All right, everybody is one o'clock welcome to 10 strategies to get your first or next 100 subscribers. So I do want to alert you in case you don't see it there on the zoom portal. This webinar is being recorded we are going to share a copy of the recording I think you're going to want a copy of this recording. And so don't fret there.  That is by design. We've got a lot of people on this call. Let's take a look. Oh, yeah, got a lot of people on this call. So it can be a little chaotic but do submit your questions throughout today's presentation. Heather will answer those that she can live. She'll just answer them in the question fields. But then she's also going to collate them and we'll have a Q&A at the end. I feel like you already know this as a nonprofit nonprofits if you joined us in our little pre webinar chat nonprofits tend to get this more than for profits, but your contact list is really, really valuable to your organization. And I think a lot of organizations including nonprofits don't fully comprehend how powerful that contact list is especially around email email addresses. So let's break that down. If you've gotten somebody's email address and they've gone to your website and they gave you their contact information. If you met them at an event they signed up for a dollar or some sort of event you're running. They gave you a business card you're at a trade show, whatever the case may be right. They gave you that contact information freely you didn't hit them over the head to get it they gave you the contact information and they called in. Get more information. They gave you that contact information fully so thus they already know you. Right, they already know what you do. They already know what you provide. They already know the opportunities within your organization perhaps right.  They are already a little further along than somebody that's maybe casually following you on social media not that I don't love social media that's going to be a big core conceit in today's presentation. But it's a little more serious relationship right off the bat. In fact, one thing I encourage people to do and I'm going to go ahead and say this right off the top and you don't have to do it in today's presentation. One thing I encourage you to do is write out the size of your list and you may have multiple lists but you know you can do your best to kind of accumulate figure out how many contacts you have on the list and multiply it by the average donation you get. You know the average event fee you receive right. Whatever your source of income is multiply that together and you will get a rough approximation of what your list value is and for most of you it is going to be substantial now will everyone of those people donate no will everybody attend no. Of course not. But I think it's really healthy for organizations to really truly value and prize their contact list. It is one of the most important things you'll ever get one thing to remember to. Yeah, I love social media we love social media contact but one thing to remember is that with social media you do not own your contacts you are at the will of the social media organizations to do what they want. You own your contacts when it comes to email marketing, and that's a big differentiation. Now, today's presentation we're all talking about growing your email list so why email in the first place will 55% of consumers still rank email as their preferred communication. If you've attended one of my tech soup webinars you probably heard me say this before. The most commonly used app on your smartphone right now the app you go to the very most for most of you. You'd probably answer tick tock or Instagram, maybe maps or something like that no it's probably your email app. You're probably in your email app more than you realize and you're probably in it consistently why, because that's where you're doing business that's where you're communicating with stakeholders that's where communicating with stuff. Your business occurs right and so, if we think that through, who else is always in their email app.  That's where they are right. It's not a big surprise that email marketing still ranks so high, but there is something new really creeping into the space.  One in 10 of people have shifted to prefer text over just the last year. Now we're going to cover the text bases as well in case you're unfamiliar, constant contact does offer text marketing for you. As an add on to your current constant contact plan. This isn't primarily going to be talking about text I do will be talking just a little bit about it. But just know the winds are shifting a little bit. Alright, so let's talk about what we're going to cover today we're going to talk about how to entice people to join your list. I'm going to share 10 strategies that you can use and various channels to grow your list and then we're going to talk about how to build momentum once you have that new subscriber. How to actually engage them regularly and what steps you should take once you've gained that new subscriber let me introduce myself my name is Matthew Montoya I'm senior channel marketing and enablement manager that long title simply means that I train people for a living just like I'm training you today I've been with constant contact for 12 years but in case you haven't attended one of my presentations for tech soup. Do you know I've sat where you said, proceeding my time at constant contact I worked for a 5013 C and one of my responsibilities was doing marketing and some of the challenges that I'm going to talk to you about overcoming were challenges that I felt working at that nonprofit. Again, if you haven't attended one of my tech soup presentations know I'm extraordinarily passionate about nonprofit success because I've lived there and I felt the passion that everybody that works at a nonprofit has. And so I'm excited to share the tips with you today. So let's start with the first one. How to entice people to join your list. Now, before I share the next slide let me talk about what most organizations do now they do it on social media they do it in their email. And we've got, let's mute here. Can you handle that Heather. And probably everybody's Google device just went off. And if you could make sure you're muted we'd appreciate it. Thank you. Our technology. I will remove her. All right, thank you. All right. All right, so back train back on track here. So, one thing I see all organizations do nonprofits for profits whoever it is is in email social media on websites it's very, very common for them to talk about themselves and it's especially common in nonprofits. I can hear you shouting at your computer screen I can hear you saying back well. That's our mission we do this and we have to explain to people what we do and that's why they're going to volunteer that's why they're going to join the board that's why they're going to become a member whatever your model is right. That's not necessarily what I'm talking about it's just extraordinarily easy to say you know what you're going to get out of a relationship when it comes to particularly soliciting for email addresses and contact information. All you want to do is flip that over, especially when you're trying to grow an email marketing list or marketing list in general, you need to make about what's in it for them. Now this is more challenging for nonprofits and I will admit that than for profits because your resources are likely somewhat limited not just in the sense of financially, but in literally what kinds of things you can provide. Now, when I talk about what's in it for them three people, three reasons people generally subscribe or to receive promotions and discounts and that's the gotcha right that's going to be for nonprofits the difficult one. But if you have some way to give something of perceived value away, then that might be something you lead with when you're trying to get people to sign up for a list and that really falls into something around like exclusive content be willing to bet many of you could do something about a guide, a checklist right bulleted information, you know, 10 top tips to help be know whatever your mission is or whatever your consistency cares about offering that kind of thought leadership and offering it as a thank you for subscribing is the whole idea around here. Now the one you all probably have well in control is showing support right offering that your support is going to allow us to do X. Probably put that in when you're doing a campaign around gifts, right. The idea is to actually put that into your campaign around growing your list so on your website on social media when you're when you're trying to grow your email marketing list. Encourage people that by joining your list you're going to help them support your mission and explain how so all of these are mix and match you don't have to do all of them you can mix them a match them, and you can mix them and match them according to where you're promoting the opportunity for them to join your list. Now, this whole concept of offering something right is a lead magnet. Now this lead magnet some of these are very for profit but I think there's ways we can make this work in nonprofits to a loyalty or referral program. Now that's going to be pretty hard for you to provide in the nonprofit space, but there might be a way to make the access to your organization, somewhat exclusive. People will get early bird pricing on your event they will get early access to this thought leadership piece that you put out every quarter, something like that. Give them a sense that they are special because you know what they are a giveaway right now again with limited resources and thin margins that many nonprofits have obviously this can be challenging. What we did it at our nonprofit is we did have vendors and vendors love to give stuff away so you know, probably you do this events if you have events like the conferences and things that we have vendors and exhibit boosts and things like that work with them to give something away doesn't always have to be from you ebooks guides checklist. I think that's going to be one of the easier ones you can do you probably have material material that you've already developed that you can turn into an ebook or a guy. Now within constant contact I'm assuming about half of your constant contact customers but within constant contact, you do have the ability that when they sign up, you can actually immediately offer the download they can immediately download the PDF directly from when they sign up. Or you could offer a welcome email so the welcome email hits their inbox and that's where they download the PDF. Regardless, this one I think is something you probably already have in place and can probably employ pretty quickly. This is a webinar class this is something else I think would be strategically smart for you to do. And probably many of you are already doing this kind of education right so just offer that they will get early access to registration for these events. The thing you want to be careful of though is if you're going to solicit for email addresses online social media and blogs things like that. If you're going to offer something it needs to be evergreen so you don't want to say hey you guys will get a webinar class coming up this Thursday well they may be signing up next Wednesday. You want to make sure that you keep it vague enough that it's evergreen meaning that it's going to always make sense when they sign up. And then case studies, not all of you will be able to pull this off that probably most of you offer a case study if your organization is in my user word selling I know a lot of people sure get that in this space. Remember I worked for 501 to receive. What you're doing that's what donations and event attendance that's what it is right.  Well, you probably have some case studies me to offer a case study on the things you do. It's going to be perceived as valuable because that's why they're signing up to your newsletter. Now, when it comes to signing up for your newsletter we can talk about a couple of tips to take this idea of a lead magnet and put it into our forms and put it into the devices that are going to encourage people to join the list so you can see here this is an example of a feature within contact called the lead generation landing page. What this is is a customized landing page meaning that you can change the logo the color and even the wording to match your organization. And you can see in this example that this organization is offering a case study right to give more information are actually they're offering the value proposition to learn more to stay on top of things right so they're talking about their mission. They're not just saying join our list. One thing a lot of organizations do is they just say join our list, join our newsletter join our E blast or you know get our E blast. Everyone likes actually getting another email. Don't make it about getting another email get it make it about how they can help you right or how they can get some information that's useful to them. How they can feel special. So you want to put whatever lead magnet you're going to use whether that's a case study, or guide and ebook or giveaway whatever that that lead magnet is you're going to advertise that in your landing page. You want to keep your landing page simple now constant contact offers a couple of different ways for you to grow your list. This again is a landing page means, and what that means is that this is a intake form that you can create and then share on social media you can share it on a blog you can share your signature line for Gmail or something like that right, but we also have forms that live on your website so we have pop up forms we have a fly out banners we have. We have forms that can actually live within pages of your website, and all of those could have maybe a different lead back remember not everybody goes to your homepage thanks to social thanks to search engines, they may go somewhere deeper within your website. Now, simplicity is important constant contact with this with all of our forms allows you to ask whatever questions you want to ask first name last name phone number birthday. Seven things for them to fill out the more things you asked them to fill out the less likely they're going to actually do it they're going to abandon it. You want to make sure that you're focused on the data that is most important to you. Now I say that I'm about to talk out of both sides of my mouth, because there's also another piece of strategy you want to think through at this point, which is segmentation what information is going to help you learn the most about this person. What is it going to be? Well then ask for their zip code. Is it income level will ask that is an education level will ask that try to gather whatever information strategically will help you send them more relatable content content that's going to be perceived as valuable. You just don't want to overdo it with too many questions. You want to set expectations, we plan to send this many emails or this many texts. Now I told you I'd be bringing up text that's because we do offer SMS text marketing. And one thing you can ask for when you get text marketing through contact is you can ask for somebody's phone number and their permission to send you a text. Other things you'll need on an intake form is a privacy policy in terms of service but if you're not a contact customer yet. Well that's included in all of our forms. Now, next we're going to talk about the strategy surreal reason you came today 10 strategies that you can use in various channels so let's define channels channels are just going to be different places that you talk to people right. So, you want to first ask them where they are. There's a couple of different places where people would trip over you right we've run into you in person through print and online so in person you want to think about any place that where you have an in person information opportunity where you, you know, you're collecting money, and that's generally going to be an event but all of you are probably a little different so you want to make sure that you have some way to collect contact information at those events same thing with any kind of event where you're just gathering a lot of volunteers to do some sort of work, right. You know, you probably have some public visibility there you want to make sure you have an opportunity to gather contact information at that point, and obviously any public event. So, if you're doing expose galas, if you're doing conferences, if you're doing workshops, classes, whatever the case may be, you want to make sure that you're collecting contact information in person print material that's the easy one signage flyers brochures direct mail car wraps anything people see you want to make sure you're collecting and online so your website social media landing pages so let's let's break all of these down so let's start with a website. So, if you have information and teased a little bit of information about the tools that you should employ to grow your list. Let's let's dig a little bit deeper. First you want to capture their attention. Now some of you are groaning right now but with a pop up form pop up forms are remarkably effective at getting conversion in fact what people generally don't like about pop up forms or two things. Usually about get our email right join our list, get in our e blast right you don't want to do that you want to make it about them, offering them something of value whether that's perceived value of that's value and how your organization can help them and help the community. Or it's literally any book or something of that nature, but you want to what people don't want to get is just another email, but the fact that the pop up shows up right there on the screen is a fantastic way for you to get contact information. With constant contact you also have the ability and some of our advanced plans to actually have a timeout so that, meaning that it only show up occasionally when they visit or only once when they visit or maybe if they're about to leave the website that's when it pops up. It's a pretty advanced feature that can be really valuable and overcoming this perceived dislike for pop ups but remarkably effective at growing your list. Number two and I'd be willing to bet or I certainly hope most of you are doing this when you are collecting the donations whatever tool you're using if you're using donor perfect somewhere tool like that. Well, you want to make sure you're asking people, would they be willing to be added to your marketing list to your email marketing list you again want to make it about them. You'd want to include that in the donation process just a little check mark right where they can check mark and say yes I'd like to get more information. All of us have probably run into this either through for profits when we're buying something or in the nonprofit space. If you're not doing this this is low hanging fruit. You know, now one thing you could do this class isn't this class this webinar is not per se about automation I will be touching on it to a certain extent. And one thing on a decent amount of that I say it out loud is, you can have these things called welcome email so we're going to go into a little bit more depth on that a second, but welcome emails are triggered when somebody joins a list well, what would we want to trigger when somebody donates right. Yeah, thank you. Now most of you are probably doing that. Well, you can actually start a whole campaign around that thank you you can actually sit out multiple emails, think that through and whatever you do, don't force them into it. Technically in the United States if they give you a donation you are able to add them to a marketing list but I wouldn't give them the ability to opt in. So don't have that check mark already checked for them. Make sure they have the ability to volunteer to join your list. Most of you are probably on some social channels, you know, at least a couple of them. And so make sure you're leveraging your social media channels to help you grow your list. The next step number three is to add a link to your biography to your bio on social media so on your social channels. You want to add an ability for people to join your list now this is one thing I did when I, when I prepared for this this webinar is elected a couple of nonprofit Instagram pages. Many of them are leading people to their homepage which is very natural. If you want to pop up, you can grow your list if you have a forum you can grow your list but if you're just leading them to your homepage you might be missing out on opportunity to engage people remember those contacts are extremely valuable. It might be more valuable than getting them to your homepage you might want to lead them to a page where they can join your list or have them go directly to join your list by going to an intake for. Now I talked to you about that lead generation intake form just a moment ago. Maybe that's what I link up in my Instagram right. So make sure that you add it to your biography. Another place to link it up, especially on Facebook and LinkedIn is actually on your profile so add a button to your profile. So, Heather what I'm going to do we should have thought about this beforehand. I'm going to chat you the instructions for this unless you have them still handy. I know that people will probably want this so let me open up my PowerPoint. And this is number four. I have instructions for you and how to add a button everybody and I want you to get that. So, I'm going to see if she can get it into the chat if not we'll definitely get it into the follow up email promoting this are sharing the recording with you. And Matthew if it's in the notes I can I can grab it. It's in the notes but I also just sent it to you via slack. Thank you. Alright, because there are some steps you'll need to make to add a button like this, but think about it if they're if they're joining you on social media why wouldn't you want to get that that contact to convert into being a email contact for you as well. You know they're already somewhat interested we want to push them a little bit further into taking action. Some of you may have the need for multiple links something called a link tree. Now link tree is literally that so it's one page it's a landing page where you can give people different options follow us on Instagram follow us on Facebook, here's some fun recipes, or sign up. And then you can link to different profiles and you can link to that that lead generation intake form off of that this is something that is included in all plans of constant contact you can create link trees, and then you can add that to your Instagram profile you can add that to social media other other social media channels that that's the signature line of your Gmail you're out looking at hotmail accounts things like that. You can also pin posts what you can do is you can create a post and then pin it to the top of the page. A pin is simply just a very popular post you have the ability to determine what you're going to pin.  So it will be you to probably pin an article where you're talking about the value you provide if they join your marketing, whether that again as an ebook or it's going to be early access to something. That's what you would talk about in this post and then pin it and then occasionally refresh the pin with a little bit more information a little different information maybe a different image so that it stays eye catching. Now, on the flip side, you, some of you may be doing this you want may want to use lead ads now what a lead ad is is it's going to be an ad you have to buy. It's an ad you have to buy you have to put money into it, but a lead ad is a way for you to get a gain contacts through paid advertising. So it's going to allow you to pick out what your audience looks like going to allow you to determine what your budget is it's going to allow you to, to determine where you want to geographically target your ads and then the people that meet that profile, they're going to see and in this ad you're going to talk about the value of joining your list and then if they sign up. If you're using constant contact to run your ad, you can actually funnel those contacts directly into your constant contact account and you can even use things like leveraging automation to do follow up emails especially a welcome email. Also pay attention to your social media and I'm sure all of you are doing that but occasionally promote the fact that you have this email content. Talk about what the latest emails about or make sure you check out our email because of this fantastic information and remind them they can get that early bird access or they can get unique webinar content things like that. Use your social media to occasionally promote the fact that you have an email marketing presence. Now this one is one I've noticed a lot of nonprofits don't really think through. And I do understand that there's sometimes a schism between the for profit and nonprofit world. But take a look in the world around you and figure out if there are some for profits that might help promote you if you have something in alignment right if there's something makes sense now the most natural, but I can think of is food kitchens and restaurants right that's a very natural connection and that's kind of what I'm talking about is fine for profits that would make sense for you to have them promote the fact that you have this email marketing list. And if you do have a very similar industry relationship, promote them to obviously the nonprofit space look at sister nonprofits that are not. You're not competing for donation dollars for and see if you can promote each other and have them post about your, your lead generation landing form so you have them promote that, and you promote whatever kinds of list growth tools that they have. Some of us are still printing items. One item that is still being printed handed out a bunch at the conference I was at last week I was a fundraising professionals conference in New Orleans a lot of business cards flowing out there. All right, so take that lead generation landing page again what that is is that's going to be a customizable form that constant contact host for you so we give you a URL you turn that URL into a QR code. There's a lot of QR code generators out there you just Google QR code generator, but in the address it will turn it into one of these little scantable codes. You put the scantable code not just on your business card but you put on brochures, car wraps event promotional materials, anything. Somebody that looks like your constituent would see touch or pick up. Lastly, one of the most overlooked features in contact and it is included in all of our plans.  You actually Google if you type in constant contact you'll see something called the list builder app it is free. It is meant for tablets not phones you need to go search for it in the various stores on a tablet. And it'll download into your phone when you run it you're going to put in your username and password for your contact account what this will do is allow you to create a customizable form, meaning you put your logo on it same kind of idea you can ask whatever questions you want you can tie it to whatever list you want. And the idea is this is really great for events.  Well and then somebody has to type all that out or even business cards and you have to transcribe that in. Well this allows you to just hand a tablet over to somebody and then they put their information and the beautiful part about this is that you don't even have to have Wi Fi for this to work. They'll put their information in this Apple collect the information and as soon as it's connected to Wi Fi, it's going to dump those contacts directly into constant contact for you. So I know most of you probably do events this is a fantastic way for you to streamline contact gathering. Next up, we've got the contact how do we keep the momentum going. Again those contacts are really valuable they're showing intent when they join your list they know you, they know what you do and they're already engaged enough that they're moving well along to becoming that donor to becoming that volunteer to becoming that stakeholder that you're looking for so how do we keep the momentum going. Well, my most important tip today. If you haven't done so already run don't walk to your computer and make sure you set up a welcome email welcome email simply triggered when somebody joins a list. The reason why I'm telling you that you need to run that walk and this is really important is because it is has an extraordinarily high open rate, meaning that most of the people that you send a welcome email out to will open it. It's not a big surprise because if I send a Rita. If she joins my list, right, and she's joining my list because of perceived value right so she's joining it to get early access to my early bird fees for my something of nature right. Well what is she going to be expecting. She's going to be expecting an email so within a few seconds she gets an email what is she going to do. She's going to open it right. So let's think that out, we have an email that is likely going to be open by somebody that is actively interested in us what do we put in that email. Certainly an opportunity to donate right, but we're going to also link off to our current events we're going to also link off to important pages of our website what you don't put in a welcome email is current information meaning you don't talk about the event coming up next week you don't talk about the event coming up next month, because Aretha might have signed up today but she might sign up in six months from now we don't know. So we want to make sure we keep that evergreen. Now, if you want to take things a step further in our more advanced plans you can do something called a welcome email series. So this maybe would just be one email and again, if you don't do anything else we don't leverage automation and any other way. This is included in all of our plans it's that important. But if you want to take things up a step further, you can create a welcome email series. So the welcome email is email number one. Maybe I wait a week and then email number two goes out, and maybe it's a call to action to join us on social media. This is growing our sphere of influence with this contact, giving us more opportunity to connect with them educate them and encourage them to take action. Or we could create a couple of emails in this series further. Maybe the next email is going to be a little bit deeper dive into why they need to be engaged with us. Then maybe we're going to share a very unique aspect of our organization, and then maybe we'll give them a fear of missing out right like that that they really should be taking action, because of the great need in your community or something like that. In this example this is a five email series but what we're doing is we're taking the momentum of them joining our list, and we're encouraging them to take the next step. And this is actually in the in the for profit world this is a drip campaign this is us cultivating a lead and turning them into a customer so in the nonprofit world, we're cultivating a lead and we're turning them into a donor or a volunteer, or whatever your business model is. So, we're going to start to wrap things up, you know what, when it comes to building an email, right, I've got all these examples and it's really great Matt you've been here for 12 years, blah blah blah this is probably easy for you. What do I put in the email, you know it's it's easy for me to tell you to build five emails or to build a welcome email to create all this stuff. But I will tell you in my 12 years, I've had the opportunity to meet and teach at this point almost 14,000 small businesses and nonprofits. And I get questions about how to get a higher open rate I get questions about how to craft a good subject line. I get questions around how to segment but those are pale in comparison to my number one question. When it comes to crafting an email, the number one question I get is what do I put in the email. Well, that had been a challenge for me to answer for years and years and years. And the reason why it was difficult for me to answer is that it's unique every emails unique. I would need to sit down with each individual nonprofit to tell you what to put in your email. I'd have to sit down with each one of you, and I'd have to learn about your, your constituency at your mission. I'd have to learn about what's going on in the next three months. I'd have to talk about where you want to be in the next six months to a year. A lot of information that I need to gather from you. Just to kind of give you some guidance and then literally writing the email. Well, that's even more unique. Well, all of that changed about two weeks ago. So this is constant contact for those of you that are not familiar with it. And what we just launched two weeks ago is this. So you find it for right now you find it. Let me, it looks like it's flickering and there we go. When you find it for right now we're going to be changing it so it's a little easier to find is you just go to the constant contact logo and you're going to you're going to find it here. And then, right now it's in beta what that means is that we are starting to put it into our email editor and other places but right now it's on this page. Let me hit try it out. All right, so what this does is it gives me the first question which is what kind of content do we want the AI to write. Is it an announcement is a product promotion is a newsletter content. What this is going to do is it's going to change the tone of the content right. So it's going to have a slightly different voice, if you will. And then what I choose so let's do, let's do an announcement. And then what I do, what I do is I describe the announcement now I can put in a couple of words, or I can write out a couple of sentences. All of you probably know what you're going to be promoting all of you probably know what you're educating people on it's the challenges I'm, you know, not a copywriter and I don't know how to actually write something it's going to engage audiences well this does.  But I think this is the kind of content you might come up with so I'm wanting it to write me up an article. This is my organization and this is what I do. This is what the events about parameters around the event we got a raffle get music that the East Tyco Hilton. So I'm going to generate text. Now it'll take a second someone have a sip of water. There we go. So it gives me two different options I'll just read the first one. This is the first time my eyes have seen this. We are thrilled to announce that the hearts and tails animal rescue is hosting our highly anticipated annual gala on June 27 2023 at 7pm at the luxurious East Tyco Hilton. Many of those words are not in my description. I did not come up with luxurious for East Tyco highly anticipated this year's event promises to be bigger and better than ever before. With a fantastic raffle like music and of course plenty of adorable animals available for adoption so come dress to impress and join us for an unforgettable evening and support of our mission to rescue and care for animals in need. I didn't write any of that. I didn't put any of that into those keywords. Don't miss out for this once in a lifetime opportunity to make a difference and have a great time doing that. I wish I had this when I worked with the nonprofit. I wish I had this all those years I was teaching nonprofits about successful email marketing because this definitely if it's not the content you're going to use. It's close enough for you to copy and edit right and I can do it directly from here so I can copy this text and I can just paste it into the email. And so you can edit it doesn't have to be perfect but it's certainly giving you a release from that writer's block if not outright writing your content for you. It does give me a couple of options. So this one's a little bit longer. Animal enthusiasts that probably changed that word but hopefully your, your, your wheels are spinning here on how you could leverage this there's a lot of different ways you can leverage this. Now right now you're going to just copy the text this is actually a future version where we're going to soon be able to actually help you generate an email so it'll actually pop up on our editor and have that content already in there for you. What we're trying to do is make this as easy as possible. We know that nonprofits are generally pressed for time we know that nonprofits generally have small staffs. We know that nonprofits often the folks in the nonprofit have multiple hats to wear right they have a lot of things to do. Hopefully this makes your life a little bit easier. Now, let me pivot back to PowerPoint because there is some important things to know about this. This comes our AI content generator comes with our new plans so two weeks ago this AI content generator was launched in new plans of constant contact. So, if you are a current constant contact customer, and you got really excited about that AI content generator. If you are a current constant contact customer, you currently have a constant contact account, you're going to call<PHONE_NUMBER>. I'm going to talk to you about what plan you want to go into we have three plans, and the AI content generator is an all three for right now, our entry level plan is actually just a preview so they'll talk to you about. I'm going to talk to you a little bit more about the discount you received your tech suit because I think it's going to make our content generator, even more palatable for you. What I'm not demoing for you is we also launched new automation so all that automation I talked about is still completely valid but we've made it even easier and we've added some additional benefits. The biggest additional benefit and right now I'm talking to those of you that use constant contact and those of you that has set up automations. The biggest value in our new automation is the ability to do something called conditional splitting, meaning that somebody takes some action you can lead them this way or you can lead them that way. An example of that would be if you were doing SMS if you're doing text marketing through constant contact and you have their phone number. Maybe you send them a text as we welcome instead of an email as a welcome. Maybe you send them a text as a reminder of the events registration or maybe you send them an email. So that's a concept around our new automation there's a lot more functionality it's really easy to use. The big draw for our new plans is going to be that AI content generator I think it's a game changer I'm extremely excited about I can say without lie in 12 years it's the most exciting feature update. Our inclusion I've seen in constant contact ever never seen anything like it. So I'm going to take your questions so Heather get ready just have a couple more things to say then we'll take your questions. Reminder what we learned today get your first or next 100 subscribers by making sure that it's all about them making sure that you're talking about them and I don't literally mean using words like you I mean, think through what's going to be perceived as valuable useful helpful to them while also being useful for you leverage as many channels as you can to grow your list don't just rely on your website make sure you're looking at social and blogs make sure you're looking at in person make sure that you're looking at your events. And I just want to say that you interact with a potential constituent or constituent donor volunteer whatever it is that your model is you want to make sure that you're including a way for them to join your list. And you want to engage those people as soon as you join the list so one thing I do see in the nonprofit space is that some nonprofits send very sporadically will send an email you know this month and three months will pass and send another email what you want to do is you want to send an email regularly and one of the most important emails you'll ever send out is that welcome email. Now I told you that we have a fantastic relationship with TechSoup we love TechSoup's mission and we love and I personally as I said love nonprofits. I would say and Heather you back me up TechSoup has the best discount of any of our partners. We don't do discounts like this often so you can get 50% off of constant contact which is why I say that our new plans while they're not expensive at all. Really not expensive for you so you can get your hands on that AI content generator. I want to remind those of you that are current constant contact customer, you are still eligible for 50% off in the new plans so if you want to get your hands on that AI content generator and our new automation. We have that discount available to you as well so if you're not a constant contact customer, you can pull out your phone scan it over this QR code, or visit that somewhat cryptic bit. I bet if I know Heather she's probably pasting that into the chat right now. Love to see you leveraging that content generator and growing your list and then using that content generator to write content. I love to put in the emails when they they receive their first their second their fifth email and they convert, and they become a donor and they become a volunteer really exciting stuff. So Heather with that let's go ahead and open it up for questions. What do we got. Yes, we got an active chat going on everybody. Let's see, we do have a couple of hands raised let me go to the Q&A first. It is rare to access the AI tool and constant contact. Let's do that one really quickly. At the moment it looks like it's on the homepage. It is on. So right now here's constant contact. It's going to be under the logo so if you go to the logo, you'll find it. And this is again, only if you're new. If you're a current constant contact customer you will not see this.  If you if you've had constant contact, you know, at the beginning of this webinar, then you're going to need to call this number you're not going to find the AI content generator you're going to have to go into the new plans<PHONE_NUMBER>1. But if you are interested in constant contact you want to kick the tires you want to see what we're all about. You want to get your hands on that content content generator. So thus, you're at the beginning of this webinar you were not a constant contact customer. You're going to scan that code you're going to use the link that that Heather shared and you will have it right here under the logo now for those current constant contact customers. Once you do upgrade into the new plans, you go to the same spot. Now future state, as I said we're going to actually bake this into our editor so it'll be a button in our editor. Those of you that do use SMS it's actually in our SMS tool as well. You can actually have it right content for you there. A lot of things coming around AI and constant contact that I cannot say, but I just you can expect to see it in more places. Great question. Next one, Heather. All right. So I think we just answered this but Janet asked. She is not a constant contact customer but I have an account with tech soup to tech soup offer a constant contact discount. So I think you just went over that. So we can close that one out. So there is a question about the benefits of constant contact first mail champ. So maybe if you can kind of speak to that the question is from Deborah and she's asking, we are an environmental nonprofit and currently use mail champ however I've worked with constant contact over the years. So I put in the chat about our award winning customer service and customer support but if you wanted to. Um, you know, I will call it like it is me for the most part we're pretty much in parity with each other. We have a couple more features they don't they have a couple more features we don't. I mean, it's it's really comes down to a couple things. So we have road business for 26 years we have exceptional deliverability meaning that you build an email with us it's going to get delivered to we are most well known for a fantastic free customer support. And it's always for the top right hand corner, every page of constant contact and these fantastic folks will help you with not just technical problems but marketing questions. And lastly, and this one's maybe the most squishy, but I'm going to go here. Where's Mailchimp. Where's Mailchimp support for nonprofits. We do these webinars through tech soup and we just did one with donor perfect yesterday. I was at the donor perfect booth for the FAP or the, what is it, the AFP conference supporting nonprofits, they weren't there. They never are. There's value to me in that. Maybe that's not valuable to you, but it's valuable. It means something to me that that constant contact stands behind our nonprofits and puts, puts money where the mouth is. It gives us. Awesome. Okay, so Alan asks, how can we reduce people opting out and unsubscribing. Alan that's going to be a case by case basis I think they need to know you better I mean this would be one reason to talk to our support folks, but I can give you some generality for everybody. Generally, what you need to compare yourself against averages so you may not be doing badly with unsubscribed. I'm going to bring up an article, and I'm going to share it with you, Heather. Right, so the first thing I'm going to do. Let me copy this link and get it to you. So while this report does not have averages I encourage everybody to bookmark this report. Every month we update the industry averages. We open clicks and bounces bounces are simply emails that bounce back it got delivered but it came back for some reason. And we break it out in a couple of different verticals for nonprofits membership organization services or legal services might cover some of you. Faith based education. And so we give you these averages so get used to that inside constant contact when you're looking at your reporting we tell you the average unsubscribe rate for your industry. So that's the first thing is, are you really unhealthy, probably not. But if you are the next thing you need to think through is segmentation segmentation is taking a big list of people you email and putting them into smaller buckets of people and that can vary. This is why this is an individual conversation. It might vary by geography might vary by gender it might vary by the missions that you do. It's all about relevancy you want to send as relevant content as possible to people and so if they're unsubscribing and they're unsubscribing a lot. They may not be getting that perceived value and they certainly may not feel like the emails relevant to them. And so again, the best thing, the best case for him is to call our support and have them look at the the metrics and actually have this one on one conversation with them. But for all of you. One thing I want to encourage you to do is don't freak out about people unsubscribing everyone. Every organization there's no organization uses constant contact or any of our competitors that have zero unsubscribes. There's one, one example I was holding a class, and this was a live class, you know people had to drive to go do it imagine that right, and live class and everybody love the content and they were like clapping yay and you're going to send us the content we want the content is like yeah of course I send you an email. I send an email this is something they asked for. Right, they drove across down they asked for this. I had one unsubscribe to this, like people are going to unsubscribe. Don't fret too much now again if you see your numbers are out of the norm. You need to change your words, but mostly if somebody's an unsubscribe to your list. They are never going to donate. They're never going to volunteer and they're going to attend they're never going to do anything right so they're pruning your list. But that is a bit of a glib answer and I want to make sure reach out to the support team and have them take a look at what you do. Sorry, I'm answering these questions on here and I couldn't find the zoom. Okay, so we do have a couple of questions about the, the constant contact, or the excuse me the tech soup admin fee. So we have a question, I see the constant contact tech soup admin fee is $56 is there an additional fee from constant contact. I'm happy to answer that if you. So you're the closest to the admin fee so please. Yes, so we are partnering with tech soup and tech soup has their entire platform and they have operational costs and that's what the admin fee covers. So, when you go to the, the website that we shared there is information about constant contact it lives on tech soups website. You can find up through that tech soup admin fee that actually covers tech soup side. And again, it covers the admin the operations etc. Once you pay for that then you will get an email that has a URL to constant contact, which will give you eligibility for the 50% off monthly rates. They're two independent purchases, but they work together so the first step is to go to the tech soup page, and then purchase the admin fee. And then you would go to constant contact, and you would get the 50% off subscription on a monthly basis, and that would be a recurring, as long as you're an active customer. And then the last question from Norma is, can the same email address request by the constant contact form to get the same information they requested at an earlier date. Is it my understanding only one request per email is possible. I believe they are maybe asking. If somebody requests goes to the your landing page fills out the information. Is there it only one time, or they can do that more than one time. They shouldn't want to do it more than one time I mean they can. So there's that's, yeah, they really only need to do it one time. And once it gets into contact, then you can copy their information at a different list. You can do whatever you want with that contact. The only reason why you might want to have them refill out a form is if you're looking for more information from them. So a current subscriber of yours using constant contact if they go to a lead form, they the intake form and you're now asking for zip code or birth date and they enter that in. It would be updated the record would be updated for you and constant contact will match up the record for you. Another strategy you could employ and maybe this is where the questions coming from is with constant contact that intake form you can have as many of those as you want you can have as many different calls to action different lead magnets you can have them go to different lists. It is a way to segment. But technically they can they only have to sign up once. So you would be able to sign up for different pieces of content. Is that right. Yeah, yeah, so if I was doing a campaign and it was it was offering early bird access and they signed up. And then later I was doing a campaign to get an ebook and they signed up. They would get that content. We wouldn't duplicate the record though so we'd only keep one contact. Unlike some of our competitors we, we don't mind if you have somebody on the same contact list. We don't mind if you have as many contact lists as many segments as possible because that's a big strategy into being successful. And then let's see Jane had asked us to see this constant contact have an email list available to subscribers. And I will drop a link in the chat so we have an email list called hints and tips. And so our content team provides at least a monthly email. So we will share that in the, believe it or not the tip, the hints and tips just went out today and guess what the lead article was about other. I'm going to guess. Of course. Yeah, that's quite a big topic at the moment across the entire industry of small business nonprofit. It is it's a lot of people just don't really know exactly what to say they understand what they want to say but they might not know particularly how to say it so leveraging an expert like AI can definitely help. Okay, so question about how long does the discount is offered. So this discount is actually ongoing. So there's not a limit to this discount so if you sign up today or if you sign up in a couple of months. The only process that is the same is that you would have to gain access to the 50% off, you would need to go to the tech soup landing page I apologize I realized I didn't have my camera on. Speaking over here as like a little ghost. So yes so the discount is recurring. It's on a monthly basis as well. So you will be able to get the discount and then every month it will be 50% off your monthly rate. And then asks, what is the greatest challenge in starting a list and then maintaining it. The greatest challenges I mean, generally just getting started I think a lot of people don't seek out education like this don't have any frame of reference on how to or where to start. There's also perception that I've got to have X number of contacts before I really start start to use my list that's not true if you have a list of 20 people. Start with 20 people unless with 50 start with 50 right email marketing to be successful is really relationship building, and that's something that nonprofits have an advantage over a lot of for profits, you know when I when I say relationship building. Let's let's use a gift campaign right so we're doing we're doing a donation play. Some nonprofits only email when it's time to run this campaign right so not everybody's got the ability to donate the second you sit out of email. It may take a couple of emails may take seven emails and may take them seeing something on social media and something in print and an email to have that epiphany that they are ready to donate. Sometimes the email marketing consistently soliciting can actually burn bridges and and if they're not able or willing to take action right now and that's all you ask them to do. Then they get burned out right because that email is not relevant. This is where relationships come in right so the reason why nonprofits had an advantage to this is that you have a story to tell, right, you have some kind of story to tell now for many of you that story is very very natural. You have education to share you have knowledge. Share that. In fact, typically weeks we tell a nonprofit 80% of your email should be educational 20% should be promotional. And that's something that should come easy and easier for you with AI, but coming back to the core of the question. The other thing I would do is make sure I'm not only emailing whatever my contact with sizes but leveraging that welcome email so that as you get a new contact, at least get them out that welcome email set the expectations give that value out. And that would be one place to put in that donation link. Wonderful. I've had a couple of questions about this and I've tried to answer it in the chat but would love for you to voice it over. So it's questions about purchase list can we talk about permission based marketing. Yes, yes. Don't buy a list. Don't buy a list constant contacts going to catch you. Mailchimp's going to catch you. I contacts going to catch you going to stop you. That's why buying a list is bad in the United States it is legal for you to buy a list it is legal for you to upload that list it's the it's legal for you to put it in Gmail and send out to that list you can use it, but the recourse the the penalty is pretty great. So firstly, constant contact is a permission based company. We expect that anybody uses constant contact has permission to email people now permission varies country to country. In the United States permission simply means that they would have a reasonable expectation to hear from you so if they made a donation that is a reasonable expectation. If they gave you a business card at a show. That's a reasonable expectation right or an overt expectation meaning that they took action to join your list knowing that's obviously the gold standard. In many countries that is a requirement. But we break it down a bought list how could they how could there be a reasonable expectation they'd hear from. They don't know you. And so the penalty is that they they have one form well actually my frame this one we're way who sends email marketing out and nowadays text marketing to people that didn't expect to hear that marketing, and usually soliciting to people that didn't expect to hear that marketing, right soliciting for business soliciting for something spammers. And so spammers are simply send sending you that you don't know who they are you don't know what they're doing and you don't want it and so you market a spam well that's the same thing is going to happen to you. Now, one thing that contacts going to do is if you suddenly upload out of nowhere 1000 contacts and you've regularly only been adding a few at a time.  When we do it, we're going to say, Hey, what's going on, where'd you get all those contacts. Another thing we're going to do is we're going to look at who those contacts are if their contacts that we see on regularly purchase lists. We know something's, I'm going to use an old word hinky right. And then, lastly, if you do get through those two barriers and you send it out and we see a bunch of spam complaints coming in we're going to have a conversation with you and how you got that those contacts. So, especially in the nonprofit space there are organizations that will you can pay them and they will email on your behalf. That's legal. They grew their list and they're they're taking the risk. I would say that the results are usually not that great. In terms of the ROI the return on your investment you pay this much the ROI is probably not going to be there. The tricky thing is the best way to grow your list is by using tips like this. Take it slow, take it methodically grow your list using best practices. It's going to be a far more valuable list to you than a one shot here's you know here's $1,000 give me list it's just it's you're not going to see a good ROI on that. Along with all the penalties that I talked about. Thank you. Let's just go. I got two more questions. So one is a question about our support. And the question is from Alan just wondering to what extent is our support just bought first actual people. 100% human beings. 100% human beings. I mean, there is a bit of a bot in when you first called to direct you to the right place I mean I think that's pretty expected nowadays, but the chat and human support is human support. We, we, most of our company. So, you know, I think this is public information we have about 1000 employees, most of them are support. And when you call in you're going to be talking to Boston are you're going to be talking to lovely color. And you can even say, you know, where you located they're going to say love them or Boston wall fan, most of them will say that. If you hear, if you hear hard ours, it's going to be the boss of office. Okay, so quick one. I'm Alan has said so if you don't look he's got a little bit of a comment and a question. If you don't go to the plate you're never going to get the base or hit a home run. So he's basically talking about unsubscribes is there re unsubscribing so what about frequent and other factors, how do you how do we deal with that with then unsubscribed so if somebody unsubscribes and they want to resubscribe if they take the action if they go to that intake form if they go to your website, etc, etc, and they fill it out they're resubscribed on their own volition. They did it. We allow that. Another thing you can do and you can only do this once we pull up constant contact. It's funny how this mirrors yesterday's webinar. I got to go into an email that somebody. Oh, I got to go into different accounts. Sorry, everybody. I need to go into account where somebody actually unsubscribed. And I know we're at time so I will do this as quickly as I can. Go ahead. I was going to say we did have a quick one while you're bringing that up ahead. We've been thinking about transitioning for a while the biggest concern about transitioning to constant contact since they're using a different platform is to make it easy for us and to design new templates. So Deborah, I'll pop a link in the chat just about our professional services. They'll be able to transition that no problem. And one thing to make sure you do I mean lean on our support. Make sure you export your unsubscribed list out of whatever tool you're using you can import that unsubscribed list. Just make sure you talk to our support they'll walk you through that again that's free. So here is that one person that unsubscribed. If I go to view her. And I see this resubscribe. So if I hit that is going to say yes I have permission to resubscribe them so basically they called in they said I want to get back on my on your list I unsubscribe by accident you're going to choose which list that they're going to go into or less. I'm not going to hit continue because this is a real human being but what would happen is it would send off one email to them and if they click on a button in the email they're resubscribed. This is our one shot better thing to do is encourage them to go to your site and resign up. Okay, I think we were able to get through all the questions and we just want to say thank you so much. Wow, so much engagement really appreciate all of the interest and all of the energy in the chat that was fun. I was trying to balance it out links and answering the question so thank you so much Matthew thank you for Rita and tech soup for organizing this and thank you so much everybody for joining we hope you got a lot of value out of this. I'll be sharing the recording and some resources afterwards so keep an eye on your inbox. Thank you everybody.