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As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the 2x Webby Award Honoree Be A Marketer podcast!
[0:00] Dave Charest: On today's episode, you'll hear from someone who built an $80 million global business with his brother thanks to great design, great email marketing, and a relentless focus on doing everything better than the competition. This is the Be a Marketer podcast.
[0:27] Dave Charest: My name is Dave Charest, director of small businesses at Constant Contact, and I help small business owners like you make sense of online marketing. And on this podcast, we'll explore what it really takes to market your business, even if marketing's not your thing. No jargon, no hype, just real stories to inspire you and practical advice you can act on. So remember, friend, you can be a marketer, and at Constant Contact, we're here to help.
[0:59] Dave Charest: Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining us for another episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. Hey, do me a favor. Let's check in with my favorite co-host, Kelsey Carter. Hi, Kelsey. Hi, Dave. Good to see you again. Good to see you as always. We've really got to stop meeting like this.
[01:16] Dave Charest: It's like anytime we see each other, we just have microphones with us and we start to put on the microphone voice, it's very, very, very strange.
[01:25] Kelsi Carter: Maybe we should do something different.
[01:27] Dave Charest: Maybe we'll see. We'll see. All right, so you ready? When I say the word relentless, what do you think about?
[01:34] Kelsi Carter: I think of a movie, which is funny because it's probably not what you're thinking, but I think of the movie Whip it, which is a roller derby.
[01:41] Dave Charest: Roller derby.
[01:43] Kelsi Carter: How she was.
[01:44] Dave Charest: Oh, the movie is about
[01:47] Kelsi Carter: roller derby. He is ruthless, but it reminds me because she is very relentless in the movie.
[01:51] Dave Charest: Oh, I see. OK, OK, OK. Well, I was thinking a little bit more along the lines of, but I guess in many ways could relate because I think if you're doing roller derby.
[02:00] Dave Charest: You have to be pretty persistent in your skating around the roller journey in your pursuit of what it is you're doing there. Uh, but I think, you know, time and time again, we talk about that idea of resilience, but I think what we probably don't talk enough about is those businesses that really get forward and move and grow and are the ones that are continuously like moving forward and being persistent in their actions and what it is they're trying to achieve.
[02:26] Dave Charest: This is an interesting conversation that we have here today because I think it shows sites that idea of like when you really care deeply and you want to be the best at something, it really starts to show up everywhere, right? Especially in your business and of course, in your marketing as you do that as well. So, Kelsey, let's go to you, uh, who's joining us here today?
[02:42] Kelsi Carter: Today's guest is Kunal Madan, the co-founder of Amara, which is a formal design house based in New Jersey. Kunaal runs the business along his brother Abi, who handles the
[02:52] Kelsi Carter: Design while Kanal focuses on the marketing and growth. So it started as an idea between two brothers has really grown into one of the largest formal wear distributors in the world, with dresses in over 800 boutiques across the US, Canada, Australia, and the
[03:07] Kelsi Carter: UK.
[03:07] Dave Charest: I mean, pretty amazing, there we go, putting that into play and what I love about this too is that Kanal's parents owned a dress boutique in Idaho back in the 90s, right? And so the brothers.
[03:18] Dave Charest: So they got involved in a whole different side of the industry and of the business and when they started Amara in 2019, I believe, and Kanal's story is one of those, as I mentioned earlier, right, that idea of continuous forward motion from learning marketing from scratch to building this really, you would say a dominant brand in the formalware industry, right? He's been relentlessly focused on doing what it takes to win, testing, refining, scaling.
[03:44] Dave Charest: And really always staying in front of his audience. And so I'm excited for you to hear the conversation today because you're gonna hear how to balance marketing to two audiences at once, you think retailers here and end consumers and why that dual approach is key to growth, why beautiful imagery and and a strong email strategy are critical in a visual industry.
[04:05] Dave Charest: And how Kanal uses Constant Contact data, think open rates and link clicks to really guide follow-ups and close more sales. So, let's go to Kunaal as he shares what it's like building a dress business with his brother.
[04:20] Kunal Madan : My brother and I get along really well. There's things that he's good at that I'm not good at, and there's things that I'm good at and he's not good at. For example, like designing, knowing what's gonna trend, what's really gonna sell. I'd say that's why we are probably the leaders in the industry, because he has a very good eye for design. For example, in Canada, we'll sell lace ball gowns or fitted lace dresses and keeping it fresh there versus in the US, every area specific, so not the same product type sells in the same area.
[04:51] Dave Charest: What have you realized that you love most about doing your own thing here?
[04:55] Kunal Madan : So I'm very competitive.
[04:57] Kunal Madan : I like to be number one in whatever we do. OK. So, the hunger to be the best is what keeps us, us going.
[05:08] Dave Charest: What have you found to be most challenging about running your own business?
[05:12] Kunal Madan : So the most challenging thing that I learned is, even if you have the best product and the best service, necessarily it doesn't lead into sales, and the marketing is the biggest component that people kind of say to miss. Sometimes people try to get into this gig and say, hey, I'll have the lowest priced product everybody's gonna buy from me. But if you don't have that marketing component and saying, hey, look at my product, look at my price points.
[05:39] Kunal Madan : Presentation is very important in this business, like the imagery of the product, staying up front in customers, computers, their screens, the more screen time you can get, the more conversion you can usually get.
[05:53] Dave Charest: Coming into the business, then, what level of experience did you have with marketing as you, as you started?
[05:58] Kunal Madan : No level of marketing.
[06:00] Kunal Madan : So just learned it all ourselves, just tested AB testing, seeing what was working, where the dollar spent, return was high, and where it wasn't working, and then we kind of adapted and worked off of that.
[06:12] Dave Charest: You're primarily going after wholesalers, is this what you're doing? Tell me how the business kind of runs.
[06:17] Kunal Madan : So the industry is, we are a design house, so we'll make and design dresses. The boutiques will come and see us twice a year, usually in August and March. So they're your local dress boutiques. So if you go to a store near you, they're most likely they'll be buying our product. And then 6 months later, once they've ordered, we'll produce the product and distribute it into the stores. Right now we're heading towards that prom season type, like even though proms in March and April.
[06:46] Kunal Madan : We start getting product in the stores in December. That's when girls are, you know, starting to shop.
[06:53] Dave Charest: Got it. So you're primarily then focused on your market, well, I guess I don't know, like, is it a little bit of both? I mean, where are you focused marketing wise? Are you marketing more towards the, the store owners, but I guess it's a little bit of both, right, because you have to design something that the end consumer is gonna want as well, right? So how does, how does that work and how do you manage that?
[07:12] Kunal Madan : Yeah, so to get the product in the store is marketing to the boutique owners, right? So they're, they have a big budget, let's say.
[07:20] Kunal Madan : 50,000 and they're going to figure out which brands it's going to. And then you're marketing to the end consumer too, because if they go and asking for your product, then you're meeting in the middle. So it's both.
[07:33] Dave Charest: Got it, got it. So how do you then balance that and are there differences in the messaging to each of those groups?
[07:41] Kunal Madan : There is, well, somewhat.
[07:44] Kunal Madan : The messaging to the end consumer is Instagram reels, pretty pictures, so those are used like on our website, they're used on Instagram reels versus store owners, they're mainly email blasts. They also do Instagram, but a lot of email blasts help the store owners get.
[08:05] Kunal Madan : You know, see what's fresh, what's new. I think that's what gets to the stoner better and to the girls, it's usually Instagram.
[08:13] Dave Charest: Got it. OK, so walk me through a little bit, what are you actually doing then to market the business like across channels? What are you using?
[08:19] Kunal Madan : So we do constant Contact first, that's probably the most important and the best return on investment. The reason being is, let's say we introduce a new style. OK, we can email 800 boutiques right away, new style, new color added, and they'll automatically go in and order that right away. So that's what we're doing on the boutique level, sending them updates, shipments arrived, new styles added, new colors added, hot sellers, and I think I feel like that's the most efficient way to get to all those boutiques at once.
[08:49] Kunal Madan : On the consumer level, we're marketing through our Instagram reels, we're marketing through Pinterest, and we're marketing through TikTok.
[08:58] Kunal Madan : We are gathering their emails as well because, you know, um, once we have their subscriber list, we can guide them to our Find a store page where we track analytics on how many stores we're sending, what traffic, um, how many girls are going to what location, how far they are. I think the average girl lives about 28 miles from one of our boutiques, so we do work on analytics and try to make sure our product is in the stores where our consumers are going.
[09:25] Dave Charest: All right, I love all of this. So, how are you tracking that data and then how often are you looking at it, and how are you using that to make decisions?
[09:32] Kunal Madan : So we look at data all the time, for example, just today we sent out an email blast to Canada.
[09:38] Kunal Madan : And we saw which which stores open the email, which which stores click the links to their, that they're interested in uh learning more about our product. They necessarily didn't fill up, like you can see who filled out the form and who just clicked it. We still reach out to the people that clicked it because sometimes they might not have time to fill out the form, but you know they're interested, you can gauge their interest level from their behavior, and we do get a lot of sales through that way
[10:05] Dave Charest: So I got to imagine.
[10:05] Kunal Madan : too.
[10:07] Dave Charest: The boutiques, it makes sense if they find out about you, they know about you, they're, they're going to sign up right, because they want to be able to get the the newest, the latest styles right away. How do you get people from the consumer side? How do you like entice them to join your list?
[10:21] Kunal Madan : Most of the consumers that join our list are going from Pinterest or Instagram, they're seeing the product or through search engine optimization. They're coming to our website and seeing the dresses and saying, hey, you know, this is something really pretty, I want to try it on.
[10:35] Kunal Madan : And they'll they'll sign up for our list.
[10:38] Dave Charest: Got it. OK. What do you find based on, I mean, you come in, not a lot of knowledge, you're kind of learning this on the go, what do you find most challenging about marketing?
[10:46] Kunal Madan : So having the email, getting constant contact up and running is great, but if you don't have pretty pictures, they don't buy the product. So, I mean, we invest a lot in content, whether it be videos or pretty dress pictures.
[11:04] Kunal Madan : And that's what gets them interested, those high res dress images. We shot in Europe this season, we shot in Miami before, so we take a lot of time in planning and invest, make a big investment in those photos. And when we use that in part with Constant Contact, it really shows a really big return on investment.
[11:24] Dave Charest: Yeah, I mean, the images, you know, we've looked at some of the examples of your emails. I mean, they look amazing, right? There's really quality photography there. Do you have employees? Like is it just you two? Like who, who's all involved in the business?
[11:36] Kunal Madan : Yes, so we, we do have employees. It's interesting, all of our employees work from home. OK, we have some people in the warehouse, but mainly Florida, Tennessee, Philippines, Italy, so everybody, we try to find the person that's best for the role.
[11:53] Kunal Madan : Specialty, and we, we don't care about location.
[11:56] Dave Charest: In terms of the marketing, is other people helping with the marketing as well, or are you doing that
[12:01] Dave Charest: specifically?
[12:01] Kunal Madan : Um, no, we, we do have some needs specifically in the Philippines that handles all the constant contact creation of the emails. OK. She creates the emails based on what area we're sending it to. For example, if it's a Canada email blast, we'll target more ball gowns. If it's a Chicago email blast, there'll be more fitted gowns.
[12:21] Kunal Madan : So we target the emails based off of location and we have a person dedicated just for that job.
[12:28] Dave Charest: You mentioned Obviously, right, the, the biggest ROI comes from what you're doing from an email perspective, reaching out to the boutiques. Do you have any specific campaigns or is there anything that sticks out as like having performed really well over something else? Is there a reason for that? Talk me through the results there that you get when you're sending those things.
[12:48] Kunal Madan : Sure, so what we've noticed is on the emails, what really tends to work well for us is sending out value-added emails. So emails that are gonna tell customers, hey, these are the best dresses in your area, or, you know, these are the hot trending colors or hot trending sals. Just sending out an email blast with no value added information gets usually them to unsubscribe.
[13:10] Kunal Madan : But if it's style 20019, 3 new colors added, and a lot of boutiques already know that that style is selling, they'll immediately want to open it, see the new pictures, see the new colors, and order
[13:23] Dave Charest: that. Got it. So, when you start thinking of the marketing efforts that you're doing, how are you tracking success? Like, what does that look like for you and how are you measuring
[13:32] Dave Charest: that?
[13:32] Kunal Madan : Sure. So we measure it in two ways. One, we measure open rate to see what subject lines are getting the most open.
[13:40] Kunal Madan : Usually like top seller or images available, stuff like that, action items or attention grabbing headlines usually get the highest open rate, so we try to get those and then we also measure success of an email in terms of orders. This email blast led to XYZ orders or this is how many stores that have ordered due to this email blast in this style.
[14:05] Dave Charest: So when I get into some more of the specifics of this stuff, but before we get there, I mean, what brought you to Constant Contact in the first place?
[14:11] Kunal Madan : I just knew that you guys were a leader in the industry for email blast, so we, we signed up and we've stuck with that
[14:18] Dave Charest: competitive nature came in again.
[14:20] Dave Charest: Yeah.
[14:22] Kunal Madan : If you're gonna do anything right, like if you're gonna do anything, you might as well do your best at it. And it kind of shows in our dresses, for example, one of our dresses, our tags was, it just came in and the tag wasn't properly cut, and we're like, hey, you know, for us, that's a big deal because the end consumer sees that little tiny detail on the tag not being straight. So we had all those.
[14:47] Kunal Madan : Fixed. So having 500 tags changed for a little thing is not a big thing for some vendors, but for us it's a very, very big thing because every little detail matters when you're spending $600 700 dollars, $800 on your prom game.
[15:01] Dave Charest: Talk to me a little bit more about how important all of that is, right? Just in terms of like that attention to detail, but just the experience for the end user, but I guess on both sides, right, your retailers as well, because the boutiques, because
[15:13] Dave Charest: You know, end of the day, obviously, we focused a lot talking about marketing here, but marketing isn't going to save a bad product. How do you think those things allow you to reach the level that you've been able to reach?
[15:25] Kunal Madan : So marketing won't, like if you have a bad product, marketing doesn't go that far, you know, you'll get a customer one time, but you won't have that retention rate. Once you have a great product and
[15:37] Kunal Madan : A great marketing strategy, then you see the return on investment pretty fast. We're probably on track to cross over $80 million in retail sales this year. So I think the success has been driven by figuring out this is the great way to create the product, this is the best place to get the best fit.
[15:56] Kunal Madan : What adjustments do we need to make? We ask for customers to give us feedback all the time. What's wrong with the product, whether it's good or bad, and we want to improve it from length of the dress to, you know, what types of dress, what colors are selling, and we'll act on it immediately. We won't wait another season, so if a color is really trending or a style is trending, we'll act on it immediately and then we'll inform our customers through email channels.
[16:23] Dave Charest: What is the overall experience been like for you with Constant Context since you
[16:28] Dave Charest: started?
[16:29] Kunal Madan : Uh, very easy, very user friendly. It shows you the most important data points right up front, so the experience has been great.
[16:38] Dave Charest: So you've mentioned ROI a lot and how that's been a big boon for you in terms of how you're using Constant Contact. I mean, if you were to put a percentage or a dollar amount on it, are there any tangible things that you can attribute to Constant Contact and using in terms of
[16:51] Kunal Madan : dollars
[16:51] Dave Charest: or dollars or percentage of business?
[16:54] Kunal Madan : Yeah, I wouldn't be able to give you an exact dollar amount, but I can tell you, I did mention we have built a network of over 800 boutiques across the world.
[17:02] Kunal Madan : I would say a good 30-40% of those came through marketing through email channels. Got it. And it's not just that first email wasn't the thing that did it for them. It was that second email, the 3rd email, the 5th email, 2 years, staying in front of them is what kind of got them to eventually purchase.
[17:23] Dave Charest: What's your approach strategically with your emails then? Are you, how often are you sending, like, are you using segmentation at all? Like talk me through how you approach it.
[17:31] Kunal Madan : Sure. So when you kind of send uh emails out when they're needed, we don't have it like, OK, it has to go out every day. I know some people say, hey, we have to send out weekly or biweekly. We're more of a, when do we need to send it? When our customers wanting to see that email? For example,
[17:50] Kunal Madan : In the month of August when we're getting ready for prom buying season, customers want to see the email. In January, we'll send out a lot more emails because we'll have a lot more styles in stock. So it's very seasonal. Our business is seasonal. We'll see most of our boutiques do most of their revenue for the year from January to April. We do segment out who we're going to send what email to. We don't want to waste anybody's time and send them an email that is not valuable to them.
[18:18] Kunal Madan : If it's not a valuable email to them, it's better off to not send it, because if you send them junk emails every time that have no value, they won't keep opening your emails.
[18:28] Dave Charest: So you mentioned the seasonality of it. Are there things you're doing in the offseason? Like, are there things that you're doing to kind of keep top of mind? Uh, I like what you're saying in terms of matching the need, right? And I think that's a big thing because people, to your point, always want the, I think there's something to consistency, but the frequency really does depend on like, you want to match the need with the frequency, and so there are times where you're to your point, you may send more, there are times where you may send less and so,
[18:56] Dave Charest: I guess how do you account for the the ebbs and tides of the seasonality of the business? There's specific things you do in those at different times because of that? Yeah,
[19:06] Kunal Madan : so I don't want to say like we don't send out any emails at all in July, right, or June, because it's not very dressying time for formal dresses, but we do send out emails like, hey, hey, this is what's going on, this is what's new, this is the events that are coming up or a preview show. It's just less frequent.
[19:23] Kunal Madan : So that's what happens in offseason. We'll still send out like, you know, this is what's coming up, our preview shows, our show dates in Atlanta, Chicago, we do a lot of trade shows too, so we're always sending out those emails like letting people know our trade show dates and times. Email is the main way of communicating that to.
[19:42] Kunal Madan : You know, the masses, and then during on season, we're just very short, straight to the point. This is what's selling, this is what you need to have, this is, and we'll send them out specifically on certain times and dates. So during on season, we'll want to send emails out Sunday, OK, because the stores are getting ready to buy on Sunday night for the week.
[20:04] Dave Charest: Ah,
[20:05] Kunal Madan : OK. If I sent that same email out on Friday, I would have such a low success rate, because they're gonna be so busy during the weekend that they don't have time to look at the email. But if I send it Sunday night around 5 or 6 p.m. like when the store is done, they got a plan for the week ahead, that email will have a different success.
[20:27] Dave Charest: OK, so I'm curious, how do you know this? Because I, your parents having been in the industry, I've got, I got to feel like there's some inside baseball here with that because you know the industry, like, you kind of know how that audience is thinking and preparing and doing their things versus just looking at metrics. I mean, am I off on that or is there something there?
[20:44] Kunal Madan : Naturally, I guess I do have some insights in the industry because, you know, I grew up in that, in the field, but um.
[20:52] Kunal Madan : I think it's more data driven though, like you can tell what time people are gonna buy and what time the emails that you send out and the orders start coming in the, in the portal. So I think it's kind of a fifty-fifty. I won't say like not having a background in the industry didn't help me at all grow, but knowing so much about the retail aspect helped us a lot.
[21:14] Kunal Madan : To make the wholesale aspect very successful. But timing of the emails is very important because for us, sending an email on a certain day, certain time, depending on the season of the business, had a very big impact on success
[21:29] Kunal Madan : rate.
[21:30] Dave Charest: What have you found that you like most about Constant Contact?
[21:34] Kunal Madan : What I like the most is probably
[21:36] Kunal Madan : It, it's very simple. Like I wanted to add more, I think we added 200 more people to our Canada list, and it was very simple. It's automated. You just put the Excel file in, it added them up. We sent out the email in the next 3 minutes. I think the automation, the feedback, and the analytics is what the best part is.
[21:55] Dave Charest: How are you using automation? What, what types of things are you doing there?
[21:58] Kunal Madan : Automation we're doing is we're trying to get as many email addresses as possible through the sign up forms. OK.
[22:06] Kunal Madan : And just trying to get those emails going every week on season, so planning ahead, scheduling the emails, even we do get busy during our peak season, so scheduling out those emails, getting that feedback really helps.
[22:21] Dave Charest: Yeah, you know, we've talked to some people that have some seasonality too, and they were often trying to plan in that again, downtime is a misnomer, right, because you're always doing something with all the, all the things you have to do, but, but at those times where it's not as busy, do you find yourselves getting together to plan to set goals, like what does that all process look like for you and when do you actually
[22:43] Dave Charest: To get that stuff done.
[22:44] Kunal Madan : So when we got out of our jobs, like when I got out of my job, I was like, oh, this is going to be a 5 hour a day gig, you know, 4 months. It's completely opposite. We start at like, I'll give this to you. We start at 10 a.m. but we go till like 22 a.m. every day, whether it be on season or off season, there's, there's always work from the design aspect of it, photography of it, the search engine optimization.
[23:09] Kunal Madan : Um, we're really focusing on search engine optimization because, you know, the more people you can get to your website, the more brand awareness you have, and we feel like that's the main, main core of trying to get the customers to be aware of the product. So we, we really push that throughout the whole year, whether it be slow time or fast time.
[23:29] Dave Charest: Do you do any outreach with the boutique owners and things like that, like outside of Constant Contact? So for example, if you, you're using that information, you're finding out, OK, you're looking at the data these people haven't bought from us, like, do you then call them up? Do you like, do you do something outside of Constant Contact to follow up with these folks? Oh
[23:47] Kunal Madan : yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Once we know they're interstate or
[23:51] Kunal Madan : They're opening our emails a lot, we'll definitely call them. So we'll introduce ourselves. We'll say, hey, we've been sending you emails. I'm not sure if you got them, and they'll say, Oh, I've seen that email before. So they're already aware. So the brand awareness has started. And now we tell them, hey, this is what we sell, this is our product. Can I send you an email with all the images?
[24:13] Kunal Madan : And then that's where the conversation gets started, and then we, if they come on board, we move them from like general interest to our retailer list, and that's when they become like onboarded as a customer. So it's not that the email just does all the work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it, it creates the brand awareness and then that's where we go at the phone calls and say, hey, you know, outreach, or if they're not buying over the phone, we'll invite them over to a trade show, Dave.
[24:41] Kunal Madan : So we'll say, hey, you know, we'll be in Atlanta in August or we'll be in Chicago in March, or would you like to come visit our headquarters in New Jersey and we'll try to get them to interact with us, right? It's a relationship-based business, it's not like image-based business. So most of the customers that purchase from us, we have a really good relationship with. We take care.
[25:00] Kunal Madan : Of every single one, like it's our own store. And I think that's why we have a good retention, right?
[25:05] Dave Charest: I wanted to ask that because like I feel like, to your point, it's kind of all of these things that feed into each other. It's not just that you sent an email, right? It's that you've built these relationships, you've been doing these things, you've, you've made a call to somebody, they've seen you, they've seen you at a show.
[25:20] Dave Charest: And then that in turn makes kind of all the things work better, right? You mentioned, oh yeah, I've seen the emails, right? So they know who you are, right? It's all of these things together, it's not just, I sent an email and now I've sold $80 million of dresses, right? It's, yes, I've done this, but it's one piece of the overall things that you've done to make all of this stuff work, which I absolutely love.
[25:40] Kunal Madan : And it's surprising sometimes when you call a customers like they'll say, hey, I saw your email, so you're like, OK, then you're like, oh, that is important because even though that you're your best customers, you never thought that they were like waiting and seeing your emails, but even they see your emails. So it's just another touch, you know, like another point, like, hey, OK, I'm, I'm here, I'm here. So that's what really helps make the whole ecosystem work.
[26:05] Dave Charest: To your
[26:05] Dave Charest: point there about calling, emailing, then following up.
[26:09] Dave Charest: How important is that persistence?
[26:12] Kunal Madan : So very sometimes people aren't not buying from you because they don't want to, it's just they are so busy that they don't have time. Yeah.
[26:22] Kunal Madan : And you just got to keep at it and let them know, hey, I'm here whenever you're ready, I'm here. Most of the people that are very, you know, the first year of this business is very, very hard, because like at the start of the call I mentioned, you can have a great product, but if you don't have the great images or a great package, people don't, in today's world, they just don't want a great dress. They want a great product, they want great service, they want great imagery, they want everything.
[26:48] Kunal Madan : So we've learned a lot from the business for 5 years. You can't just have an email blast that says, hey, new dresses have arrived. You gotta have a new Amara 2025 prom dresses arrived and have 30 beautiful dress pictures, and that will see a very big result versus a text-based email, right? People tend to, you know, images do a lot more in our businesses than words.
[27:14] Dave Charest: Well, I was gonna say, right, that that's something I think that's important to note that great, that's what works really great in your industry and because it is a very visual medium, right? It's a very visual thing that's going on and a style and and all of that, where another business, a text-based email, may be the right move.
[27:31] Dave Charest: And I think that's something to think about. It's so specific to the industry and the audience that you're really trying to reach when you're thinking about those things. Well, let me ask you then, I mean, what would it be like trying to do what you do, run your business without constant contact? So
[27:46] Kunal Madan : it would be very, very hard.
[27:48] Kunal Madan : The reason being not every person goes to a show, not every person travels, so not being able to inform the customer that our brand exists would probably lead to a lower account base than we have right now. So, it would have a big impact in terms of number of number of stores that we have.
[28:09] Dave Charest: When you think about what you've learned through just your use of Constant Contact and what you've learned from a marketing perspective and the success that you've had, what would be your advice for another small business owner, maybe considering marketing tools like Constant Contact?
[28:24] Kunal Madan : I would say start off with Constant Contact right away, figure out who your customers are, whether it be businesses or end consumers, figure out how you're going to grow your mailing list, how you're going to get their email addresses.
[28:38] Kunal Madan : And just start marketing to them via email. You're gonna spend a lot less marketing them via email versus Instagram ads, Google ads, and it's an ongoing relationship. Those ads on other platforms, they go away. You gotta pay for them to see them again versus Constant Contact. Once you have the email, you can market them over and over again.
[29:03] Dave Charest: Well, friend, let's recap some items from that conversation. Number one, great marketing can't save a bad product, but it will accelerate a great one. Kanal emphasizes the importance of having a strong product first, but pairing that with high quality marketing to fuel growth. His team, for example, invests heavily in beautiful professional photography that brings their dresses to life, because in fashion, images sell.
[29:31] Dave Charest: So think about how you're presenting your great products and services. Are you doing so in the best way to attract your target audience?
[29:39] Dave Charest: Number 2, email isn't just outreach, it's intelligence. Kanal tracks, open rates and link clicks to identify interest, segment outreach, and prioritize follow-up with boutique owners. This allows his team to turn curiosity into conversations and conversations into sales. So what's your follow up plan for those that are most engaged with your messages?
[30:04] Dave Charest: And number 3, know when your emails matter most. Rather than blasting emails on a fixed schedule, Kal sends messages when they're needed, especially when boutique buyers are most receptive, like Sunday evenings. The key is value-driven content that makes opening the email worth it. So here's your action item for today. Segment your audience by geography or interest and tailor your next email to match.
[30:34] Dave Charest: Kanal's team sends different styles to different regions like ball gowns to Canada and fitted dresses in Chicago. You can do the same with your product or service. Use segmentation to show your audience exactly what they care about most.
[30:50] Dave Charest: Not sure where to start, well use constant contacts, content management and segmentation tools to group by location, past behavior, or tags. Then make a plan to send relevant information to those contacts.
[31:06] Dave Charest: I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review. Just go to ratethispodcast.com/BAM. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. That's ratethispodcast.com/BAM. Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.