Organize Events With Constant Contact Event Marketing
Much of the time, we don’t see a lot of our fellow web workers. Every once in a while, though, we have to put together an event that lets us meet in person. Constant Contact has launched a new web-based tool, Constant Contact Event Marketing, to make it easier to organize events for small businesses, freelancers and organizations.
Constant Contact Event Marketing is a little different from the many event invitation sites already out there. It’s a professional tool — among other benefits, it won’t spam your contacts simply because they RSVP-ed to one event, once. It offers options to invite attendees to to your event, as well as create open registrations. If you’re planning to charge for attendance, you’ll have a built-in PayPal payment processing option. You can also track registrations and other information.
In addition to the planning tools included in Constant Contact Event Marketing, the application makes use of Constant Contact’s background in promotion and marketing. The application allows you to create a page for your event as well as promote it via email and social networking sites. While you’ll still have to do some legwork to promote your event, the process is simplified by the fact that you won’t need to build a landing page.
In order to create a new event, you start by filling in the event details: location, time and so on. Constant Contact Event Marketing uses those details to automatically fill in templates for event invitations, registration pages and other event elements. Once these elements are complete and approved to go live, the application collects registrations. You can check in on registration information online, as well as export it as a PDF or Excel spreadsheets. At any time during the registration process, you can update invitation information, add new invitees, remind attendees or email out updates.
Constant Contact has a long history as a provider of email marketing and online survey tools. While you can use the new Event Marketing tool on its own, it is full integrated with Constant Contact’s other tools. If you already use Constant Contact for an email newsletter or other purpose, you can also access your list of contacts for use through the Event Marketing tool, which can make setting up your event significantly easier.
While Constant Contact Event Marketing isn’t free, it is an affordable option for a freelancer or a small business putting together an event. Pricing starts at $15 per month — at that level, you can organize five different events at once. The different pricing levels are based on the number of events you organize, rather than the number of attendees registering for your events. There are no advertisements on either the tools to plan your events or the pages you can use to invite attendees to your events. Constant Contact also offers a free 60-day trial.
Have you tried Constant Contact Event Marketing?
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The Constant Contact Event Marketing tool looks like one of the better email marketing tools out there although it is new and I have not used it. My first comment is I would recommend taking them up on their 60 day free trial offer if you are thinking about using this new tool. Then you will see a sample of what you would be getting for your money. Another factor in evaluating this tool is taking into consideration how much a particular small business or free lancer uses email marketing and if it is necessary for that individual or business to invest in a tool that they may not need.