In this episode I speak with Dave Charest from Constant Contact. We discuss everything content marketing. Dave and his team use content to generate traffic and support their existing customers. In this episode Dave tells me how they have evolved their content strategy over the last 7 years.
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Last 5 questions:
What’s your best piece of marketing advice?
I have a philosophy I’m usually talking about with the team all the time, it’s really this idea that all good things come from focusing on the people that you’re trying to reach, and helping them become more successful. I think from a marketing perspective, if you stay focused on that, I think anything you create or anything you do is going to feel like a valuable resource to people, and not necessarily marketing. It’s gonna be marketing people are interested in, versus interruptive type of stuff. I think that’s really important, and I think if you can do that most of the things that you create or the things you’re gonna try to do are gonna come from the right place, and really benefit you in a better way.
Can you recommend a book to our listeners?
Writing That Works
What software tool couldn’t you live without?
Grammarly
What’s your favourite example of a marketing campaign?
I really enjoy the things that Amaze has been doing. My wife and I are big U2 fans, they recently just did one with U2 about going to play mini-golf with U2. I think they just do a fantastic job.
Which other podcasts do you listen to?
This Old Marketing Podcast
StartUp by Gimlet Media
Unthinkable by Jay Acunzo
Transcription:
Matt Byrom:
Thank you for joining me for today’s episode of the Marketing Strategies Podcast. Today I’m joined by Dave Charest, who is Director of Content Marketing at Constant Contact. Dave joined Constant Contact back in 2011, and is responsible for bringing in new customers and helping customers become successful with their product. In addition to this, Dave is a regular blogger and a self-confessed marketing enthusiast. It’s a pleasure to have Dave with us today to talk everything about marketing strategies.
Hey Dave, how are you doing today?
Dave Charest:
Matt, very well, thank you so much for having me on the show today, appreciate it.
Matt Byrom:
Your welcome, it’s great to have you. Constant Contact has been in business for 20 years, that’s an impressively long time for a marketing software business. You guys must be doing something right.
Dave Charest:
Yeah, I think we were one of the first to really recognize that email marketing was something that would work really well for small businesses, so been going strong since.
Matt Byrom:
Absolutely. What position was Constant Contact in when you joined the business, that was 13 years in I guess?
Dave Charest:
Yeah, it’s been a little … I’ve been with the company for about a little over six years now, going on seven, and I think when I joined Constant Contact I came in as a content developer, and we were really just building out. Constant Contact has always done a lot of work in the field, presentations to small businesses, that type of thing, and at the time we were really looking to get a lot of that stuff online, build out a company blog, start doing some more social related content, things like that. I was just part of that team, getting together and building out that. And so my team is primarily responsible for channels like our blog, we do webinars each month, we also create content for other areas of the business to help with their campaigns and their processes and things like that.
But yeah, it’s been an interesting ride, we’ve been able to do a lot of really great work and built a readership on the blog, and bring in lots of search traffic, and do those types of things. So it’s been really exciting.
Matt Byrom:
Absolutely. It sounds like an interesting ride. Would you say that over the last seven years things have become, you’ve become more process orientated? You’ve actually worked out which strategies and channels work for you best, and really nailed down and focused on them.
Dave Charest:
For sure, I think focus is a great word to say there, I think you find some interesting things working for a larger organization. There are typically, I think folks that are doing this from a content perspective too, will resonate with the fact that there are sometimes different groups within the organization that are creating content, and so it becomes a big thing to manage internally. It’s really understanding who those people are, getting everybody on the same page, just so that we’re all telling one story as a business. There’s a certain level of quality that’s being sent out to our customers, or prospects for that matter. So it’s that, and then really just looking at some of the things that we’re doing, and saying, “How do we do that better?” And questioning things in a way that makes us say, “Okay, do we have to do it this way? Is there another way to do that that gets us better results?”
Matt Byrom:
Do you test a lot as a team, is that a big part of what you do, testing channels or marketing methods, different strategies and tactics?
Dave Charest:
Yeah, I think what we do on our team is really, we’re focused on really looking at things from a content perspective in the sense that, what are we writing that’s going to resonate? So we work really closely with our social media team, we also work really closely with our customer success team. And so when we’re creating content, we’re really trying to one, pay strict attention to who it is we’re trying to reach, and for us that’s typically a small business owner that’s a business owner first and marketer by necessity. So they don’t necessarily have a marketing background, and so we really try to hone in closely to those folks. We spend a lot of time talking to them, my team will actually sit down and talk about best practices and think of strategies to work with people on that.
In that sense, we create the content, see if we can get better results. One of the things that we do is we hold at least a monthly webinar, and we look at the registration numbers for those, see if we’re hitting the mark with the types of things that we’re hitting on, are we hitting the right pain points and helping people be successful with those things? And so we’ll look at things like that, and also just the process by which we’re doing. When I first started taking over the webinars that we were doing, we were looking at a place where I was like, “Hmm, we’re doing a lot of these, we’re not really getting …” We were getting decent, but not great registration numbers, I started to think, “Is there a different way that we can do this, is there a way that …”
One of the things with content is you get seduced into this idea of creating more and more, but not really thinking about the promotion and the effectiveness of that. So the way we look at is, “How can we do less, so we can get more?” We really changed the frequency that we were doing, and also just changed some of our promotional methods of that stuff. The first go-around with this, we were really, it was pretty exciting because we were able to increase our webinar registrations by over 1000%. And then from there, I always look at things at an iterative process, so we’re doing V-1, and then we’re getting feedback from that. Then we’re gonna go back to it, and we’re gonna do V-2.
And then an example after that first increase, we were able to increase again an additional 181%. So it’s really about honing into who that customer is, what are those pain points, and presenting things in a way that are engaging, compelling, and help them solve those issues. Particularly with the small business audience, I think it’s one thing to give people best practices, and it’s another to give them the step-by-step methodology with which they can execute against that. That’s where we’ve been trying to move with things, and have been seeing some really great results with that.
Matt Byrom:
It sounds like you’re really using marketing, creating marketing content as a support too really.
Dave Charest:
I look at it as really across four buckets for our business, we have stuff in a prospect bucket, for us a big thing is to drive trials, we look at it through the trial bucket, then we look at the customer, then I would say an advanced bucket, an advanced customer bucket. From a prospect perspective, we’re really looking to give people, or create content that gives them quick wins, so we can build that relationship and trust with people. In the trial bucket, we’re really looking to help create content that gets people to achieve or serve a particular task, it helps them do something quickly and understand how they can use the product.
Then from a customer perspective, we’re really looking to build out a framework for how they start at a base level. Like I said, most people aren’t marketers when they come to us, so we’re really trying to help them understand, “Here’s the basics, here’s some ways to set benchmarks for yourself, and then here’s how you can use the tool most effectively, and just understand marketing in a way that’s gonna most help your business.” And then the advanced bucket is really looking at building on those things that we’re teaching people at that base level, and how can you do that better is really the answer that we’re trying to answer for people there.
That’s the interesting thing about content, is that it does hit many different areas of the business, and so one piece of content could have multiple goals, depending on where it’s being used. It really changes based on what it is that we’re trying to accomplish.
Matt Byrom:
That’s really interesting. Can we dive a bit deeper into that, what does your marketing funnel look like? Where’s the entrance point for people to come to you, and then how do you segment them into these different buckets?
Dave Charest:
Obviously there’s lots of things we do from a high level, in terms of paid acquisition and those types of things, primarily my group is focused on just what we can do from an organic standpoint. So like I said, we look at the blog, and we look at, “What can we bring in from a search perspective?” Somebody looking for something tangential to email marketing, or email marketing specific, a particular strategy, something like that, we’ll try to create content around that. “What are the best subject lines, what are ways to market my business?” Things like that.
Matt Byrom:
Sorry to jump in, when you guys do key word research in terms of finding actually, not just necessarily what the pain points are, but then you’ll dive into some key word research tools to actually find what’s most searched for around that topic?
Dave Charest:
We’ll look for those areas and see what the traffic is, how many people are searching for that, and then we’ll build that based out on that, in addition to actually talking to small businesses. Like I said, we do a lot of work in the field where we’re actually in front of small business a lot, so we try to capture those questions people are asking. I usually try to keep things in an organic place first, in the sense of, “What are the questions that we’re hearing, what are the things that people are asking us? And then how do we create content to answer that for those people?” Then if that’s something we see is getting some wind, then we’ll look at that, and then we’ll tweak that, and we’ll create content around it to further out the SCO piece of it.
We really write for people first, and SCO second. But then there are particular times where we’ll do a campaign that’s designed to increase rankings for certain things, again it really depends on what stage that we’re in with that.
Matt Byrom:
Do you offer specific guidelines in terms of the content you’re creating, for example the length or depth of the content, depth of the writing that you’re actually going into in a particular post?
Dave Charest:
Yeah, we typically … Obviously from an SCO perspective, we want to have something that’s at least 300 words, something like that. But I think we don’t have a standard word count, we find some things that go into things in more depth, are longer, have more weight, and actually offer more, but we really try to base it on the audience. So really, what I try to do is, our posts need to be as long as they need to be to convey the information that we need to convey. So they have to be concise, they have to be helpful, and so we think of it in those terms, so that way we’re not wasting anybody’s time or just doing something because we want to game a particular system necessarily. But we’re really focused on, “How is this particular piece going to help the person reading it, and is it giving them all the things that they need to be able to do that?” That’s really how I judge it, it’s not a hard word count or anything like that.
Other than those guidelines as in what Google may particularly look for in terms of the basic length, but more so we’re focused on making sure that we’re fully explaining a situation, answering potential questions and objections that somebody might have when they’re reading it, but then summarizing that information and then giving them something that they can do right away to take the next step, or get started with that thing. I think that’s what we find works best.
Matt Byrom:
In terms of posting frequency, how often do you create articles, how many articles would you release in your average week?
Dave Charest:
In a week right now we’re running on a three post a week schedule, so we post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We found right now that gives us a good sense of publishing frequencies, so that we’re one, able to do other things obviously rather than just posting all of the time, and we’re a relatively small team at the moment, so you have to match that with what you can actually do. Then we also find that gives us the ability to promote the content in a good way, so we work really closely with our social media team who will be publishing that content out on our social media channels, we also have a couple of newsletters that we produce. We have one where people can actually register to get tips directly from the blog, so every time a new post is published they’ll get an email about that particular post.
Then we also have a bigger newsletter that goes out twice a month, and that’s where we pull in the top content and some webinar information, and things like that. We find for us that gives us a good frequency of one, not overburdening our small business customers with information, but also gives us enough in order to promote it and actually gives people a chance to give that content some more life. Because I feel like one of the things you can run into, is when you are publishing so frequently, and in the beginning when we first started we were publishing a lot, because we were trying to make up ground in terms of having more content available. So that was our goal, was to get a bunch of things to have, but then once you get that and things start to settle, then it’s like, “Okay, what do we really need to do, and how can we expose this stuff in a better way?”
That’s where you really start thinking about the frequency and what is actually necessarily to be most effective for the particular business, and I think it varies based on your type of business. I think especially when we’re thinking of a small business, sometimes once a week, every other week, something like that is probably okay. But if you’re, depending on your industry, if you’re a bigger company and you’re more on the publishing side of things, it may make sense to publish multiple times a day. I think it really just depends on what your goals are, what your team can handle, and what’s gonna be most effective for you.
Matt Byrom:
Absolutely. I was speaking with Kevan Lee from Buffer the other day, and he said almost a very similar thing to what you said, they used to post a lot of content almost up to three articles a day, three pieces of new content a day in some cases. But they scaled back quite considerably, just for quality over quantity, not necessarily they were producing bad quality, but they found actually that their numbers didn’t drastically change by producing a lower frequency of content. They actually just were able to put more effort and time into the pieces they did create, which is really interesting. They’ve actually followed a similar trajectory to yourself, where they used to create a lot of content, but have started creating fewer pieces. Quite interesting.
Dave Charest:
I think that the other interesting piece about that now is because we’ve been doing it for a while, I’ve been with Constant Contact for about, a little over six years now, and being able to go back and look at what those numbers are and how those change, you actually really start to see trends, and you can start to really understand what pieces are actually driving most of the benefit, depending on what you’re trying to do with that particular goal. Looking at that, and seeing that, you probably find that 10% to 15% of the content you’re creating is actually driving the majority of the things you’re hoping to drive with it. It really gives you that opportunity to say, “Yes, step back, we’re actually not doing as much as we think we’re doing by doing more,” it’s really being smarter about it and building content out around those top performing pieces that really helps you move the needle in a way that …
It’s sometimes counterintuitive, you think more is better, but … And not to address quality, I think quality is always the most important, but it’s an interesting dynamic.
Matt Byrom:
I read a post by HubSpot stating a very similar thing actually, they analyzed all their content, and they found that I think it was 50 pieces were actually providing their biggest proportion of traffic to them. I guess you have to actually create lots of content to actually find those 50 pieces, but it comes to the point where there’s certainly a small number of pieces that are actually generating you the most revenue or profit or sales or signups or whatever that might be.
Dave Charest:
Absolutely.
Matt Byrom:
I looked on SimilarWeb for Constant Contact, and it seems direct traffic is a huge driver for you, this may be inaccurate, but the next biggest driver was mail, followed by search. I guess you guys are very heavily focused on search with your content that you create, and then would that be accurate to say that search is a big driver for new signups?
Dave Charest:
Absolutely. Especially when we think of, we look at the website as there’s the main website that is really the acquisition side, and then there’s the content side, which we’re at, our job really is to be supportive to the main website. So we’re trying to get those people that aren’t necessarily looking for purchasing email marketing, that’s the main websites job, that’s the acquisition website’s job. We’re looking for those people that may be looking to find out more information, or thinking about other ways that they can market their business, and so we’re able to capture those people and talk about things that we may not necessarily talk about on the main website.
From a search perspective, definitely our traffic comes in primarily from that source, and it’s just a good way to start to capture those people in the longer tail, looking for things that may eventually lead them down the path, and it’s really a way for us to start that conversation with folks in a sense of building that relationship and earning some trust. We’re always looking for, how can we provide information and then point them to email marketing the product when they’re ready to get that.
Matt Byrom:
That makes sense. Again, it comes back to the supportive marketing and tactics really, doesn’t it?
Dave Charest:
Absolutely.
Matt Byrom:
And then, I notice that the Constant Contact website is really straightforward, it doesn’t really have many pages, and the pages are relatively short, there’s also a lot of prominent signup buttons. Even in fact when I visit the page from a UK location in a normal browser window, I go to an international landing page that’s even shorter without any navigation, I presume this has come from testing, experimenting, and user testing. Is that right? Is this something that’s a big focus for you guys?
Dave Charest:
Yeah, we’ve had a great web team that really works on those things, that’s consistently looking for the best ways to get people in and do that. There’s always something that you may find yourself in, in terms of a test or what they’re trying to accomplish, or messaging, or the length of the page, that type of thing. They do a really great job with that.
Matt Byrom:
Absolutely. You guys are super focused, laser focused on conversion by optimization testing.
Dave Charest:
Absolutely.
Matt Byrom:
You can tell, super short pages with signup buttons. Would you say that your team, the search and content team, are you as laser focused on SEO, around the metrics and the technicalities of SEO? Or you’ve mentioned a lot around you creating content to support your customers and their needs and their questions, does that go hand-in-hand with the technical side of SCO, or how do you view that?
Dave Charest:
Again, it’s a supportive channel that for that, from the SCO perspective we do work closely with our SCO people to look for those areas that again may not be serviced by the main website. We’re always, we’re tightly knit in terms of, “Okay, here’s an opportunity where we may be able to catch somebody for these particular terms, or we see a lot of people looking for this particular thing.” And how can we do that, but then also how can we support the pages that we do have built out from a feature perspective, or that we have those deeper pages that explain things on the site. We’re definitely always looking for that, and I would say the other piece of it, and that’s just one slice of it, I think a little earlier we had talked about that idea of content touches many areas of the business, and many areas of the kind of customer lifecycle.
When I think about looking at what we do, that is one area, so I break it up, and this is something I actually learned, which I thought was a great way to think about it. Because I was always struggling with that idea of, “All right, there’s a lot here, how do we really get your brain around it in a way that shows the impact that content can have, and how it touches so many different parts of the organization?” Went to one of those Content Marketing Institute workshops, and they had this really great way of looking at it, and breaking into these, basically four buckets. Which is competency, campaign, customer, and cash, and cash is one of those areas where I would put the SCO things. In the sense of how much SCO traffic can we bring into the Constant Contact website, that we don’t have to pay for basically, because we obviously do a lot of things from the paid perspective.
I look at that as cash savings, we’re bringing X amount of traffic in, that would equate to this many dollars. How are we saving money in that instance, that’s one of those areas I would put SCO into. The other areas I mentioned, competency, campaign, and customer is really … From a competency level, when we’re looking at how we’re gonna measure things, really that’s just saying, “How effective are we as a team?” So it’s those things that you would look at based on, “Is the content we’re creating resonating with people, are people attending our webinars, are people registering for those, are we doing the right things or talking about the right things that are getting action, or doing the things that we want them to do? And are we just good at creating that content?”
Those are areas there where, those are your more day-to-day metrics that you’re looking at, to try to figure out, “Are we on the right track?” And then there’s the stuff from the campaign perspective, so how can you take what you’re learning in that area and then apply that to what we would be working with people on our marketing program’s team for example, how are we using what we’ve learned from our competencies to say, “Here’s the tool that will help you most effectively with the campaign that you’re running.” And maybe that’s a guide, maybe it’s a webinar, maybe it’s a piece of content that’s designed to do something as part of a program, so how are we providing the right tools for that and what are those results. Sometimes those may be results that we don’t, the content team itself doesn’t necessarily track, but the person running the campaign is.
It’s really about going back to them and saying, “Great, you used this thing here, what happened there?” Or “How does that look different from something that you’ve done before?” Because I think really, at least what I’m trying to do, is really always show … I feel like content can make things better in a lot of instances, so how is somebody that’s gone through a content channel, or we’ve educated somebody to hopefully be able to do business with us, how is that different from somebody that doesn’t go through that path. We’re always looking at those things. The last piece I mentioned was the customer perspective, so how are the things that we’re doing helping our customers to either take advantage of a tool, or increase usage, or how is it helping people do something, just understand the concept or just help them be more successful. I think that’s the end of the day, that’s what we’re trying to do.
I look at things in those buckets, it helps me make sense of a little bit more, and again show that breadth of what content is doing in different areas of the business.
Matt Byrom:
What type of metrics are you tracking to actually determine success here? What would be your core KPIs for your team, in terms of actually your North Star Metrics of things that you actually judge your success based on?
Dave Charest:
I think again it really depends on what it is that we’re doing with a particular thing, but I think at the end of the day ultimately we’re looking at, “What is our cost to bring in new customers, or service existing customers?” And then we’re also looking at, “How are we saving? Where are we saving money?” Those are at a high level of really what we’re ultimately getting to, but I think for each of these buckets that I mentioned, there are different metrics in there. We’re gonna look at things like how many unique visitors are we bringing into the blog, how many people from that blog are we driving to the main website, which is trying to convert people. We’re just gonna look at those types of things to give us indicators.
From a webinar perspective, how many people are we getting to register for a particular webinar, are those topics resonating well, what are the sources that are driving the traffic to those pages. It’s all of those things that lead up to ultimately those two main metrics that I talked about before, are we bringing in more people, are we saving money, and that type of thing. Those are the things that we’re really interested in, from the customer perspective we may be looking at, are we increasing usage for a particular thing, are we increasing the number of services that we’re selling that may offer something. It really depends on what it is that our particular goal is with a particular program, or campaign that we’re running.
It shifts in some instances, but end of the day we’re really trying to get to those main metrics.
Matt Byrom:
At the end of the day, it all comes down to new user signups I guess.
Dave Charest:
Yeah, for us absolutely. It’s that coupled with customer success, because I think retention and engagement is obviously a big one, so you’re always looking to … End of the day, really what we’re trying to do is help small businesses do more business, and so when we’re looking at it like, yes obviously, new customers coming in is a big one, but it’s also beyond that. How can we keep those customers, and how can we best help them be successful, so they’re gonna see value in our product and recommend us, and stay with us longer and all of that. They really work really closely together.
Matt Byrom:
Do you actually, are you able to correlate back to any different type of content, or any different entrance points to the amount of retention that you get off a customer at the end of the day?
Dave Charest:
Yeah, those are things that are a little more difficult to get at, and things that we’re actually exploring now to try to see how can we … We do have some insight into where people are coming from, and what the main source was, but that gets into some things that are a little beyond my group in terms of multi-touch attribution and all of those types of things. But we are looking at that and trying to dig deeper into that information, and one of the things I’m personally digging into with our data people is really looking at, for example I mentioned one of our newsletters, we have a hints and tips newsletter, we’re really trying to look at, those would be people that I would consider content consumers, these are people that like to consume, like to learn, and like to try to apply those things to their business, what does that person look like versus somebody that is not subscribed to that newsletter, or not consuming that content.
Like I said, it’s a little bit more difficult to get to, and we’re still trying to figure out a lot of that, but that’s where we’re trying to really see, “Okay, what does customer A look like versus customer B, and what can we learn from that?” I think we’ve all heard stories of TD Ameritrade, who found that the people that were subscribing to their TD Ameritrade newsletter, thinkMoney I think it’s called, they found that people that were subscribed to that magazine traded five times more than people that weren’t.
Matt Byrom:
Because they’re more engaged, really.
Dave Charest:
Exactly. So then from a strategic standpoint, it makes sense to, “How can we find more people that wanted to subscribe to this magazine that are used to doing that?” Because ultimately it’s going to be five times more effective for us, same ideas, we’re really digging into that information to see if we can get a wholer picture of what the impact of that content is in the different ways that people come in through the funnel.
Matt Byrom:
I guess that’s it, the more that you can actually support and engage and inspire and educate your customers and prospects, the more likely they are to join your business and stay with them for a longer period of time.
Dave Charest:
Absolutely.
Matt Byrom:
It’d be criminal if we didn’t discuss email marketing a little bit, I know we briefly touched on this, but I’m really interested to learn a little bit more about how you guys actually manage your own email strategy, and it’d be interesting to learn a little bit more about that.
Dave Charest:
Sure. Across the business there are obviously lots of different, we have a customer lifecycle management team that builds out email marketing programs based on customer’s lifecycle, and then those types of things. On our side, we’re really more focused from an email perspective on the prospect side of things, we have our newsletter that people can subscribe to, we have our daily blog newsletter that people can subscribe to. So we’re really looking at those things to see obviously how we’re doing in opens and clicks, and that type of thing, but what happens to people as they get that information.
I remember one of the things that we did when I first started was really take a look at our hints and tips newsletter, and we had quite a bit of information in there in terms of just lots of links, lots of blocks, and lots of things that people could really dig into there. A lot of times that happens, you end up having something that is a channel that reaches people and marketing wants to be involved with that, and then somebody else, it ends up being this thing where everybody’s trying to, “Can we get this in there, can we put that in there?” And to your detriment, because it ends up not being as effective because the clicks on those are very low, so you’re just giving a lot of information to somebody.
One of the things for us, what we were able to do was really look at that and remove anything that wasn’t getting a significant amount of information, so we could streamline that for the user. So when they got that, now it’s not all of this stuff they need to look through, but really a select group. I think now we’ve narrowed that down to about four things that we put in our newsletter, that allow people to … Obviously we have to take into account mobile, so there’s mobile responsive, and we follow this rule for ourselves and for our customers, this idea of picture, paragraph, call to action. People are consuming things in smaller bites, how can we give them something that’s a quick piece of information, allows them to go find out more, so we get to learn more of what people are interested in, and takes them to learn more information. Then we find that email is still a big driver of traffic for us, that’s where we’ll see the numbers in the blog go up, when we share that information.
We’re gonna see those registration numbers go up when we share information about a webinar in those things, so email is still a very important piece of the online marketing puzzle. Because it’s still a huge driver of action around people, so it’s an important tool for us for sure.
Matt Byrom:
It sounds like you’re tracking a lot of metrics in terms of the actions that people take, and what they do, they’re engagement that they have with your emails. How do you guys actually action that and change things over time, based on what you see?
Dave Charest:
We look at it based on what are the top things that people are clicking on, it helps us look at things in terms of positioning. We’ll test things about, “What happens if I put this article or this information in the first spot, versus the third spot or the second spot where it was?” Really helps us get an understanding of how people are engaging with the content, we recently did a redesign to make things a little bit more streamlined, a little more mobile responsive, and those types of things. We’re actually in that phase now where we’re gonna start to see what’s happened, what’s been different in the way people are engaging with us now. We really just use that to help us make smarter decisions in terms of, “When we put something in here, what can we expect to see from that?” It helps us know, “If we need to promote this thing, or we want to do something around this thing, this is the better way to do that.”
Maybe it’s over multiple conversations, so we’ll have a blog-post that talks about something that in the future we’ll want to expose as a more promotional block, let’s say for example, versus just something to learn more about that. Those are the ways we look at it, again just to see how people are responding to the things that we’re putting in the email, what are they clicking on. At the end of the day, really tying it back to, “Are they taking those actions that we want them to take?” So it’s not just about, for example webinars, if we put the webinar block in our newsletter, are they clicking it, but are they actually signing up. What does that look like, so it really gets to beyond the opens and clicks, and more into what are the actions people are taking after they click.
Matt Byrom:
And then do you segment people into different buckets and different lists based on the actions that they take, so that you can then personalize the content they receive in the future?
Dave Charest:
Yeah, we personalize some content at this level for us on the education side or the content side, we really look at it based on what state they’re in, are they a prospecting customer, or are they a trial-er of our product. We segment there at that level, it’s not as in depth as things like you’re mentioning there, that stuff we definitely do at the CLM level and do things based on, have particular messages that will fire based on actions people take and those types of emails. That’s where we work closely with that team, to provide the right types of content for those particular messages that they’re sending out. I feel those are probably two different goals, based on our team and their team, we’re looking to keep interest, build trust, and build that relationship and keep that relationship warm. Whereas they’re looking more specifically to drive either product actions, or get people into trial, or do something like that. We do that, just not so much on our side.
Matt Byrom:
And you’re really looking for that engagement, and to actually build that person’s trust and connection with your brand and business, rather than actually maybe sell them onto the next product or what have you?
Dave Charest:
Absolutely.
Matt Byrom:
How do you see email changing over the next five years? Obviously as many people know, email has been around a long time now, but it’s consistently still rated as one of the top drivers of traffic and engagement over other marketing methods, so it’s here to stay for the long term. But how do you feel that might change over the next five, ten years?
Dave Charest:
It’s really interesting, I think one of the ways we’ve seen email change up to this point, is that I think it used to be about, it used to be a way to get your paper newsletter into a digital form, and like you were talking before about having a lot of information in it. I think with mobile devices coming in and the way people engage with those now, is we’ve seen the more effective pieces really be less those big email newsletters, and those shorter messages. I mentioned picture, paragraph, call to action, that idea of one idea driving people towards taking one specific action, those types of messages work best now. I think it will be interesting to see where email goes.
It’s interesting when you still see social media platforms for example, are still using email to drive people to their sites, to get people. It’s hard to say there’s something that will replace that, I don’t think we’ve figured out what that thing is yet. I still feel that’s still going to be a major driver, because we all have to use it. Email, once you get to that point where you’re in a job or you’re all using email, email’s still one of the things you use to sign up for all these other platforms that you’re using, so it will be interesting to see if that starts to evolve. But I still don’t necessarily see it happening soon.
Matt Byrom:
It still feels like there’s a long way to go with rich media adoption and email, and things like that really, it feels like we should be further ahead than we really are.
Dave Charest:
I feel like email is really starting to do, you have the animated gifs in there now, I think you’re really starting to get the ability to do some video things in some instances, so I think it’s actually becoming a more engaging piece of content, rather than just a static, “Here’s a message, and go do something.” It will definitely be interesting to see how it evolves in those instances, but I also like the idea of really you can do a lot of things from an email marketing perspective. Just in terms of the tools really allow you to do those things that you were talking about, in terms of just segmenting people by based on what they click, and getting the right information to them, and using things like auto-responders or automation to follow up messages. And really I think, when you look at it as a business tool, and particular for small businesses, the main things people are looking to do are get new customers, they don’t have enough time to do the things that they want to do, and they want to retain existing customers.
If you look at those three challenges that small businesses have, if we go that angle, I think email marketing really helps solve for a lot of those pain points, so I think it’s still just a very important and effective tool to do that.
Matt Byrom:
100% agree. One of the things I was going to ask you about GDPR coming in and UK and Europe over the next month or a few months really, how do you feel that will change the email landscape? And particularly for marketers really, where there’s bigger focus around collecting people’s data and using people’s data. How do you feel that will change email and email marketing over the coming years?
Dave Charest:
That’s an interesting thing, I think there’s lots of sensitivity around data obviously, that’s a topic that’s probably a little over my head in terms of how we execute against that. We have a team working on that now, and thinking about how that will impact things. I think it’s just when you look at it, it’s really about understanding what the real product is in those instances, I think lots of companies aren’t necessarily using … A lot of times people that are using email marketing are doing it to sell a product or a service, whereas you look at other things that are, you are the product or the service for that particular business, because they’re using your information to do things, whereas email is somewhat a tool to allow people to do something.
Again, I think it’s a little bit beyond my scope in terms of the legalities and what’s happening there, but I think it’s definitely something that we have to look at in terms of just what are we doing with that information and what are we making available to people, in a way that helps them without betraying any kind of data information that shouldn’t be available to them, if that makes sense.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, I feel that will be a good change, that people will be using data more as they should do, really rather than for wrong uses or for exploiting and misusing data. I feel like it will be good for the consumer, and I feel like marketers, good quality marketers will be able to use data more effectively, and actually new marketing methods and tactics will come from this I’m sure.
Dave Charest:
Yeah, I think you’re bringing up a good point, there are those, the good marketers versus maybe the more black hat marketers. I think these things are always good or bring up new innovations or ways of thinking about things for the folks that are trying to do things the right way, versus the folks that are trying to do things in more of a black hat manner.
Matt Byrom:
Absolutely. I’ll bring this back to you and your team, what are the marketing strategies that you’re focused on in 2018, have you got any big campaigns coming up, have you got any specific things that you’re going to test or try, anything that’s on our radar this year?
Dave Charest:
The big thing for us this year, and I do this every year, I write down one word or a phrase or a couple of words that really are my focus for the particular year, that I hope that we can move. For us, this actually comes a little more internal than external, but it touches on those things, and I’ll explain what I mean in a second here. Really I’m looking at experience and efficiency this year, and by experience I mean the customer experience, so when they come in or they hear something from us as a prospect in the content that we’re sharing and the education that we’re sharing, is that experience of the things that we’re saying also reflected in the rest of their experience. If they talk to somebody on the phone, or if they go into the product, are those things that we’re doing and the stories that we’re telling and the ways that we’re helping them be successful, are those things feeling cohesive, are they moving them through.
For example, if we say, “Here’s how you should think about building out your marketing calendar,” and then they get into the product and they can use the marketing calendar in the ways that we’re showing them, things like that. Or if you talk to somebody on the phone, are we sharing the same type of coaching across the way. I think that’s one thing that I’ve been really focused on this year from the things that we’re creating and the teams that we’re working with, is making sure that we’re providing that cohesive experience for somebody. And then the efficiency piece of it, can we use the main pieces in different areas of the business, without having to recreate the wheel. Are we making sure that we’re making those things be more accessible to the people that need to use them, so they can do so in a way that is more efficient, so we’re not, “I just wrote a guide on how to build your email list.” “I’m working on a guide on how to build your email list, too.”
There’s a lot of that, that can sometimes happen, so we’re really looking to eliminate that, so we’re using one piece of content in multiple ways. And then I think for us, we’re celebrating 20 years this year, so we’re really looking at some ways that we can share that with our customers, and the experience that we’ve had working with our customers, to help others learn from them. And reach new people in the market, to really help small businesses be successful, I think that’s the real nice thing about what we’re doing from, either if we’re looking at marketing campaigns, we’re really trying to show people some of the things that are available to them and the ways they can do it. Inspire them to be more successful with that, and that’s the nice thing about, with Constant Contact is there’s a really good group of people that are really passionate about helping small businesses succeed. Really most of the things we do are built around that idea.
Matt Byrom:
That’s awesome. You’ve got 500,000 users, did you say?
Dave Charest:
Yeah, I think we’re at a little over 500,000 at this point.
Matt Byrom:
What an incredible journey. I’d love to bring this to our last five questions, if that’s okay with you. First question, what’s your best piece of marketing advice?
Dave Charest:
Best piece of marketing advice, I have a philosophy I’m usually talking about with the team all the time, it’s really this idea that all good things come from focusing on the people that you’re trying to reach, and helping them become more successful. I think from a marketing perspective, if you stay focused on that, I think anything you create or anything you do is going to feel like a valuable resource to people, and not necessarily marketing. It’s gonna be marketing people are interested in, versus interruptive type of stuff. I think that’s really important, and I think if you can do that most of the things that you create or the things you’re gonna try to do are gonna come from the right place, and really benefit you in a better way.
Matt Byrom:
I agree. Marketing over the years, through content marketing has come much more towards knowledge transfer really, and I think now we’re coming to the point where it’s really got to be authentic to really resonate with people. Your view of supportive marketing is totally where I would see things moving, as well.
Dave Charest:
Absolutely.
Matt Byrom:
Cool. Can you recommend a book to our listeners?
Dave Charest:
I was thinking about this, I’m actually in the process of re-reading this book right now, I’m a content guy, so I’m always looking at, I love to create, so I’m always trying to look at, “How can I write better, how can it be more concise, how can I get to the point, how can I be more effective?” A book I always go back to, even though at this point it’s a bit dated, but it’s a book called Writing That Works, it’s by Roman and Raphaelson, I believe they’re a couple of Ogilvy guys that put this together.
I mentioned it’s dated, because they’re talking about email, e-mail, they’re using that as a new channel now, but still a lot of the principles that they talk about in there about being direct and removing the fluff and doing all that, I enjoy reading it because it gives me that, “Oh yeah, I need to do this, I need to do that,” type of thing. That’s a good book to check out.
Matt Byrom:
It’s got the sentiment, but the tools may have changed a bit.
Dave Charest:
Exactly, yeah. It talks about sending memos, nobody is doing memos anymore, but the application of writing those things, I feel like those basic fundamentals of communication are the things that always stay the same, just the method of which you’re using changes. I think that could be said of everything, so I love those fundamental things that you can apply no matter what.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, I totally agree. I love it that you actually go back to read the book, from that point of view. That’s so cool. What software tool couldn’t you live without?
Dave Charest:
Again, on the writing side of things, I’m a big fan of Grammarly. I like to write, but I write like I speak most times, and so the proper grammar when necessarily I don’t always catch those things, and that’s just a nice tool to put things in and capture things as I’m writing in some instances, depending on what I’m using from a plugin perspective. I find that’s a really great tool to help edit the things that I’m creating.
Matt Byrom:
Grammarly’s awesome, we use that in the office too.
Dave Charest:
Yeah, I love it.
Matt Byrom:
What’s your favorite example of a marketing campaign, you touched on Ogilvy as well, some of their campaigns still are awesome. What is your favorite example of a marketing campaign?
Dave Charest:
I really enjoy the things that Amaze has been doing, I don’t know if you’re familiar with them or not.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, I am.
Dave Charest:
My wife and I are big U2 fans, they recently just did one with U2 about going to play mini-golf with U2. I think they just do a fantastic job, if you just go to their website, the way they describe what they do, the writing, the style of the website, I think from an email marketing perspective they’re doing a really great job. And I think they’re just doing lots of really great things too, they use great use of video in their campaigns, great use of celebrity and influences in their campaigns, just the messaging comes across great. I think they’re really doing some interesting things too, I just got a follow up email from them the other day about, “Here’s your last chance, and if you make another donation you can get some more entries into this thing,” I think it’s just a really smart and effective way to do things, and I think they’re doing a really great job with it on all facets.
Matt Byrom:
That sounds cool, and I’ll put a link to the book and Grammarly, as well as the marketing campaign in the show notes, so if anybody wants to check those out, then they certainly can. Finally, which other podcasts are you listening to?
Dave Charest:
It’s football season right now, so most of my, I do most of my podcast listening in the car, but I’ve been listening to a lot of sports radio with football going on right now. I’m a New England guy, so we’ve got the Superbowl coming up soon. I haven’t been doing a lot of listening lately, but when I do, I’ve been listening to This Old Marketing by the Content Marketing Institute folks, which I believe at this point I think they’ve stopped it, so I think this was the last year, the end of the year was the last they’ve done it. I have a couple episodes to catch on there, but another one that I enjoy listening to is StartUp by Gimlet Media, I think that’s really interesting. In particular the first season of that, where they actually talk about starting up their own business, which is interesting.
I love that inside baseball and meta content marketing, I think it’s pretty cool. Then another one is Unthinkable by Jay Acunzo, who talks really about thinking about things differently to get better results for your business, and the things that you do. I think it’s a pretty interesting listen as well.
Matt Byrom:
That’s cool, I’ve got Jay as a guest on the podcast soon, so that will be in a future episode.
Dave Charest:
Excellent, I can’t wait to hear that.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, should be great. Dave, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you today, really interesting hearing about the work that you guys are doing at Constant Contact, certainly recommend everyone go and check out Constant Contact and the work that they’re doing over there. They’ve got some great articles and the website and tool is super interesting. Pleasure speaking to you today Dave, and I’ll speak to you again soon.
Dave Charest:
Thanks Matt, been a pleasure, thank you so much.
