Training - Constant Contact (Email Lists for Target Marketing)

Welcome to the Constant Contact integration How-To video.

The Constant Contact integration is a great way to keep you email contact lists updated with current customers, and gives you the ability to make targeted email blasts from your Constant Contact platform.

Let’s try our hand at this integration from the ground floor up, shall we?

I’m in Manager Console currently, I’m going to go over to our “Maintenance” link, and then I’m going to go into the “System Settings” button.

At the top here, we’re going to jump into our “Modules”, and I’ll show you how to turn that feature on.

We’ll go over to the “Interface” tab, and there you’ll see the “Constant Contact” link where you can turn that on or off.

This is a good time to mention that Constant Contact is a licensed feature. So there will be a fee involved if you do not have it currently.

Please contact our Sales team and they can give you more information about any costs involved.

Alright, I’m going to go ahead and say “OK”.

And I’m going to jump into the “Constant Contact Options” right here.

Now it tells us that we have an “Access Token is missing” the Access Token is basically the communication portal between the Software and the Constant Contact app.

So I’m going to go ahead and hit “Connect”, and it’ll ask me for my credentials for the Constant Contact platform which I will put in now. I will log in, and I will “Allow” access.

The link is complete, I can close the window. And now we are talking to each other.

The first place we’re going to go is this “Lists” tab.

The “Lists Name” on the left-hand side is generated from Constant Contact, and the “Query Name” is the Report that you’re going to be making. And then you’re going to be linking the two together, here.

So let’s go ahead and create an Ad-Hoc Report in order to do just that. I’m going to “Close” this form and jump over to our “Reports” on the left-hand side.

And there you will see our Ad-Hoc Reporting feature with “Customers”. I’m going to go ahead and click into that.

Alright, for those of you who do not know anything about the Ad-Hoc Reports; Ad-Hoc Reports are a great way to create your own Report. And this is what we use for Constant Contact integration.

I’m going to go into “New Customer Report”.

In the middle here, you see what will be generated on the Report.

“Customer Key” not really necessary for this particular Report for Constant Contact, so I’m going to go ahead and give that an “X”.

The “Birth Date”, that would be handy if I was to make a list of people whose birthday was in a certain time frame, but for this particular one, I’m going to go ahead and “X” that one.

“First Name” “Last Name” is important, and so is “E-Mail Address” so I’m going to click into “E-Mail Address” and I’ll use the right caret to bring it into the Report.

And what I’m going to be creating today is an Active Membership Report. So I want to see everyone who is currently Active as a Membership in my facility.

So if I go down on the left-hand side all the way to the bottom, I see “Customer Memberships”. I’m going to go ahead and expand that.

Alright, I need to know who’s currently Active. So I’m going to go ahead and hit “Status” and I’m going to bring that over.

Perfect. Yea. That’s exactly what I’m looking for.

So now I’m going to go into my “Filters” tab.

And I’m going to hit “Add New Filter”, “Column”, and I’m going to do “Status”.

Now what “Operation” for the Filter do we need for the Status of the Membership?
Let’s do our drop-down and see what they’re giving us.

“Equals”, and then the “Value” that it needs to Equal is going to be Active.

I will go ahead and say “OK”

And now I’m going to only be Filtering in this Report those customers with an active Membership Status.

I will go over to “Preview”, and I have a nice long list of folks in my system who have an Active Membership.

And a lot of these people do not have an E-Mail Address, so I’m going to go ahead and go back to my Filter.

I’m going to “Add a New Filter”. And I’m going to say I want to Filter my E-Mail Address.

And what kind of Operations do they give me to choose from, I will make sure it “Is Not Empty”. Meaning it has to have an E-Mail Address. The customer has to have an E-Mail Address.

I will say “OK”.

Now I have two Filters on this Report. I’ll go to “Preview”, and that’s what I’m looking for.

Active Status, all my E-Mail Addresses, all of their names, perfect.

I’m going to go ahead and say “OK” to save this.

And here’s where I can hit “Save”

I will call this my “Active Members List”.

And there we go. I will go ahead and say “OK” to save it.

And now I have an “Active Members List” ready to be synced over to my Constant Contact form.

Now let’s go ahead and jump into our Constant Contact right now, so I can actually create the list where this report is going to be synced to.

If I minimize this, I actually have my Constant Contact open currently. And if I go down to “Email Lists” you can see where all of your lists are.

Right now I only have “General Interest” so I’m going to go ahead and hit the “+” sign here and make a new list.

We will call this my “Active Members List”, and we’ll “Add” that to our list of lists.

And there we go.

That has been created and now I need to get that report synced to that particular list.

So bring up my Manager Console one more time.

I’m going to go over to “Maintenance”, “System Settings” and go back into our “Constant Contact” button.

And I will go over to my “Lists” tab. And now I find my “Active Members List” listed here to be able to sync to my “Query” Report that I’ve just done.

Alright. I’m going to go back to “Connection” and I’m going to go ahead and “Run the Sync Now”.

This is just to manually push the sync and make the sync happen. While this is happening, let me mention a couple of details on the Constant Contact integration that we can provide for you.

This actually happens at 11:00pm daily, and auto-sync happens.

So you actually don’t have to manually push it over like I just did, it happens at 11:00 every evening.

Any new customers that match the Ad-Hoc parameters that you set will be added to that Report.

And any folks who no longer match the parameters will be taken out of that report.

So it’s very handy.

There is something here; I’m going to close this.

If I go back over to the “Lists” side, you see this circular arrow on the right-hand side.

That is actually a forced full sync.

The only time you would ever want to use that is if there was some sort of problem with your list, with your sync.

If you did that, you would actually remove all the Contacts from that particular list, and then try to re-add them in. It could take some time, and it’s really only a last ditch effort to solve a problem before you’re going to reach out to CenterEdge Support.

Alright, one final thing on the integration.

On that Ad-Hoc Report, if your folks have indicated they do not want to be added to any kind of bulk email, or bulk mailing application; the system will actually not include those folks.

So no worries if somebody has indicated they do not want bulk email, they won’t even be put in here.

Alright. Looks like everything has synced up. Now we just need to make sure our list in Constant Contact is filled with all of our emails, that we can now create a email blast for.

I’m going to minimize this application, I’ll bring up Constant Contact one more time.

There we go.

Our “Active Members List” now has 18 folks. All of their emails, all of their names. Fantastic.

That easy.

And that’s it. You now have a list of emails that fit the description of your choosing, ready for an email blast.

Well I hope you enjoy the Constant Contact integration. Of course if you have any questions feel free to reach out to CenterEdge Software. Either the training team, or the support team, or the sales team if you’re interested in learning more about the integration itself.

336-598-5934 Again thank you, and have a wonderful day.