Five questions for ‘Annette Iafrate’- Constant Contact, UK
1. Annette Iafrate .. You are launching your new Social Campaign product. What will it achieve for SME’s in the UK?
It’s a common perception amongst small business owners that social media marketing requires a lot of time and resources – and thus can be prohibitive. We completely understand that; with so many new tools popping up every day, it’s almost impossible to know what to do. Further, our research found that while UK SMEs are keen to use social media marketing, only a third believe their current efforts have been effective. Social Campaigns aims to solve both of those problems, bringing small businesses an easy-to-use tool that will provide real results.
The product helps SMEs to quickly and easily run results-oriented social media marketing campaigns on Facebook. It gives business owners the tools and applications required to build highly professional-looking Facebook pages where they can run marketing campaigns.Social Campaigns empowers busy business owners to grow their fan base, engage with customer and generate social word of mouth – all of which leads to increased fans and more business.
2. You place a lot of importance on your free personal coaching and support programme. Tell us more
At Constant Contact, we are passionate about small businesses and understand the crucial role they play in the worldwide economy. As such, we want to do everything we can to help grow this important and vibrant community. We know that small businesses need more than just marketing tools; many of them aren’t marketers by trade and they need additional “know-how” to create and run effective, targeted marketing campaigns. To help meet this need, we offer free education and personalisedtraining to all our customers, enabling them to create their own successfulcampaigns that drive real business growth.
Our customers can speak with experts to get personalised training and one-to-one support so they can get on with their busy working day. Alongside this support programme, customers also benefit from our two free social media tools: Social Media Quickstarter, an online resource which helps SMEs wanting to get started with social media marketing and NutshellMail, which allows businesses to monitor their social media effectively, by sending a summary of activity straight to their email inbox.
3.You have just announced Constant Contact’s 500,000th customer. That’s quite an achievement in just over 10 years – tell us how you did it.
We’re so proud to reach such an incredible milestone. We strive to help SMEs connect with their customers to create and grow strong, long-lasting relationships. Whether that’s through our latest product, Social Campaigns, or one of our other proven tools, our goal is to make complicated marketing concepts simple and effective so businesses can get new customers and keep the ones they have. Coupled with our award-winning support and personalised training, we’ve found a winning formula for SMEs. Of course, if it weren’t for our customers, we wouldn’t be here today and we want to thank them for giving us their vote of confidence.
4.You say “Without great content, people won’t feel inclined to open an email, much less follow up on a B2B’s services” How can Constant Contact help create quality content?
This is exactly where our coaching and education come in. Whether it’s through a webinar, best practises guide, or one-on-one training, our educational services help businesses to understand how they can create engaging and relevant content that their customers want to read and share. Using Constant Contact’s suite of tools and the support of our coaches, SMEs learn how to glean insight from customers and to develop compelling content from scratch.
5. What have I missed? Do you want to get any other points across about your UK activities?
We’re thrilled to be here on the ground in the UK. We took the decision to set up a UK office because it comes at both an exciting and crucial time for the small business community.
In these economic hard times small businesses need help to make it through — our online tools help them market themselves affordably and generate results.
2011 saw an increase in US tech firms basing themselves in the UK, with 45,000 US companies now working in or trading with the UK.
With such a vibrant SME community in the UK, Constant Contact wants to work with small businesses and nonprofits to make it through the recession and grow their customer base and the country’s economy.