Constant Contact Labs Developer Blog
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Why a Facebook App? Posted Friday, January 8, 2010 13 Comments
Why build a Facebook application? At Constant Contact, we talk a lot about the importance of building relationships and clearly social networks are yet another way to build and develop relationships - whether it is with your clients, customers, members, family (for better or worse!) and all the other relationships we have in our day-to-day lives. We believe that it is important to connect all your relationships from a variety of places, so a Facebook app can help enable that. How?
I won’t go into the technical details of developing a Facebook app, you can read more about that on this blog post. Here at Constant Contact Labs, we look for ways to reach outside of our day-to-day application and find opportunities to explore different technologies. We know there are many Constant Contact customers using Facebook as a way to communicate as well as a way to grow and build their customer lists. However, we also knew that there was a potential disconnect between their Facebook friends/fans and their opt-in Constant Contact list. We felt an explicit opt-in Join My List application would be a great way to connect their relationships on Facebook with their relationships on Constant Contact, especially as Facebook doesn’t really enable this capability.
As with other Labs projects, Facebook also presented an opportunity for us to learn about the FB platform (the good, the bad and ugly…) and we have been able to incorporate multiple new (at least to Constant Contact) technologies, so we’ve been learning a lot in the process. We know this will be an evolutionary application and we’re looking forward to your feedback, so if you have any comments, ideas or suggestions please contact us.
The opinions expressed here represent those of the author and not those of Constant Contact, Inc. Read Blog Terms
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Jackie | 11:05 AM February 5, 2010
I think this a great feature. Thank you for adding it! I’d like a little more customization, but it definitely gives the newsletter an edge.
Charlene Kingston | 8:04 AM February 12, 2010
I just installed the app and I’m thrilled. The only suggestion I have is that I’d like to be able to add some welcome text to the page, a little description about the newsletter, how frequently published, etc. I don’t know FBML, but I’d guess my idea is not as easy to implement as it seems. Thanks for making this app available.
Jim Garretson | 9:46 AM February 12, 2010
Charlene, Thanks for the suggestion! We’re collecting ideas like yours to help us figure out what to do next.
Ramzi | 1:40 PM February 16, 2010
Is there a way to send a link to the “join my email list” tab to be able to send as a personal message? Thanks for making this app available!
labsAdmin | 4:19 PM February 16, 2010
Hi Ramzi, Are you asking if you can create a link directly to the tab? If so, yes: Click on the tab on your page or profile to open it, then copy the link out of your browser’s address bar.
Danny Johnson | 11:33 PM February 16, 2010
I built this app in Facebook that uses Constant Contact to capture the contest entries for our sweepstakes. I thought your users might benefit by seeing the power that integrating FB and CC together can provide
Jim Garretson | 10:21 AM February 17, 2010
Danny, is it this?: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Whitecap-Stand-Up-Paddleboarding/139837049542?v=app_7146470109 That’s very cool! How are you doing the signup box?
John Marsh | 2:52 PM May 3, 2010
How about a button for a Facebook “Group” page? That is where I would like to see one.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=358760671689
Jim Garretson | 3:30 PM May 3, 2010
Hi John, We’d love to support Facebook Groups, but it’s not technically possible right now - Facebook won’t let applications be installed to Groups. Please let them know you want the ability to install apps to Groups!
Sue | 5:01 PM July 8, 2010
I added Facebook as a tab on my fan page but I want it to show up on the front page of my fan page. How do I do that?
Jim Garretson | 6:09 PM July 8, 2010
Hi Sue, Unfortunately, you can only install our Facebook application to a tab. What you can do to make it more visible to your visitors, though, is write a status update to your page about it - that will appear at the top of your page, and will also appear in the News Feeds of your page’s fans.
Bill Booth | 4:08 PM July 29, 2010
Any progress on the post from Charlene Feb 12. I would like to add some text so visitors know what they are signing up for? In my case our monthly newsletter.
Jim Garretson | 7:56 PM July 29, 2010
Hi Bill, We’re working on an update! Please stay tuned to the app’s Facebook page for details: http://www.facebook.com/ctctjmml