Email, social media, and coupons makes the CFO smile

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While attending the Monitoring Social Media Conference I had the opportunity to listen to Mark Schmulen, General Manager of Social Media for Constant Contact (affiliate link), discuss a case study centered on the combination of e-mail plus social media.  The study focused on how Dingo, a pet product company,  leveraged Facebook plus Constant Contact to achieve impressive revenue growth.

In searching the web I found a good overview of the social media accomplishments from this campaign. However, those are but part of the story and miss the real business outcomes.  I will summarize the article and add the rest of the story to help you better understand what took place.

Their goals?

• Capture more Dingo users, adding to their existing database of power users.
• Find dog owners who haven’t tried Dingo and drive trial of their product.
• Utilize the power of Facebook to build a community in which Dingo could have easy, real-time interaction with consumers.

Their Tactics

Dingo began the campaign with 330 fans on their Facebook page and around 9000 users in their mailing list.  Dingo added the Constant Contact tab to their Facebook page and offered a $20 coupon to the first 5000 fans that joined their mailing list and liked the page. 

The Outcomes

In just three days they had passed the 6000 fan mark and their mailing list surpassed 14,000 users.  Even more important, however, than these metrics, were the sales numbers.  During the month of this campaign they grew monthly sales by 22% (3 or 4% was their normal monthly growth) and 45% of this growth came from new customer accounts.  That’s right, 45% came from new customers.  The strategy proved itself to work very well in driving revenue and customer acquisition.

After the promotion ended?

Mark did not go into the life after the campaign as he had other studies to discuss.  However, in checking out their Facebook page they now have 7,445 fans so we can see the growth rate has not continued.  The coupons plus the use of social media probably provided the largest incentives.  Also note that they are running a new campaign which ends on October 29th, pushing to reach 25,000 fans.  I’ll keep an eye on how this progresses and let you know.

John

Some thoughts on Constant Contact

I use Constant Contact for The Lab’s mailing list and really enjoy using the application. I wanted to share with you some of the things I like, and dislike, about the product.

What is Constant Contact?

Constant Contact is a SAAS-based email marketing management application. It manages contacts, images, emails, and the analytics around your campaigns.

What does it cost?

Constant Contact pricing is based upon the number of contacts you have stored in the system. Costs start at $15 per month for fewer than 500 contacts and rise from there. However, they offer a FREE 60 day trial which is enough time to dig in and determine if the application is right for your needs.

Creating emails

Constant Contact uses a straightforward wizard to construct your emails. The editor allows the non-technology savvy users to easily create good looking emails, inserting images, formatting text, inserting social media links. For those of you that are comfortable with HTML, however, you can easily load the email into the built-in editor and build a very robust mail message.

However, a downside of the editor is that it requires Internet Explorer or Firefox. Someone on the road with their IPad, as I am now, cannot use the email editor at all.

Managing Contacts

The contact management aspects of Constant Contact are basic but sufficient for your email marketing efforts. I really like, however, the ease with which you can customize the information you capture from people when they sign-up for your emails. A simple form enables you to define fields that you want captured and if they are required.

Social Integration
Constant Contact has done a nice job providing social media integration. Email and social media must be used as complimentary communication methods and this solution handles this need well. When emails are sent you are able to save your mail as a web page, automatically tweet links to the page, and share the page on various social sharing web sites. In my experience you can achieve impressive results by sharing these messages on mail and social channels, give it a try.