site map

 

 

Thingnamer Banner

Constant Contact Overbranding?

May 30, 2006 | Tate Linden
Let me start by saying I love Constant Contact as an email campaign manager. I just used it for the first time this morning and find it to be intuitive, powerful, and effective - especially compared to Microsoft Outlook. All the great tracking tools and CAN-SPAM compliance are in one place and accessible from any computer with Web connectivity.

I found them through word-of-mouth, but apparently they're looking for a bit more than that.

Here's the part I don't love.
Constant Contact puts a link at the bottom of each email I send out that distracts my clients and prospects from my own message. Given that email campaigns are usually used for marketing or branding, doesn't it seem strange that a big logo from a service having nothing to do with my product is stuck on the bottom of a letter I'm paying to send?

It's rather like having the guy that delivers my car to the dealership put his sticker on the back of my new car. He's a delivery mechanism - and to the car buyer he's supposed to be invisible (unless he performs his service in a memorable way, I suppose.)

Yes, I know I can remove the Constant Contact logo from my email - and I did - but it just seems that a company that enables marketing programs should know better. Why preach about the power of opt-in marketing (as they do once you write an email campaign) and then not offer this same courtesy to their own clients?

Heck, Constant Contact doesn't even have a link to automatically remove the offending logo - you have to click the FAQ which tells you to contact them via a form to ask (in free text) to have the logo removed. It took me 10 minutes to figure out how to request the removal, and then it took a manual response to get it done. For a fully automated service this seems a bit absurd.

What disturbs me the most is that the companies that are trying to establish themselves and don't know about marketing and branding probably won't know to ask for the logo to be removed, meaning that Constant Contact is preying on the ignorance of its own consumers to benefit its bottom line. Free advertising is great, until it impacts the bottom line of your customers.

Someone paint me a happier picture of this, please. I love ya, "CC", but stop picking on the newbies.

Tate Linden Principal Consultant Stokefire Consulting Group 703-778-9925

In

Comments (3)
3 Comments
Daniel Neamu September 21, 2006 2:01 PM

Hello
First of all sorry I post the comment this way but there was no way I found to contact you, other than this, to contact you.
My name is Daniel Neamu and I am running brandxpress blog. I really want to thank you for the appreciation you show to my blog by listing it in your blogs list. Related to that I want to inform you that brandxpress blog has moved to a new address: www.brandxpress.net and I kindly ask you to update the link in your blogroll, as the old blogspot page I soon plan to delete.
Thank you very much!

Regards

Daniel
[Ed: Change made! Let us know if there\'s anything else we can do for you.]

Tami Nutall November 2, 2006 1:49 PM

Hellooo There,
I am a REALTOR who uses Constant Contact regularly in my email campaigns. My target market is all The Busy Women (professional and entrepreneurial) in the Metro DC area who are in need of real estate consulting and representation. Since I do have a large circle of women that new or somewhat established entrepreneurs, we all try to share our various successful methods of doing business. It amazes me to realize how many business owners don't know that such a service like Constant Contact exists until either 1. we're talking about in a group forum, or 2. they get my emails and like they way the are laid out. So of course, I am only happy to share my preferred vendor with them so they can be successful too.
As for myself, I had received a lot of emails from organizations where I saw the Constant Contact logo at the bottom, but it wasn't until I saw an email from the Maryland Association of REALTORS with the same logo displayed at the bottom.
I figured if it was good enough for MAR (who has about a 40,000 email dB), then it must surely be good enough for my 250 dB email marketing campaign.
So, "preying"...no.

"Viral marketing"...maybe

"Works"...absolutely.

Tate Linden November 2, 2006 3:02 PM

Interesting point Tami.
I must admit that it is effective... but it certainly doesn't help their clients any. I'm still advocating for a discount if people opt to include the logo - after all, we're using our own email lists to do their advertising.
I suppose that I'm more sensitive to this than most folks since I am responsible for setting people up with solid brands. Slapping someone else's logo on my own emails just didn't make sense. I got nothing from it and they got to pick up new clients at my expense.
I'm still not a fan of the stealth branding. They don't even show you that the logo will appear until you're ready to send. Why do you think that is? I'm guessing it is that if people knew it was there they'd delete it immediately...
Just my own opinions here, though.
Thanks for stopping in!