Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a leading email marketing service for small and medium businesses (SMBs). More than 50,000 paying customers worldwide use the service to send permission-based newsletters, promotions and announcements to customers, members and visitors.

Constant Contact needed a cost-effective way to demonstrate its services to prospects and business partners all across the country. “While traveling to a prospect’s or a partner’s company to do a demo may be an option every once in a while, it cannot be a daily occurrence,” says Janet Muto, Vice President of Marketing for Constant Contact.

Having an affordable demonstration tool was critical for Constant Contact because of the volume of its business. “We need to reach hundreds of small businesses, on a fairly frequent basis. So having an easy-to-use interface and something that’s affordable, is really a critical element of our marketing strategy,” says Muto.

Constant Contact chose WebEx Meetings to demonstrate its services nationwide. “WebEx Meetings allow us to demonstrate the benefits of our service at every opportunity - easily, affordably, and spontaneously. We can schedule WebEx Meetings in advance, or do them on the fly. When the customer is ready to look at our product, we can hold a WebEx Meeting right then and there.”

"Conducting a demo with WebEx Meetings is absolutely the best way to show a group of decision makers our services in one shot."

- Steve Oriola, Director of Business Development, Constant Contact

“Using WebEx Meetings to demonstrate our service to prospective customers and partners is tremendously effective in helping us close deals,” says Muto. “Our sales people can talk about Constant Contact until they are blue in the face, but if prospects see it demonstrated right on their own desktops - as WebEx Meetings allow us to do - they are likely to purchase our services immediately,” Muto says.

Also, in a WebEx Meeting, prospects can get all their questions answered on the phone as the product demo unfolds on their desktops, instead of having to come back to the sales rep on multiple occasions.

“With WebEx Meetings, prospects see how easy it is to use Constant Contact and how much functionality they get for the price and how it will make a difference for their businesses. When they see Constant Contact demonstrated in a WebEx Meeting, it just tells the story instantly,” says Steve Oriola, Director of Business Development at Constant Contact. “And that shortens the sales cycle tremendously.”

“Having meetings like this that are affordable for us and easily available for our prospects is just the best way to close deals. WebEx Meetings are extremely valuable for companies like ours who are continually looking for new ways to make our online presentations more personal and interactive,” Muto says.

Beyond using WebEx Meetings for prospects and partner demos, Constant Contact also uses it for educational seminars and training for its partners’ customer bases. WebEx Meetings has decreased the time and effort that would have been involved in these large-scale demos.