Constant Contact Labs Developer Blog

• Welcome to Constant Contact Labs! Posted Thursday, November 5, 2009 Dan Richards 1 Comment

  Let me take the opportunity to welcome you to our new site!

  Constant Contact Labs formed about a year ago in order to provide the business an opportunity to look at a wide variety of new technologies that may be interesting to our development and operations teams as we continue to evolve the business and the applications we offer to our customers.  It’s always interesting to build a new team, a charter and a path for the team’s success. 

  Integrating email communications with other forms of communication has been one area we’ve spent a fair amount of time on.  The recent release of our new iPhone application is a good example of the types of projects and learnings we can bring to the business.  Other topics we are and will continue to be spending time on are around scalability - Hadoop in particular and how we might utilize that for some of our business needs; SMS and how to make this simple and easy for small businesses to incorporate into their day-to-day communications strategy; and mobile in general and how small businesses will be impacted by the move to more smart phones and more pervasive mobile applications.

  We will be blogging and talking about these topics and variety of other topics as they come up.  We’re looking forward to hearing from you to learn what types of things you’re interested in and what sort of technologies you think might be interesting for Constant Contact and how they might make your life better, easier, more efficient, etc.

  Thanks for visiting our site.  We’re just getting started and don’t know exactly what direction this will take us, but we’re looking forward to the journey.

   

  The opinions expressed here represent those of the author and not those of Constant Contact, Inc. Read Blog Terms

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Comments (1) +comment on this post

 

• Jason Kobrin | 2:03 PM May 3, 2010

  We are going through an interesting time in mobile right now as consumers are looking for personalized information on the fly and ways to connect with their favorite brands to build personal “one on one” relationships.

  There is not a better tool than SMS to be able to do this.  Based on the ubiquitous nature of SMS, consumers can interact with brands and have “2-way” conversations through this channel, regardless of the device or service.  Since SMS is permission based, consumers only hear from the companies they choose to hear from and while this ensures that messages are relevant to the consumer, it is a golden opportunity for companies to connect with their consumers on the most personal device we own.

  Just as email has evolved from operating in a silo as a single touch point with nearly zero personalization, mobile messaging is doing the same.  It is not about mass messaging, but rather connecting with consumers based on their needs.  In order to successfully execute a mobile marketing program, it must be connected to the overarching marketing mix including email, direct mail, traditional media, social media, etc.

  Companies must have complete understanding of the short code procurement process, carrier provisioning, mobile strategies, program design, the carrier submission process, the 100+ pages of Acceptable Use Policies set up by the carriers and the audit management process before then can be assured that their programs are going to be effective (and be sure your company is protected/compliant and not shut down by the carriers). 

  Then companies can take a look at the technology and account management that is going to manage their mobile program, so they can be sure that they have a long-term partner. 

  There is a tremendous mobile eco-system out there and while the term “mobile marketing/messaging” are often thrown out there, mobile messaging is about identifying how to help businesses acquire new customers, retain existing customers and solve business challenges by increasing communications.

  It is not about, “hey, let’s start texting our customers”, because there is a true “art and science” to effectively build a mobile program that shows a strong ROI.

  I look forward to hearing from the development team at Constant Contact.  We would like to partner with you to integrate with your technology to provide your customers the ability to focus on their business, while we provide you with the strategy, guidance and technology as a seamless extension of your current offering.

  With the open and response rate of SMS in the high 90% range with 4 minutes, it is a natural progression for Constant Contact to extend their offerings to be able to directly reach the 275,000,000 consumers in the US (with permission…of course!) via the SMS channel.

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