Tips on Using Constant Contact to Create Your Company Newsletter

If you run your own business like I do, you don't have much time to spend fudging around with new programs. Here are some tricks I picked up while using Constant Contact's email marketing software to create my company newsletter.

First things first: gather up some subscribers!

Before you do anything, place the subscriber sign-up box on your website, and anywhere else that your portfolio is displayed online. You can't send out a newsletter if you have no subscribers! By the time you're finished learning the Constant Contact ropes, you'll have at the very least a handful of interested readers-but hopefully, more!

Make your visitor sign-up form as simple as possible.

You've already lucked out once because someone took time out of their busy day to pay attention to you. The worst thing you can possibly do now is make them work to become a subscriber. To simplify the process, go to Constant Contact's More Features section where you can "Customize Your Visitor Sign-Up Form." Other than their Name, Company Name and State, uncheck all the contact information boxes. You can always take down their information later, if they decide to become an actual client.

Write and/or collect your articles ahead of time.

If you're a writer, you'll hopefully have some decent material of your own on hand, saved onto your hard drive. If you don't have any articles, now would be a good time to write some. Don't type them directly into your newsletter from scratch. Navigating through an unfamiliar program is a big enough headache without trying to create error-free content. Use a word-processing program you're familiar with, then save and store the files so your articles can be accessed easily, for this or any other project.

If you're not a writer and don't intend to become one, go directly to Ezinearticles.com. This website showcases thousands of talented authors offering valuable tips. Many allow you to publish their work without even having to ask (although some require a quick permission request by email). Asking permission to use someone's article is a great way to expand your circle of contacts! Once you've found the articles you'd like to feature, copy and paste the text into a file stored on your computer.

Prepare your company logo in advance.

Constant Contact allows you to "pop in" your logo and resize it to fit the page using their prescribed measurements. My logo is 300x180 pixels, but you can size yours to whatever specs you'd like. Save it as a .jpeg file and then upload it to your website. You'll be accessing it from this URL later on.

I decided that my masthead looked a lot cooler as part of my logo than in boring Arial type, so I designed the name of my publication "The Good Word: Wordfeeder.com's Writing and Marketing Newsletter" right into the logo. With that in mind...

Go ahead and break all the formatting rules.

You don't have to type the "suggested details" where Constant Contact indicates. If they offer a space for you to type your company newsletter name, but your name is already visible in your logo, just don't type it into the box! If you don't like their "privacy policy" letter, write your own! Go on, break the rules. Delete that line where they ask for the date if you want. Don't add "helpful tips" like they suggest. You know you're a rebel deep down.

Set the Global Colors and Fonts before you create your articles (not after!).

Your newsletter format should reflect the same style as your website. My font of choice is Arial, color 996600--Wordfeeder's signature Sienna brown. If you're waffling around about point sizes and headline colors, use Article 1 as an experimental template. Type in some jibberish, and a bogus headline. Preview several times, playing around with font sizes until you're satisfied with the whole look. Then preset your Global Colors and Fonts to match. When you're ready to pop in your article, you can be sure it will be designed to your liking.

Note: Global Color and Font changes don't affect existing text. If you type your first article in Verdana and then make Arial your Global Font, guess what, your first article is still in Verdana. To save yourself a huge headache, set the colors and fonts BEFORE you enter your content.

When entering article text, Control-A, Control-C and Control-V are your best friends.

God willing, you already know that these keys stand for Highlight All, Copy and Paste. This is the quickest way to transfer an entire body of text from one file or program to another. Open the original file containing your article, hit the Control-A and Control-C keys in succession. Your text will be highlighted, and then stored in your computer's memory. Now go to Paragraph 1 of your Contant Contact Article template, and do a Control-V. The entire article will flow into the box. Use your down-arrow key to move down the article body and insert html paragraph breaks between each paragraph. Use your Preview screen to make sure everything's lining up.

"But wait!" you say. "Constant Contact's article format shows one box per paragraph. That means they want me to copy each paragraph at a time into each box." Pah! Constant Contact doesn't care how you create your newsletter. They just want you to sign up for their software. If you really want to, you can copy in each paragraph at a time, but I wouldn't recommend it. Just fill in those paragraph breaks, and the pain of creating a newsletter will be over before you know it.

Add images by uploading photos to your website and then pasting the URL into the Constant Contact format.

This is an arduous process, and you may not care enough to include pictures, but I like my newsletter to look jazzy, so I use them. You can search for royalty-free images on www.picturequest.com, or you can get photos from another source if you have one. Select images that pertain to your content. For example, I found a picture of a turtle to use with an article about Slow Days at Work. It's up to you how much time you spend on the aesthetics of your emailed newsletter, but I for one appreciate a quality presention so I would say, go all out!

Use the Quicklinks as an opportunity for free advertising.

Once again, I recommend deviating from the newsletter template. You can link to anything you want here; a selection of product you sell, the writing or design samples of your website, or even the website of a friend or business partner.

Don't create a brand new newsletter campaign from scratch each time you want to mail your subscribers.

The "Copy Campaign" button is an incredibly handy tool that duplicates a newsletter you've already completed and sent. All you have to do is change the name of the campaign, and replace the former articles, headlines and photos with new ones. So if you had some trouble getting your first newsletter in order, breathe easy. You'll never have to worry about it again. Just take care to update all of the information so you don't accidently send dupes of articles you ran last month!

Constant Contact is a bit tricky at first, but with a little patience, you, too can have your own email newsletter up and running in no time.

Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved.

Dina Giolitto is a New-Jersey based Copywriting Consultant with nine years' industry experience. Her current focus is web content and web marketing for a multitude of products and services although the bulk of her experience lies in retail for big-name companies like Toys"R"Us. Visit http://www.wordfeeder.com for rates and samples.

---

How to Format Your Email Newsletter

When subscribers' email readers (programs) receive your text newsletter, they will display it in all kinds of ways. Not only are there different programs, but each one has several customization options.One of the... Read More

10 Tips For Ezine Publishers

1. Many Ezine Publishers use too many styles of separatorin their Newsletter. I recently saw an Ezine that used noless than 7 different separators:++++++------~~~~~~\\\......======******This confuses the reader and makes your Ezine difficultto read.... Read More

Why Arent You Writing Ezine Articles?

I'm amazed!Everywhere I go on the Web, people are desperately searching for ways to get more traffic to their websites. Some will even pay hundreds of dollars for an Express Listing in Yahoo.And... Read More

Ezines and Newsletter Software - How to Drive Traffic and Improve Your Business Cashflow

So how do smaller businesses use the internet to drive traffic and improve their cashflow?The upfront answer is building a permission based contact database tied into your website.Build a targeted list and you... Read More

The Plain Truth About Branding for Newsletter Publishers and Web Designers

Branding, or brand marketing as some now call it, is one of the buzzwords of public relations and marketing. I searched several dictionaries in vain for a precise definition of this high... Read More

Email Newsletters: Privacy and Unsubscribing

As you likely know from personal experience, the value of email has been greatly tarnished by spam, unsolicited messages, online junk mail. So, many subscribers and would-be subscribers care very much about the... Read More

Internet Marketing Idea: Publish an Ezine

Chances are if you surf the net much you have noticed that almost every website offers a free newsletter or ezine in some form or other. Wonder why someone would go to so... Read More

6 Important Tips For Choosing Ezine To Advertise In

Did you ever wonder why some business owners seem to be able to pull in all the business they want, while others ? perhaps you ?can't seem to get any momentum? More often... Read More

Your E-zine 13 - A Formatting Checklist

While sending out a text e-zine may seem like a piece of cake, there's more to it than you may think. *Good formatting* is the name of the game. Here's a handy checklist... Read More

Start Your Own Ezine Newsletter & Profit!

The information listed here is worth more than gold. if you apply these simple list building plans and techniques, we guarantee you will see results. you may not get the results as fast... Read More

Plagiarism on the High Seas

More and more companies are finding the value in informational advertising. Giving away information to the world. This has worked well as it tends to develop confidence in potential clients in your companies... Read More

Create An Ezine To Get People Back To Your Site

I know you've worked hard on your website. I know it looks pretty good - in fact, it's fantastic. However, you are facing one huge problem - getting people to come back.Look at... Read More

5 Ways to Make More Money With Your E-zine

Have you been publishing an e-mail newsletter for at least six months but still aren't seeing real results (read: revenue) from it? Don't fret - you may just need a tune up. Here... Read More

10 Newsletter Ideas to Write Articles for Your Newsletter

Since you publish your newsletter on a regular basis, sometimes it's difficult to find newsletter ideas for your next issue's content. You sit in front of your monitor and stare at the white... Read More

Are Your E-Mails Bouncing? Hard Bounces, Soft Bounces, and Everything in Between

Are you doing "the bounce"? No, it's not a new hip-hop dance. A bounce, or bounce-back, is an e-mail that is returned to you because it cannot be delivered for some reason. You've... Read More

21 Questions to Ask Any List Service Before You Sign on With Them

If you publish an e-mail newsletter, or "e-zine," you'll need to sign on with a list service (or "listserve") to manage your subscriber list. There are many types of listserves out there, so... Read More

Ebook Rebranding - The New Ebook Marketing Power?

Well, it is definitely yes!In the early day of internet marketing, giving away ebook free was a very good list-building strategy. It worked extremely well. But it is no longer the case in... Read More

Talking Pictures Are the Go!

A Tokyo day care company has begun marketing a "talking picture," which can play messages for up to 12 minutes by holding up a pen-shaped scanner on the photograph. The scanner uses invisible... Read More

How To Increase Your Sales From Your Newsletter

The first and most important thing you should know when thinking of your own newsletter is that YOU can do it. Yes, you can write your own newsletter. There is nothing much to... Read More

An Embarrassment of Riches - Part I

The Internet is too rich. Even powerful and sophisticated search engines, such as Google, return a lot of trash, dead ends, and Error 404's in response to the most well-defined query, Boolean operators... Read More

E-Power The E-zine Advantage

"Regular communication with your customers is essential to your success." - Heidi Richards -E-zines - The alternative of choice for many companies is a great way to market your company. All you need... Read More

An Overlooked Fr~e Advertising Opportunity

When you have an online business you need to utilize every possible avenue of advertising and promotion. As I sign up for more ezines and discussion groups, I am finding numerous publishers are... Read More

10 Valuable Tips For Ezine Publishers

1. Write your own articles.Your articles will give you an effective way to build up your status as an expert by sharing your tips and advice with your readers.Your articles will also help... Read More

Managing Internet Addresses in Your Email Newsletter

Web and email addresses pose a special challenge for writers and publishers of email newsletters and ezines.I don't know about you, but I find it frustrating when I have to copy and paste... Read More

The Biggest Mistakes That Can Spell Doom For You As A Newsletter Publisher And How To Avoid Them

A lot of newsletter publishers spend a great deal of time wondering why they are not making money with their newsletters. Most of them expect to make so much money on getting started... Read More

Top 10 Tips to Give Your Newsletter Impact!

There are thousands of email newsletters or "ezines" produced every week, and most of them have great material and are written by passionate people who want to share valuable information. Unfortunately, very few... Read More

Explode Your Business

You can make a decent income selling products and services but you can become insanely rich by creating and controlling markets.That's what I'll help you to do.You see the Internet is the cheapest... Read More

Getting Subscribers For Your Newsletter Is As Simple As This...

Having a newsletter is one thing but how many subscribers do you have? Or are you ok with the number of subscribers you have? If you are not satisfied with the answer, then... Read More

Are You Wasting Your Time With Free Ezine Ads?

There are lots of ezines (newsletters) out there that offer free classified ads to new subscribers (and many even offer free ads on an ongoing basis).This can be a nice little source of... Read More