“Don’t forget your Swiss Army Knife. Don’t forget your Swiss Army Knife.”

That’s a mantra I’ve repeated time and time again, from my youth as a Boy Scout to nearly anything I try to accomplish as a husband and father.

This amazing tool has saved me in countess situations by providing just the right feature at just the right moment. There have been countless times some situation comes up and I instantly reach for the tool.

It’s just that useful. It can do so many awesome things.

There’s a Swiss Army knife of sorts in Constant Contact and it’s a tool that is so often overlooked that it usually brings attendees at Constant Contact’s Email Marketing Bootcamp to exclaim in glee when we highlight it.

One item that is reiterated in class is how important having links is to having a successful email. Links do so many things for an email, from keeping the email short, to driving readers to a website where they’ll spend more time considering your offer. Most importantly links tell us valuable analytical data. Links are a very important piece of any email.

But what if you didn’t have a website? What if your webmaster can’t get the material online quickly enough? What can you do?

Pull out that Swiss Army Knife

Constant Contact has a feature called a “Document Link” that can link to a document directly, bypassing the need to link to a website. With a basic subscription Constant Contact allows you to host up to 5 documents with a .pdf extension using the Document Link tool. Anything you can print you can turn into a .pdf. Most programs—such as PowerPoint, Word, Excel, image editors—allow you to save a document as a .pdf.

Once you’ve created your .pdf you can upload it to Constant Contact via the Document Link tool. You can customize the text to show up as a link and when subscribers click on the link, your .pdf will open instead of a webpage. It will have all the features of a link and be tracked without the need for you to host material on a website.

Just like any Swiss Army Knife, there’s even more functionality

What if you wanted to attach a large image, like a map or a calendar? You could create that image and save it as a .pdf. Then upload it using the document tool. When subscribers clicked on your map link, a full size map could appear on screen ready for them to print, same if it were a calendar. If you’ve ever built your Constant Contact email and thought to yourself, “I wish I could attach something!” The Document Link tool is how you can do it.

You can even keep your files up-to-date

Because you control it, you can update files live, so if you are hosting a document that has info changing every day, you can upload an updated .pdf and subscribers who click on the link created by the Document Link tool will see the latest document, updated just as you intended, in real time.

Use it to give your contacts something special

The last little trick using this tool is it can act as a way to give your subscribers something special. Because only subscribers see this link, you can share a special document or offer in a .pdf and because it exists only in your email, only your subscribers get the offer. Keep in mind that if you share your email on social media sites or as an archived email, those people would see the link as well. But you can keep this deal relatively private without sharing it on your site.

And because it’s a real link, you are able to track subscriber behavior, telling you what they liked and how often they liked it.

It’s one handy little tool

I use the Document Link tool in nearly every email I send and just like my little red knife; it’s ready to offer me all sorts of awesome features. Why not check out the Document Link tool the next time you are building your email and add it as your go-to tool.

Did you know you could do this with your Email Marketing from Constant Contact account? What are some of the ways you’ve used the Document Link feature?

Want to get some hands-on training about using Email Marketing from Constant Contact? See if there’s a Boot Camp in your area.

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