With a mail group such as Gmail you can spend hours creating a well-branded email. Constant Contact, on the other hand, has a simple guided process that will allow you to get the same results in minutes, among many other benefits. We have put together this step-by-step guide on how to easily create a professional, branded email in Constant Contact.
1. Select Your Template
First, navigate to the "Campaigns Tab" on your menu. Then select the bright orange "Create Tab" and select email.
Upon clicking email, you will be prompted to select a template. You can choose from hundreds of professionally designed templates such as "Basic Postcard," "Special Event," or "Agent Feedback." However, we recommend selecting "Brand Templates" from the upper right hand corner to look professional and promote brand recognition. (Using a signature color can increase brand awareness by 80% according to Oberlo).
Further, with Constant Contact, no skills are required to brand your templates. The platform will prompt you to put in your website URL and then create six different branded layouts.
You can even customize the colors and input your address and social channels to help your contacts further engage. Play with the different templates and see what fits your message most. Then select the blue "Continue" button in the top right corner.
2. Name Your Email
You will be taken to an editor page in Constant Contact, and a box in the upper left-hand corner will populate "Untitled Campaign Created X" with the create date. The date is important, so in the future you can remember when you sent out this email. The name should be related to the purpose of the email, for example "Product Offering June 2020" or "Investor Resource June 2020." Organizing your emails by name and date will substantially help you when searching or referencing an email. For the purposes of this tutorial, we are going to call it "June Blog Post Email."
3. Create Your Subject Line and Pre-header
When you click on the Subject Line, a box labeled "Email Settings" will pop up. Here you can verify your name and email address as the sender and add in a subject-line. For the purpose of this tutorial we want to teach you how to input a subject line and pre-header text, and will provide additional guides on how to create strong ones in the future.
One unique feature we want to highlight is the ability to address your database by first name by hitting the "Personalize" button to the left of the subject line. For this sample we said "First Name, Check Out Our Latest Blog Post" as our subject line and "We wrote this great blog post on understanding Debt-Service Coverage Ratio or DSCR" as our pre-header (preview text).
4. Add an Image(s)
Depending on the template you select, you will have one or multiple images to add. In our template, we have one main image. To edit it, you simply click on the image and the blank placeholder and then click the "Replace" button.
It will take you to the image library where you can either upload a file from your computer or browse free stock photos:
For this tutorial, we selected a calculator stock photo and inserted it into the email.
5. Input Your Text and CTA
Now for the actual body of the email. Similar to the image, you click the part of the template you want to change. In our sample email, we put our blog post title as a header and the text as a the first few lines of our DSCR blog post. You can choose to follow the template text or change the fonts and colors as you type:
And now, the CTA. A CTA is a call-to-action that gives your audience guidance on what to do next. It could be, "Learn More," "Contact Us," "Visit Our Website," etc. In order to lead our audience to our blog post, I have included a "Read More" CTA that links to the blog. To do this, simply follow the buttons and input your text and hyperlink for the button. You can change the colors and font if you like.
6. Include Your Business Info and Social Channels
The last step is to add your business information so your audience knows where to find you. At the bottom of most templates, you can put in your business name, address and phone number by clicking on the section:
Finally, you can click on the social icons and then click "Edit" to include your social media channels. A social block will appear where you can type in the information:
Ready to get started with Constant Contact? Sign up for your free 60-day trial here. For additional marketing tools, see our Marketing Solutions Resource Page.
Related: 7 Components of a Social Media Marketing Strategy, Why Small Businesses Need Email Marketing Platforms
