Do you have a WordPress website?

Looking for an easier, more effective way to grow your email list?

Rather than designing your website for hit-and-run readers — who visit and leave your site without taking action — our free and easy-to-use WordPress plugin helps you create an embeddable form to capture visitor contact information.

Looking for more advanced sign-up tools? Our integrations with MailMunch and Privy provide a variety of interactive forms and analytics.

Let’s take a look at each sign-up tool and how they can work for your business:

1. Constant Contact Forms for WordPress

We recently released a free plugin to collect visitor information right from your WordPress site. Constant Contacts Forms for WordPress helps you to build professional, mobile-optimized sign-up forms that automatically match the theme and style of your WordPress site.

constant-contact-wordpress-form-example

No matter how tech savvy you are, these forms are easy-to-create and customize — with no coding required.

After downloading the plugin, you’ll select the fields you want to include based on the information that’s relevant to your business, including email addresses, first and last name, phone numbers, event sign-ups, and visitor feedback.

If you’re a Constant Contact customer, you can connect your account so that the new emails you collect will automatically get added to your account. You can even create a new email list without leaving the plugin, so you can keep track of which contacts signed up from your website.

For example, if you entice website visitors to sign up for your email list by offering a 10% off coupon, you can create a specific email list for website visitors and schedule an automated email to send to contacts that are added to that email list.

Note: Constant Contact Forms for WordPress works for all domain-owned, WordPress.org sites. You don’t need a Constant Contact account.

Learn more and download our new WordPress plugin here.

2. MailMunch

If you’re looking for more advanced customization, look to our integration with MailMunch.

MailMunch allows you to choose from different types of sign-up forms, including, Popup, Embedded, Top Bar, and Slide Box.

Many of these forms are designed to jump out at visitors or grab their attention right before they leave your site.

mailmunch-and-constant-contact-integration

Financial consulting company, CPA for Freelancers®, uses a MailMunch Popup form on their website to connect with website visitors.

“It’s been consistent since we launched the website and email marketing program that we’re getting 10-20 subscribers a week,” says Gaynor Meilke, community manager for CPA for Freelancers®.

Learn more about MailMunch features and pricing here.

3. Privy

Similar to MailMunch, Privy offers a variety of interactive email sign-up forms for your website.

Popups, banners, and email bars are all available options for their mobile-friendly subscription forms.

Constant Contact Solution Provider, Bryan Caplan, uses Privy as an easy way to grow his clients’ email list. He’s even added a customized sign-up form to his own website at BCJBranding.com

His customized splash page appears after visitors have spent three seconds on his site.

constant-contact-privy-integration

Once website visitors sign up, Bryan sends an automatically scheduled Welcome Email to deliver a strong first impression.

Learn more about Privy features and pricing here.

Start turning your website visitors into email subscribers today!

Get started by downloading Constant Contact Forms for WordPress today.

With a sign-up form in place, make sure you have a plan to deliver a strong first impression with a winning Welcome Email.

Have questions about these tools or other ways to grow your email list? Provide us with your questions using the comments section. 

At Constant Contact, we talk to our customers. A lot.

With 25,000 customer calls, chats, and emails on an average week, we’re dedicated to listening to our customers and helping them succeed.

So when we first started building our next-generation email editor, we did our homework.

From deep customer research, big data, competitive analysis, and — yes — a lot of customer calls, we took our time to understand your biggest marketing challenges.

And while we knew our existing email editor had a lot to offer, we also knew there was a lot of room for improvement.

Which is why we decided to take things to the next level to make things easier and help drive results for your business.

Our next-generation email editor is designed to help small businesses and nonprofits easily create engaging and compelling emails that look professional on any device.

Balancing simplicity and power, we set out on a multi-year effort to create the best email editor available. And we did it.

Here’s a look at our next-generation editor’s top features:

1. Mobile-responsive email templates

With over half of all emails now opened on a mobile device, it’s essential that your emails look great — no matter what device they’re viewed on.   

That’s why every email created using our new editor is mobile responsive. Choose from a full selection of mobile-responsive email templates that automatically adjust to the right size when viewed on a computer, tablet, or smartphone. And preview them to see how they look on those devices before you send.

mobile responsive email editor
Our Preview tool allows you to see what emails look like on both desktop and mobile devices.

2. Intuitive drag-and-drop editing

You’re a small business owner. You’re a side hustler. A baker. A mechanic. An accountant. You’re not a designer.

So when it comes time to send your next email, you need an editing experience that’s extremely easy to use.

Our editor’s smooth drag and drop experience makes creating an email faster and easier than ever. And our unique Smart Columns feature allows you the flexibility to fine tune column sizes.

Make a mistake? Our undo/redo feature remembers ALL edits in an active session.

3. Import PDF to Email

We want your email marketing to fit in seamlessly with the rest of your marketing efforts.

Say you have an existing promotional flyer for your business. With Constant Contact, you won’t have to recreate anything. Simply upload an already-designed PDF and we’ll convert it into an image for your email. You can then add buttons, columns, and functionality as needed.

import-pdf-to-email-feature

These are just a few of the new features our next-generation editor has to offer.

Behind-the-scenes, we’re busy releasing new features and enhancements on a schedule of about every two weeks to ensure your business is always on top of the latest marketing trends and best practices.

You can stay updated on new product enhancements any time by visiting the Help Center in your Constant Contact account.

We look at data to see which features people are really using and which features are slowing people down. We’re proud to see that the send success rate is higher with our next-generation editor, particularly for new users.

That said, if there’s a feature you can’t live without, let our Support team know. Your feedback is tracked by our Voice of the Customer team, which helps us prioritize upcoming product improvements.

Ready to take your email marketing to the next level?

At this time, all new customers will receive our next-generation editor automatically. Not a customer yet? Test drive our new editor for free for 60 days! Sign up for your trial here.

Make hundreds of dollars a week just by stuffing envelopes.”

Remember that tiny ad that used to run regularly in virtually every newspaper’s classified ad section?

I suppose a fair number of people answered the ad, otherwise they would have gone extinct quite quickly. However, most of us didn’t take the bait. Why? Because we didn’t have any trust in it.

Trust may be the single most important foundational element in a business relationship.

And with so many business relationships starting online, knowing how to build trust with customers and prospects via digital media is essential for success.

Not only do you need to communicate how your product or service solves the problems your prospects are having, you need to establish trust with them, as well.

Here are four strategies you should use:

1. Address objections

You probably know the objections prospects have to buying your product or service. Address those head-on in your marketing materials and on your website.

The more honest and forthright you can be when you take on possible objections, the more your prospects will notice and appreciate it.

2. Use social proof

Testimonials and reviews are a great way to build trust. However, there are a lot of companies on the Internet that fake testimonials. Be sure yours are legitimate.

It’s great if you can use a customer’s full name and picture and even say a little about the product or service that your customer used. In other words, make it into a mini-case study rather than a one-sentence quote.

Using a third-party review app gives your reviews a higher level of legitimacy. When they can be identified as actual buyers, their reviews carry a lot more weight with prospects.

Take a look at how this Oregon hotel, Inn at Seaside, highlighted a positive TripAdvisor review on their Facebook Page.

3. Influencer endorsements

Getting influencers on board is a major trend today. There is even a growing movement of using “micro-influencers” —  individuals who are recognized authorities in smaller niches.

If you’re a local business, think about who the influencers are in your community. If you owned a sporting goods store, making a donation to a local team and posting a thank-you note from a respected coach would help build trust and esteem.

Highlight these endorsements on your website and email marketing messages to build credibility.

4. Your ‘About Us’ page

The About Us or About Me page is always one of the most-read pages of a website. That alone should tell you how important it is to build trust with customers and prospects — they are looking for reasons to trust you!

Sadly, many businesses use this page as a sales page. They tell how dedicated they are to providing the best widgets or widget repair service in the world. It’s wiser to take a more personal approach. Let your customers and prospects see you and your team as real people. Talk about hobbies, families, and other interests. Talk about why you started your business and your vision for the future.

Then, let them know how to learn more about the products you offer. Encourage them to keep in touch with you by joining your email list.

Build trust with customers online and off

Are you doing everything I’ve outlined here? If not, you need to get busy. These are not difficult steps to take, but if you’ve dropped the ball on any of them, you are undoubtedly losing some business.

Finally, although I’ve concentrated on the image you present online, these principles apply to print media as well.

Trust me on that.

Want to get really advanced? Check out these 25 Helpful Resources for Building Customer Relationships Online.  

About the Author: Susan Solovic is THE Small Business Expert. Sign up for Susan’s Success Tips Newsletter and get your free copy of “Smart Marketing Strategies for Small Biz” ebook.