Getting started with Constant Contact

New to Constant Contact or need a refresher? Start here and we'll show you everything you need to know.

Get set up for success: Check out our New Customer Hub on the Community to hit the ground running with quick video tutorials, on-demand courses, live webinars, and a network of your peers!

Whether you need help setting up your account, adding your contacts, creating your first email, or growing your contact list, we've got the resources to guide you! 

If you need help with a particular topic, you can quickly jump right to the articles you need:

• Set up your account
• Upload your contacts & grow your list
• Create & send an email

If you're more of a visual learner, here's our Getting Started video:

You can also follow the recommended steps on your dashboard to help you get up and running!

Not sure where to start with marketing? Check out The Download—our free online marketing guide that's packed with tips, examples of what works and what doesn't, and more!

Set up your account

As you first get started, there are a few things you’ll want to do before you start creating campaigns that will save you time in the long run with every campaign you create!

• Verify your email address - If you haven’t already, be sure to check your inbox for an email from us to quickly verify your email address. You’ll need to do this before you can start sending emails.
  • Didn't receive the verification email?
    
    
    
    
• Add your industry - Next, add your business industry to your account settings. It helps us provide you with more personalized guidance and tips to get the most out of Constant Contact and lets you compare your results to others in your industry.
  
  
  
  
• Add your brand assets - To ensure consistency across your campaigns and save time designing them, automatically or manually save your brand colors, logo, and images in your BrandKit.
  
  
  
  

View more help articles for setting up and managing your account settings

Upload your contacts & grow your list

Next, you’ll want to add any contacts you already have or connect your tools to automatically import them from wherever you store them. 

• Add your existing contacts - No matter where you store your existing contacts, we have several methods for importing them into your Constant Contact account.
  • A great place to start is simply adding the email addresses for any coworkers or people that you trust to send your first email to or who you plan to have review your test emails before sending them to your contacts. It’s easy to add a few contacts individually or upload them from a file or spreadsheet.
    
    
    
    
• Collect new contacts - Don’t have many—or any—contacts yet? No problem! We have tools to help you grow your list and capture new contacts through your website, social media, or in person. 
  • The easiest way to collect new contacts is to create a Sign-up Landing Page. It’s a standalone webpage that you can share on social media, in an ad, on your website, or anywhere else you can share a link!
    
    
    
    

View more help articles for adding and managing your contacts

Create & send an email

Now it’s time to create your first email! Start from one of our pre-designed and fully customizable templates, then let us do the heavy lifting for you with our AI Content Generator.  Plus, our drag-and-drop email editor makes designing a professional, beautiful campaign quick and easy.

• Choose an email template - Create an email by choosing from our wide selection of professionally designed templates based on your industry or what you’re looking to share. Or start with one of the Branded templates that automatically apply your theme design from your BrandKit!
  
  
  
  
• Let us generate content for you - With just a few keywords, you can use our Content Generator to automatically write content to insert into your campaigns.
  
  
  
  
• Explore how to use the email editor - To help you customize your email, explore how to work with the elements in our email editor to add content and adjust the look of your template.
  
  
  
  
• Preview and test your email - To get a sense of what your live email will look like to your contacts, be sure to preview and send a test version to yourself or the people you trust to review it.
  
  
  
  
• Send your email - Once you’re ready, schedule your email to send! If you don’t have contacts yet, now’s a great time to send your email to the list of coworkers or trusted people you added to your account earlier.
  
  
  
  
• Check the reporting - After sending your email, you can check the reporting to see how it performed.
  
  
  
  

View more help articles for creating and sending emails

Need some extra assistance? We have several professional marketing and design services available!

• Build your brand with a custom-designed template
• Get expert advice from a Marketing Advisor every month
• Get assistance from a Marketing Specialist every month
• Let our Marketing Managers handle your monthly marketing for you

Be a better marketer: Check out our blog on how to market your small business on a shoestring budget!

Once you’re up and running and ready to explore more ways to market your business through Constant Contact, check out what else we have to offer in your account:

• Integrations - Achieve your marketing goals with Constant Contact's ecommerce, CRM, contact management, and hundreds of other integrations.
• Social posts & monitoring - Connect your social media profiles to create and post content across multiple platforms at once, see how your posts are performing, and respond to messages, mentions, and comments.
• Automated communications - Create automated messaging paths that are triggered to reach the right people at the right time, such as to welcome your new subscribers, nurture leads, and engage with your contacts based on their actions and behavior when interacting with your brand.
• Events - Seamlessly create, promote, and manage in-person or virtual, free or paid events - all from within Constant Contact.

Learn more about marketing and Constant Contact through our free, live and recorded webinars!

Check out our recorded Getting Started webinar:

Questions?