SMB Marketing: We Talk to Ryan Burke, Director of AI at Constant Contact

In the fast-evolving landscape of digital marketing, small businesses often find themselves at a crossroads, juggling the demands of running a business with the necessity of effective marketing. Recognizing this challenge, Constant Contact has introduced a groundbreaking AI solution designed specifically to meet the needs of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Ryan Burke, the Director of AI at Constant Contact, is at the forefront of this innovation, bringing decades of expertise and cutting-edge technology to the table.

Ryan Burke will shed light on Campaign Builder, an AI-powered tool that promises to revolutionize how SMBs approach their marketing campaigns. This pioneering solution is not just another addition to the marketing toolkit but a comprehensive system that automates and optimizes marketing efforts, allowing business owners to focus more on what they do best – running their businesses.

From crafting compelling email copy to selecting the most effective channels for outreach, Campaign Builder leverages Constant Contact’s extensive experience and sophisticated AI technology to deliver tailored marketing campaigns in mere seconds. This solution is poised to save time, enhance campaign effectiveness, and instill confidence in small business owners who may feel overwhelmed by the complexities of digital marketing. Join us as Ryan Burke delves into the intricacies of this innovative AI solution and its potential to transform the marketing landscape for SMBs.

Introduction to the AI Solution:

Can you describe the new AI solution that Constant Contact is launching and what makes it a pioneering tool for small businesses?

Most small businesses are only marketers by necessity — they often don’t have extra time for marketing, and many lack the confidence and knowledge to get the most out of their campaigns. They need help creating the right messages for their customers and understanding the best places to reach them with that content. That’s where Campaign Builder comes in.

Campaign Builder leverages our AI platform, along with best practices from nearly three decades of experience as a digital marketing pioneer, to automate the areas of marketing where SMBs frequently get stuck. In about 90 seconds, it builds a complete marketing campaign for you with compelling copy for emails, social media and text messages, branded email templates, and recommendations about the best places to reach customers. This saves SMBs time and helps them reach their goals quicker so they can focus on other areas of their business.

Constant Contact is currently the only marketing platform offering this depth of automated multi-channel campaign generation for SMBs.

Target Audience:

Who is the primary target audience for this AI solution, and how was it tailored to meet their specific marketing needs?

Campaign Builder is designed to help small businesses and non-profit organizations see better performance from their campaigns while spending less time on marketing. Our research shows that the biggest marketing challenges SMBs face are finding new customers, determining what’s working and lack of resources. In fact, 56 percent of the SMBs we polled said they have less than one hour per day for marketing, and 73 percent felt uncertain about whether their marketing strategy is effective.

Campaign Builder transforms an SMB’s ability to market their business through a quick and easy experience that empowers them to spend less time on marketing while expanding their tactics and instilling confidence that they are making progress toward their goals.

AI Capabilities:

Could you elaborate on the capabilities of this AI technology? How does it automate marketing processes specifically?

Campaign Builder is a goal-oriented tool, so when they first open it up, our customers tell us a bit about what they are trying to achieve in their marketing campaign — whether that’s growing their list, promoting a sale, or even advertising an event. Campaign Builder then analyzes that goal and, in seconds, develops a recommended set of marketing tactics that will help achieve the customer’s intended outcome, complete with detailed recommendations for the best content, channels and timing for each communication.

Behind the scenes, we’re leveraging our AI platform and our customer data platform (CDP) to do all the heavy lifting for them. Constant Contact was founded almost 30 years ago, so our AI models have been trained on historical knowledge and data from real digital marketing campaigns. It learns what works best for different types of businesses and then makes recommendations that are likely to generate success for the customer. We layer in LLMs from OpenAI and others to help make the experience of working with the AI models intuitive and quick for our customers as well.

User Experience:

How does Constant Contact ensure that this AI solution is user-friendly, especially for small business owners with limited technical expertise?

We want our customers to be successful because they have a great product or service, not because of their marketing acumen. Everything we build is designed to be intuitive, flexible and powerful, because that’s what small businesses need. 

Our customers don’t come to us asking to “buy AI’, so-to-speak, and they don’t necessarily care about how the technology works under the hood. But, they want marketing to be quicker and easier to digest, and they expect to be able to understand what’s working and where they need to make adjustments. We designed Campaign Builder with that feedback in mind, and we’ve created a guided experience that can help them achieve in seconds what can otherwise take hours, or even days to complete.

Not only are we recommending the best mix of communications, but we may also be recommending channels our users haven’t used or considered before to help them amplify their message.

Integration with Existing Tools:

How well does this new AI solution integrate with the existing suite of tools offered by Constant Contact?

Our platform is built on AI. We’ve leveraged that technology, in addition to marketing automation, for years in both customer-facing and back-end applications like personalization tools and spam protection. Campaign Builder simply builds on that foundation and delivers a new way for our customers to engage with the features and functionality inside Constant Contact that they are already using every day.

The recommendations that Campaign Builder creates are designed to work seamlessly within a small business’ workflow in Constant Contact. Every email or text message can be edited using the same tools our customers use to draft messages manually, and we leverage the same SMS features and event platform that already exists in the platform. 

A customer can do all these things manually in Constant Contact today without Campaign Builder’s help. The benefit of starting with Campaign Builder is that the process will be significantly faster, and their campaigns will feel more personalized, creative and effective. 

Future AI Developments:

Can you share any insights into future AI developments or additional tools that Constant Contact is considering?

We have a strong vision for where artificial intelligence can take us (and our customers) in the future and are already exploring how to expand its use to help solve more challenges that SMBs face. You can imagine what some of those needs might be – everything from search engine optimization, online ad strategy, reputation management and everything in between.

We take our innovation cues from our customers, so we will continue to prioritize building features that help them attract new customers and keep them coming back for more.

Advice for Small Businesses:

What advice would you give to small businesses about embracing AI technologies for their marketing needs?

It sounds counterintuitive, but don’t worry about the technology itself. AI is not a tool, it’s simply a vehicle that allows you to achieve better outcomes — like writing more witty subject lines or knowing which of your customers prefer text messages over emails.

Instead, focus on identifying areas of your marketing where you need extra help. Maybe you struggle to write copy for your weekly newsletter, or you feel like your customers aren’t engaging with your content the way they should be. Or, are you opening a new location soon and need to drum up interest for a grand opening? Those are the types of things AI can help with, and that’s how we explain it to our customers. 

Find a partner, like Constant Contact, who will leverage the technology on your behalf to create tools that allow you to overcome those obstacles and get back to what you’d rather be doing.