Action-oriented Website Transforms Visitors into Buyers.

We've long been impressed with Constant Contact. Almost 5 years ago, we wrote about their excellent eNewsletter as an example of effective content marketing--that even small companies with low budgets could emulate.  They have grown from 25,000 customers in 2004 to 250,000 customers in 2008 and more than 500,000 customers in the third quarter 2012. A combination of great content and great products has empowered that growth. Now more than ever, they not only provide terrific content, but they make it easy for buyers to take action.

Their impressive growth stems directly from their ability to help their customers grow

Because Constant Contact's success is directly tied to the success of its customers, it must provide relevant and valuable content in order to empower their customers to succeed.  I have been a fan and a user of their email marketing and research products for many years.  They do an exceptional job of online marketing, of course. Impressively, they are also experts at in-person content marketing via their regional reps who teach business owners and managers how to market effectively. When we first wrote about Constant Contact, they were doing a great job with their eNewsletter which provided customers with lots of useful tips on successful email marketing. As we noted in our 2007 article:

Content rich eNewsletters are one of the most effective marketing tools in the Internet age.  But they won’t work unless you carefully target the most pressing information needs of your prospective customers. Constant Contact obviously understands that its customers need to communicate effectively electronically in order to drive business growth.   They also understand that most of their customers are not sophisticated marketing experts–and almost certainly are not e-mail marketing experts. Therefore, they provide very practical, nuts and bolts advice on how to communicate effectively via e-mail and eNewsletters.

Today, Constant has a much more extensive range of content and services to help businesses grow:

• email marketing
• research tools
• event marketing
• social media campaigns
• local marketing
• industry-specific templates
• in-person local seminars

In addition to their action-orient homepage, they make it simple and appealing for visitors to move from prospect to customers for all of their products and services. For example, their Social Campaigns landing page explains what the product does, how it will help, and how to take the next step in a very visual, uncluttered way. How could you not be motivated to give it a test run?  

AND, THEY ACTUALLY USE WHAT THEY SELL!

Of course, Constant Contact eats its own dog food and uses the software that selling to small business executives to demonstrate how to connect effectively via e-mail, eNewsletters, research and social media tools. Even better for marketers, emulating their action-oriented website will help you convert more visitors to buyers once you drive them to your site.