Grow and manage your contact list to optimize engagement

Benefits of growing and maintaining your lists, and engaging your email and SMS contacts using Constant Contact tools and integrations

There are so many reasons you want your contact list to grow, and Constant Contact has the tools to help you! Here's what you need to know about growing a permission-based contact list the right way: 

• A larger list is great for targeted messages, and targeted messages perform better
• Email and SMS marketing is more personal, and engagement matters
• Growing your own list gives you more control over it
• Your list gives you a more reliable way to spread your message
• Integrations make it easy to consolidate your contacts, making your list larger and easier to manage

Be a growth-minded marketer: Explore our Quick Tips to Grow Your Email List and our Ultimate Checklist for Email List Growth!

A larger list is great for targeted messages, and targeted messages perform better

Growing your list gives you the freedom to segment your list based on your contacts' interest and makes creating targeted content more worthwhile because you have a larger audience for each version of your message. You're ultimately able to create shorter emails with more targeted content, and only send emails and SMS messages to the contacts that find the value in them! 

• Grow your contact list with sign-up forms
• Understand contact segmentation
• Use contact lists, tags, and segments based on your list size
• Use click segmentation in an email

Did you know? When you segment your list, you don't need to email every contact on your list at the same time! Using your engagement data, your opens and clicks reporting, and contact details and custom fields helps you to narrow your message for a specific audience. Learn more.

Email and SMS marketing is more personal, and engagement matters

A large list lets you engage with a large amount of contacts at one time in a way that is more personal and intimate than through social media. Taking the time to craft meaningful content and sharing it with the right contacts, in the way that they most prefer builds trust. And when your contacts find consistent value in your content, they're also less likely to unsubscribe or mark your content as spam.

• SMS marketing overview: What it is and how it can help your business
• Understanding email engagement
• Create more personalized emails to improve engagement
• Find your least engaged contacts using segmentation
• Re-engage contacts who aren't reading your emails

The data shows: Personalization increases open rates by 26%, and segmented emails can increase revenue by 760%.

Growing your own list gives you more control over it

What do you do when the social media platform you've been posting on changes up its algorithm? How do you know the list you just bought isn't full of people who are ready to file spam complaints? When you grow your own list, it may take a little time, but the benefits, like better deliverability, higher engagement, and more conversions, are far more important!

• Document consent - Every one of Constant Contact's list growth tools require a new contact to opt-into your list. When a contact signs-up, you know you have express permission to send them email or SMS messages.
• Get email and SMS opt-ins at the same time - With Constant Contact you can grow a list of contacts with both email and SMS consent. This gives you the flexibility to communicate in the way that your contacts prefer!
• Manage your list in a way that makes sense for your organization - Our contact management tools let you create lists, add tags to individual contacts, and segment contacts into groups with similar interests so that you can reach the right contacts with the right message every time.

Get permission: Want to learn more about consent-based marketing? Explore Constant Contact's email and SMS permission policies, and learn Why Your Business Can't Afford to Use Purchased Email Lists.

You list gives you a more reliable way to spread your message

When you have a website, blog, or social media presence, you must wait for people to visit you and rely on search engines and algorithms to surface your content. With email and SMS marketing, you send your message directly to your audience and rely on your audience to engage with your email, forward your email, and even visit your website via your email. Plus, your message sits in an email or text message inbox until it's seen, unlike its fleeting presence on social media sites, where it's easy to miss.

Here's what to do instead:

• Use your website or blog to grow your list - Our website sign-up forms, Sign-up Landing Page, and WordPress plugin can all be added to a webpage so you can catch visitors and entice them to sign-up for more regularly scheduled content.
• Use social media to grow your list - We have Facebook and Instagram Lead Ads that can be used to get your sign-up form in front of a targeted group of people who are likely to be interested in your organization. Our Sign-up Landing Page can be linked in the bio of your social media profiles, and you can always share the link in a social media post too! 
• Use a search engine to grow your list - We've integrated with Kliken so that you can easily create Google Ads that surface your sign-up form in front of a targeted audience of Google search users.
• Use an email to grow your list - Never underestimate the power of a forwarded email message! By adding list-join instructions you have a chance of capturing new contacts based on the enthusiasm from your existing contacts.

Did you know? If your email sits in an inbox for a little too long, you can resend it to all the non-openers to make sure it lands at the top of their inbox again! Learn more .

 Integrations make it easier to consolidate your contacts, making your list larger and easier to manage

You may be gathering contacts in a variety of other places, like an ecommerce platform or other business software. Use Constant Contact to sync your contacts in a centralized place so you can more effectively engage with them through email and SMS messages to strengthen those relationships. Then, set up Automation Paths to get the right content in front of the right contacts from the second you add them to your Constant Contact account!

• Import tools and methods for adding contacts to an account
• Import a list of SMS contacts who have already provided permission
• Create a segment of contacts by choosing specific criteria
• Getting started with the Automation Path Builder

Be a growth-minded marketer: Explore our Foundations for Online Marketing Success.

Questions?