There are tons of ways to have people sign up to receive your emails.

That’s good news because the easier you make it for people to join your list, the easier it is to help your business or organization grow by reaching those that want to hear from you.

That’s why Constant Contact offers the following ways, beyond the basic sign-up form, that people can join your list:

These options allow people to join your list in the way that’s most convenient for them. But what if you want to go even further and customize the whole sign-up experience? We’ve got you covered there too.

Why customize the sign-up experience?

If you’re a more advanced user with web development skills, or you have a web developer on your team, it’s easy to customize the sign-up experience. Just use one of our APIs (an Application Programming Interface) to allow your software to talk to us.

When you use an API to program the sign-up experience yourself, you can do things like:

  • Create more than one form – Have more than one target audience? Make more than one sign-up form to cover all your bases.
  • Control the flow – You can keep people on your page, prevent a welcome letter from being sent, or direct new contacts to a new page at the end of the sign-up process. It’s all up to you.
  • Customize your form design – You get complete control over the framework, the number of images, and the placement of text. This allows you to do some truly unique things.

How to customize the sign-up experience

As we mentioned, you will need someone who has web development skills. In particular, you’ll want to have someone familiar with .NET/C# or PHP (don’t worry the developer will know what that means.) If you don’t already have someone, you can look at our marketplace for some solution providers to help. In addition, you’ll want to have the following things ready to go:

  • API Key – You can request an API key from Constant Contact. They are free to use and allow your web developer to hook things up.
  • API Tips & Tricks – This document is a good resource to help you along the way.

What if you need help?

Even though Constant Contact’s Customer Support Representatives can’t help you with API questions, you do have options in case you run into trouble. You can:

  • Search for an answer
    The Developer Community forums have a lot of posts dedicated to problems people have encountered and the solutions they’ve found. Use the search to look for posts related to your issue and you’ll probably find the answer you need.
  • Ask a question
    If you didn’t find the answer you needed by searching the forums, go ahead and post your question. You can also email it to webservices@constantcontact.com.

As you check out the Developer Community, don’t forget to sign up for the Community newsletter to get monthly updates from the Constant Contact Community.

It can be done

So if you’ve ever wondered if you could have more control over the sign-up experience, the answer is yes! And when you combine your own custom sign-up experience with the tools Constant Contact offers you’ve got some powerful ways to build your list.

Spam isn’t just for email anymore.

As the use of social networks continues to grow, so does the number of professional spammers  looking to find their way into your social feeds.

But could you be inadvertently spamming your fans and followers as well?

Check out our latest infographic on social spam. Be sure to pay particular attention to the section on creating good social content. Armed with this reference you’ll never have to worry about creating social spam again.

Enjoy! (more…)

You’re thinking about hosting an event, maybe for educational, networking, or fundraising purposes.

You don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to it, but you want to look professional and minimize the time spent managing all the event details.

You decide to promote your event via emails and phone calls. Maybe you even create a registration form using Microsoft Word. You post the registration form on your website to be filled out and sent back via fax.

At first, you receive a few phone calls for additional information. Then the email responses start to arrive. Now you’re spending time on the phone answering those calls, returning messages, and playing telephone tag.

You start to receive faxes with the registration details filled out, but you can’t read the handwriting on the pages. You need to pull together all of this information into a spreadsheet, but these tasks are becoming very labor intensive. You think to yourself, “There has to be a better way to manage these event details!”

So, what’s the solution? Don’t pull your hair out; you need an online event management tool! (more…)

This is a guest blog post by Howard Givner, Executive Director of the Event Leadership Institute

You’re planning a product launch and it needs to be held at a cool location to show how cutting-edge your brand is.

It’ll be a theater-style presentation for 30 minutes, followed by a reception for 300 media, customers, and other guests.

A nightclub is perfect, right? It’s the trendy, chic place everyone reads about in the gossip columns, but that no one you know is cool enough to get into. During the day, however, it sits empty, and they’d love to host your meeting and reception.

The manager shows you the club’s two rooms, one of which has great audio/visual capabilities built in and would be perfect for the presentation. The other is gorgeous but seems like it might be tight for the reception.

No problem, he says. Last Saturday night they had 500 in that room dancing up a storm.

Well, he’s the manager, you think. He should know his own club’s capacities, right?

Doubtful. (more…)

While you probably spend a decent amount of time creating your emails, I’d bet you spend less than five minutes thinking about your signature line (or your “Closing Block”). After all, it’s not like you usually don’t know what you’re going to say in those blocks in the first place — your name, number, and address are pretty easy to remember!

But the bare details of how someone can get in touch with you are just the start. There is so much more you can do with your Contact Block to give your subscribers what they are looking for. (more…)

In the marketing world, there are three main types of media that work to get the word out and drive awareness about your business, organization, or cause:

1. Paid Media (i.e., buying an ad in your local newspaper)

2. Owned Media (i.e., your website)

3. Earned Media (i.e., media coverage in your local newspaper)

Earned media has always been the Holy Grail. Imagine getting a trusted third party, like a news outlet, to promote your message to a wide network and not have to pay them to do so? Every business wants to be featured on the front page of The New York Times or on their local nightly news.

While this type of coverage can do wonders, unless you’re a huge company, have an amazing story, some strong relationships in the media (that take time to build), and a little bit of luck, the chances of scoring a really great feature story aren’t too high. (more…)