Constant Contact Email Marketing Customers and Success Stories

Constant Contact Email Marketing Customers and Success Stories

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Constant Contact Customer Since: 2004
List size: Just under 5,000
Open rate: 38%
Favorite feature: Reporting
Website: www.filmsociety.org

Next time you're in the Sarasota, Florida area and want to see a quality film, make sure to visit the Burns Court Cinemas, run by the Sarasota Film Society, a Constant Contact customer. The Society is a charitable, nonprofit member organization guided by the mission of bringing the best art, foreign, and independent films to the people of Sarasota.

The Society had humble beginnings. It was started in a living room by a couple from New York City in the early 1980s. Sarasota had a museum and an opera, among other cultural offerings, but no place to see independent films. The group began to grow in membership and eventually, in 1983, incorporated as a nonprofit and built a three-screen cinema in downtown Sarasota.

The Society's Marketing Director, Robert Macadaeg, started using Constant Contact in 2004 after struggling with a difficult email marketing system. "When I got here, they were using plain text software. The customer support was horrible and the service itself was unmanageable. I found Constant Contact by looking at the bottom of emails I received from others who were using it. I made the switch. We were the first art organization in town to send out regular HTML emails - and now everyone is doing it, and they are using Constant Contact."

The free trial and the price of the service made Constant Contact the obvious choice for Robert. "The ability to start out small was great. Initially, I used the free trial to see if it was the right service for us. I was very pleased to find out how affordable it was. Our past service charged us by the number of emails we sent. If we did that now, with the amount we send out, it would have cost us $4,000 a year. Signing up with Constant Contact was really a no-brainer."

To help build his list, Robert collects email addresses at the theater and also gets sign-ups through forwarded emails. He sends out weekly updates to his list of more than 4,800 people. "The films and times change every week. That is a great excuse to contact people weekly. Our newsletter tells them what's 'coming soon' and links to the movies' websites and trailers. We also mention any upcoming special events happening in correspondence with the films."

The theater is a popular venue for locals and tourists alike. Annual admissions were around 100,000 up until last year, when they sold a record breaking 141,000 tickets. "Sales jumped 40%. I attribute a lot of that to our improved communication techniques, which includes using Constant Contact."

The Society has an exciting project underway. They are building a six-screen cinema in a newly-developed retail center that is only 20 minutes from their downtown location. The Society will stay true to their mission and will show foreign language, independent, and quality Hollywood films at the new venue. Between the two theaters, they will have nine screens total - the most of any nonprofit theater in the United States.

Robert is using Constant Contact to let his members and customers know about the progress of the project. "Email marketing is an important part of getting the word out. In our last three campaigns, we linked to photos and a construction update on our website. People hit those links like crazy!"

Robert sees email marketing as an effective and affordable part of his marketing mix. "Using Constant Contact's service doesn't require a lot of resources and it gets great results. It's so expensive to develop your own solution. Constant Contact has already done the work. You can have no email marketing experience and still come up with something that looks great."

Email marketing helps Robert stay in touch with his members and customers. His weekly email newsletter is interesting, informative, and produces great results by helping to fill the theater's seats week-in and week-out. That's how The Sarasota Film Society is experiencing the "reel" benefits of Constant Contact!