Constant Contact taught small businesses to send email newsletters, and it did much of the teaching in person. Its online service gave a florist, a dentist or a church easy templates, a home for a mailing list and reports on who opened each message. The company backed this with seminars and phone coaching across the country. By 2007 it had tens of thousands of customers paying monthly. Most were tiny organizations.

Roving Software Finds Email

Randy Parker founded the company in 1995 as Roving Software. The bet was that small organizations wanted to keep in touch with their customers but lacked the skills of big marketers. Gail Goodman became chief executive in 1999 and focused the company on email marketing. She built its sales engine around free trials and radio ads. Customer service and education became central to how it sold.

Endurance, Then Independence

Constant Contact priced its IPO at $16 a share in October 2007 on the Nasdaq. It added tools for social media and events, and it kept growing through the downturn. In 2016 Endurance International Group bought the company for about $1.1 billion. Endurance kept Constant Contact as a separate brand. Later, under private equity owners, Constant Contact became a separate company again.

Cover: Messenger with a Letter, from the series "Elegant Five-needled Pine (Furyu goyo no matsu)", Kitagawa Utamaro. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a messenger with a letter (email).