Yeah, it's, it's the best in class.
Esther
Yeah.
Melanie
Wow. Okay.
Esther
That's great because a lot of people, took the wobbles whenever Gmail and Yahoo were going through their, you know, we will not deliver if it's coming from an external email provider. So yeah, that's pretty good. Okay, what are some of the features of constant contact that maybe aren't talked about as much? So you've talked about email marketing, you've talked about social media management, what else is in there? Because you said all singing, all dancing. So in my head I'm going, okay, so it's got website capabilities, it's got, you know, you're building your landing pages. You mentioned QR codes. Are those inbuilt as well or is it, you know, external? What are you hiding from us that you can tell us about?
Erika
I mean where we don't have the functionality, we integrate with other leading software providers. So some of the most well known ones, Wix, Shopify, Canva, those kind of big software, you know, so, so if you incorporating your design, incorporating your website, incorporating your e-commerce store and things like that, the kind of less known or less talked about areas, SEO is one. So it basically can complete an audit for you of your web page and so you can put your web details in. It picks up how to improve the SEO of your website and gives you some hints and tips. So I think that's a great feature. And events I think I mentioned earlier as well. But any business that arranges events, whether that's the core focus of their business or whether it's just a side-line, that can all be managed through constant contact as well.
Esther
So that would be events, instead of putting them on places like Ticket Tailor or Eventbrite, they would use Constant Contact instead.
Erika
Exactly, yeah.
Esther
Okay, so now for the real question that people are sort of going, how much is this going to cost them for this? All singing, all dancing. Because you know, small business equals small profits sometimes. So in order to get the lowest package, the middle package, the highest package, what are we talking about roughly? You know.
Erika
Yeah, so it, it depends on the size of your contact list. But for, I mean the prices start from pound eight a month. So it's very, very affordable. We have three main products. We have the light, we have the standard and we have the premium. So it depends on exactly what your needs are. I think most of the functionality that I've talked about today sits within standard and if you have a contact list of less than 500, that's in the price range of around £30.
Esther
So it's not going to break the bank and it saves you money on all the other things that you're already spending.
Erika
Exactly. I mean we're getting great feedback on how affordable it is. And especially for those businesses that have multiple platforms managing multiple elements of their marketing, they can actually save quite a bit of money by bringing it all together into one place.
Esther
Yeah.
Melanie
I gotta ask, how is it sustainable at that price considering all the add-ons and benefits that you've got?
Esther
Plus you mentioned that it's a human that answers the phone if you have any issues, not the AI.
Erika
That's where we're fortunate that we are such a well established business because any, any new business starting from scratch would never be able to offer those kind of benefits. And I think that's what differentiates us because we've got that 30 year history. The larger your contact list grows, the more the prices go up. But we've got loads of really well established businesses in the us. We're one of the biggest operators in the US and half our customers have been with us for more than five years. And so we've got this great customer base and we can, we see, you know, it takes a while to get there and in the UK obviously we're starting with smaller businesses that are earlier in their journey but we know that those customers stay with us and they're usually happy with us and that the kind of long term customer lifetime value is pretty good.
Esther
Brilliant. So how can people find out more about Constant Contact, what's the website address and all the details that you think people might need to go and sign up?
Erika
Yeah, so really you just need to go to constantcontact.com and you can sign up to a 30 day trial from the website and find out more about us.
Esther
There's brilliant.
Melanie
I do have one more question before we finish. What is one action that our listeners can take today to improve their email marketing efforts?
Erika
Let me think. So I think just do it. Like I said before that so many people procrastinate and I put myself in that category. Send one out today. Don't think. Oh, it's the kind of thing that always goes to the bottom of the to do list. Right. There's always something that feels more urgent. Just, just send it and yeah, or you know, sign up to Constant Contact and then you can use AI to do it for you-.
Melanie
and then they'll do it for you. Oh, great answer. Okay, well thank you so much for speaking to us today, Erica. I'm sorry we put you under the gun slightly there trying pry information out of you but like Esther said, we will get you back when you do have something to tell us that you can go public with. But, you know, I had no idea the capability of constant contact. I also didn't realize it been so well established as well. That's kind of blowing my mind slightly there. But hopefully to all the listeners, this has given you an extra bit of confidence about the capabilities of constant contact. It's, it's certainly going to be taking Europe by storm. It's already done its job in, in the US And I think Esther and I might give it a try. We should, I really do think we should. So we're going to sign off for now, but we'll be back again next week with another podcast. Thanks again.
Erika
Thanks for having me.
Esther
Bye.
Erika
Bye-bye.
Melanie
Okay. Okay. Whilst I've got you here, Erika.
Can you debunk any myths about email marketing? Is it. You must have heard myths in the past about email marketing. Can you debunk it?
Erika
What myth?
Melanie
Any myth. Any myth at all about email marketing that it's, it takes too long, that it's, there's a long funnel that's involved that you need to always make special offers and discounts to make it work.
Esther
You need to email every day?
Melanie
Oh, yeah.
Erika
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's. I, I guess. Well, I think one is-.
