With Constant Contact, Hearst's media-services group plans to help small businesses create and build relationships through "professional-looking" emails, management of opt-in contact lists and related measurement.
"We see a tremendous amount of opportunity in email marketing," says Shawn Christensen, vice president of business development at LocalEdge. He calls it a "very effective tool for reaching potential customers."
Far from obsolete, research finds that email remains an important part of the marketing mix. Forrester, for instance, recently concluded that multichannel customers are often worth five or six times more than single-channel customers.
Among younger consumers, however, email is facing increasing competition from social media. Indeed, comScore recently reported that total email usage was down 8% year-over-year, with a staggering 59% decline in use among the 12-17 demo.
"From our customer portal, advertisers will be able to provision their email marketing on their own or have LocalEdge provision their email marketing campaigns for them," said Christensen.
Along with email, LocalEdge's digital services include search engine marketing, mobile advertising, social media management, online display advertising, including behavioral targeting, reputation management and analytics through LocalTrack.
Also, LocalEdge recently announced plans to adopt Analog Analytic's Bigger Better Deal platform, a white-label daily deal service aimed at supporting local media companies and advertisers.
A Hearst Media Services company, LocalEdge is part of its Newspaper Division along with other titles, including the San Francisco Chronicle and Seattlepi.com.
More broadly, Hearst Magazines has recently sought to expand its digital breadth. It recently brought on David Kang as creative director of content extensions. "Hearst is deepening its relationships with its audiences, and in each of the content extension products, there will be potential opportunities to integrate advertisers," says Kang.
Regarding specific Hearst brands in need of a few content extensions, Kang pointed to Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Seventeen, Marie Claire, Redbook, Esquire and Popular Mechanics.