Email: Quick Link Basics

Quick Links. It sounds fairly self-explanatory. But, what exactly is in a Quick Links Block? What can they do for you? What can’t they do? What do you do when you need more of them or if, heaven forbid, you don’t have the option for a Quick Link block at all?

Don’t worry, we’ve got the answers for you:

What is in a Quick Links Block?
Just like a Logo Block automatically inserts the logo you uploaded in your settings to save you time, the Quick Links Block automatically inserts URL links based on the website address you entered in your settings.


What can they do for you, and what can’t they?
Quick Links are designed to be an example for what you can do with links. They provide great ideas about which links to include in your email and a jumping off point for placing them.

However, they can’t guess the URL addresses for the webpages you want. To make sure the Quick Links provided for you are going where you want them to go, you will need to edit and customize them. All of those automatically inserted Quick Links go straight back to that one website address you’ve got listed in your settings. If you want to make the links go to different pages, like your products, services, or your More about Us page, you will need to edit the appropriate link.

What do you do when you need more of them or if you don’t have the option for a Quick Link block at all?
The good thing about Quick Links is that they are, in essence, just URL links that we’ve pre-populated for you. If you need more,simply go to your menu to insert another link. If your template doesn’t provide you with a Quick Links block you can just add nearly any block at all and make it a Quick Links block by manually inserting whatever links you need.

For more information on links and what you can do with them, check out these FAQs!
FAQ 1979: Adding an email link
FAQ 3939: Why are my links a different color in my email client?
FAQ 2255: Make an image a clickable link
FAQ 2572: Editing Table of Contents blocks and links

Contributed by: Jaime McCall, Knowledge Base Writer, Constant Contact

General Tips: Before Sending your Email

My parents told me growing up that working a project was 10% perspiration and 90% preparation. Preparing your email campaign for delivery is the same way, making sure that everything is set before you schedule it to be delivered to your contacts. Below is a checklist of ideas to consider before hitting the schedule button.

Read More

The content of your email is obviously important but if you have a lot of information to express, it is a good practice to use a Read more link. The important factor here is that the additional content must be hosted on another website before using this idea but if it can be done, it has some nice benefits. When people see too much content and have to scroll too far down they may might not end up reading the entire email. Putting just a small sample of text in your newsletter with a, “read more” link will let people consume more content at their leisure. Plus, by using read-more links in your email, you can look at the click-through rates and see what was popular!

Image Description

Images add great value to your email and it is important to ensure that each image has a description. The image description can be valuable for when an email client blocks images and the only thing that shows up is the image description. If the description is just a random number or filename, your contacts might question if they want to enable the images.

Linking to your website

A simple yet effective idea is adding a link to your businesses’ website. Directing readers there can provide people with further information on what your has to offer customers and prospects.

Join My Mailing List

Having a Join My Mailing List call to action in your email is a great way to build your contact list. Why add it if you are sending it to existing customer? The Forward to a Friend link can be over looked sometimes and people end up forwarding messages using the email client’s forward button. The Join My Mailing List is a good back up plan to ensure the new recipient can opt-in to your mailing list.

Hopefully these helpful hints improve your email campaigns and grow your customer list.

Top 5 Mac Questions

Each week in support we get questions from Mac users and our Customer Community forum always has comments about using Constant Contact via a Mac. Additionally, our Knowledge Base is searched multiple times for answers ranging from “How to” information to “Resolving issues”. We are aware this is a common issue among our customer base, so here we share with you the Top 5 questions and answers for Mac users:

Beginner information for Mac users
Help better understand and get familiar with using your Mac computer.

Why isn’t the email addresses listed in a file I exported from my Mac address book?
If you have exported your contacts from your Mac address book and the email addresses do not export this FAQ will help.

How do I get an image URL if I am on a Mac?
Use these steps if you want to use an image that is hosted outside of Constant Contact. You can refer directly to the image URL instead of uploading the image to your library.

Mac solutions overview
This resource will help you get started with using your Mac, exporting contacts from the Mac address book, and adding a Join My Mailing List box to your website or Mac Mail signature.

How can I use a newsletter that I designed in Mac Pages 3.0?
Have a design that you created in Mac Pages 3.0? If so, click on the link above follow the steps.

For more information regarding Mac with Constant Contact view the following FAQs:

1439 - Mac: How can I make Constant Contact work with my Safari browser?
1485 - Mac: Exporting email addresses from my Macintosh Address Book
1418 - Mac: How to right-click

Contributed by: Danyl Williams, Knowledge Base Writer, Constant Contact

Image: The Padding You Want

Last week I created an email to announce our team’s Christmas party. I fussed with the colors, played with the text, and found the perfect cute-yet-not-distracting image to insert.

However, once I inserted my image of choice I realized I had a problem. As you can see, I floated the image to the left so the text would wrap around it but I didn’t like the spacing I ended up with. The image and the text were too close together for my comfort!

The last thing I wanted to do was to center the image and floating it to the right just didn’t look good at all. Luckily, I was able to get a friend from Customer Support to give me a few pointers for adjusting the spacing between the text and image.

The tweak did involve going into the HTML Code for that block, but the changes themselves were fairly small.

Go to Code View for the block:
Save your work, just to be safe. Then, go back into your block to edit it. If you look at your menu options on the lower left hand side you’ll find a button that says html Code View .

When you click it, a box will pop-up with all the code for your block.

Find the code that controls your image:
Depending on what you have happening in your block, this can be a challenge to find. The trick is to look for a line of code beginning with img or img src:

Don’t worry about anything else just yet!

Add in the desired amount of hspace:
Hspace gives you horizontal space and vspace gives you vertical space around an image. Since I wanted to add a little padding to the sides of my image, I needed to set the value for hspace. I did that by adding the following to my image code:

The number in that code sets just how much space – measured in pixels – I wanted to add in. Here is how it looked in the string of my image code:

Once I did that all I needed to do was to check whether it looked the way I wanted it to. By clicking the Update button, I could see the change applied but remain in the HTML Code View window in case I needed to do any adjustments.

Success! The image had enough breathing room for my tastes and I could move on to finish the newsletter.

For more information on ways to adjust your image, check out these FAQs:

FAQ 1305: Resizing an image in my email
FAQ 2884: Optimizing images for use with Constant Contact
FAQ 2255: Make an image a clickable link
FAQ 2558: Modifying an image in Constant Contact

Contributed by: Jaime McCall, Knowledge Base Writer, Constant Contact

Using Copy to Plan Ahead

Time is valuable. Who wants to let valuable time slip away that could be saved by a little preparation? By using the copy feature, you can let you prepare for next month’s email, or even mailings six months in advance!

So much time and effort goes into creating your email the way you like it with custom colors, layout, etc., that you, don’t want to waste time recreating it for each new mailing. Save time by just copying it. This is great for people who keep the same theme and layout for their email but change out the daily/weekly/monthly content.

Let’s use the example of sending out a monthly newsletter to your contacts. By using the copy feature, you can make three copies of an existing newsletter naming them by the month. Edit the email copies by changing the content (text, adding new images, etc) then save your changes. Once you feel the email is ready, feel free to schedule the email to go out on a certain date for the upcoming month. Even if you want to make changes before the email goes out,return it back to Draft status and make the modifications. Just remember to reschedule it to go back out.

By planning your emails a few months ahead, there won’t be any panic attacks and you will have more time to work on other things.

Resources: The Many Ways Constant Contact Provides a Helping Hand

With anything, there may be times when you come to a block in the road and need assistance to knock it down. Constant Contact has the resources to help with the obstacles on your email marketing road. We offer various options including getting answers from other users, assistance from one of our Customer Support Representatives, to self-help options. No question is too big or small. Below are some of the many tools we provide to help you find your answer.

Talking With Other Users
Seeing how other customers are utilizing Constant Contact may give you some new ideas to put to use in your own effort to use email marketing to build relationships with your clients. In addition, you may be able to share your knowledge and great ideas with others.

• Forums: Take part in a discussion with other Constant Contact users, post your ideas and read others ideas.
• Connect Up! User Community: Use our community to network, refer a friend to Constant Contact, and much more.

Connecting With Constant Contact
You can connect directly to Constant Contact to get your issues resolved. We are always here to help and can point you in the right direction to effectively use Constant Contact. Our mission is to delight the customer.

• Chat: Contact a Customer Support Representative via live chat and get the answers you need in a timeless fashion without tying up your phone.
• Call: Contact Customer Support for immediate assistance by phone. We are here to help Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. EST.
• Email: Don’t have time to call? Send us an email Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. EST, Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST.
• Live Webinars: Watch, learn, and ask questions with our live webinars. Click the link to see the topics and schedule.
• Local Seminars: Want to meet your local Constant Contact Representative? Attend a seminar.
  

Self Help
There may be times that you run into an issue when our live support is not available.. Don’t fret, there are still many options for you to get your issue resolved:

• Recorded Tutorials: Watch our recorded tutorials on the topic of your choice and at your leisure. These are great tools and provide step by step instruction on using the products we offer.
• FAQs: Want your answer fast? Search our database of frequently asked questions.
• Whitepapers: These printer-friendly documents will provide guidance using email marketing and Constant Contact more effectively.
• Support Blogs: Constant Contact posts two Support Blogs per week on a variety of different ways to use Constant Contact, hints and tips for creating your communications, and much more.

Contributed by: Danyl Williams, Knowledge Base Writer, Constant Contact

Highlighting the QuickView app on the iPhone & iPod Touch

Keeping on top of your email’s statistics is usually on most people’s minds when they send campaigns through Constant Contact. With people always on the move, you don’t have the luxury of time to sit down at a computer, log in to your account to view their reports, add new contacts, etc. Now there is a mobile way to do all of that from your iPhone or iPod Touch!

Just download the free QuickView application from the iTune App Store, tap the QuickView icon and log in with your Constant Contact username and password. Once logged in, the status of your most recent email will be displayed as a graph. Tapping on the graph will show you in greater detail a break down of the email statistics. This is a great way to see information on one of the various categories including the open rate, click rate, forwards, opt-outs, spam, and bounces. Tapping on one statistics will also provide a break down of the contacts in that particular category. Any email that you have sent with in the last 85 days can be viewed.

If you want to look at the details of a contact while in the list view, just tap on the contact’s email address and you will be brought to the contact details. There you can see which list the contact is on, edit the contact’s information or send a personal email to them.

To view your contact lists, tap the center icon labeled “Contact Lists” and any list you have within your account will be displayed. If you click on a list, you can see which contacts are in it, edit the contact’s information and send a person email, same as before.
A new list can also be created by clicking on the ‘+’ button in the upper right part of the screen.

Searching for a contact is as simple as tapping the “Contacts” icon then entering the full email address into the box displayed. Adding a new contact to a list is just as easy by clicking on the ‘+’ button and entering the contact’s email address. You have to agree to the terms and conditions before adding the contact and after that, any contact info can be entered and added to a list.

With QuickView for the iPhone and iPod Touch, no matter where you are, in front of your computer or on the move, you can keep track of your emails and increase your contacts!

Related FAQs

4278 - Quickview Application: Help OverView
4285 - Deleting a list in Constant Contact using the QuickView application
4372 - Contacts being added using QuickView are not showing up