iContact |
An iContact review - market leader in providing email marketing services, based out of Raleigh-Durham NC, more than one million customers around the globe use their email marketing platform, get high marks for their features and functionality.
Like other email marketing platforms, iContact is used primarily for email and event campaigns, and surveys. iContact has also been a leader in social media campaigns, making them something of a groundbreaker.
The iContact email marketing platform is powerful, even allowing customizable HTML and design, the user interface is intuitive and simple to operate, even for a novice email marketer. We like their seamless integration with social media platforms and mobile devices.
They provide standard email marketing services provided by most of their direct competitors (Vertical Response, Constant Contact, AWeber, etc.), including online surveys and autoresponders, with no incremental charges for both.
Note, for this iContact Review – Vocus has just acquired iContact, with the intent of combining iContacts email marketing services with the full suite of online marketing services offered by Vocus.
Some of the primary email marketing features of iContact review:
A wide library of templates: Most email marketing application providers offer their users a selection of 100 and 200 templates - iContact has more than 500 templates and each template can hold up to three columns of text, and can be modified to suit your needs and branding.
WYSIWYG editor: iContact’s email editor is intuitive and all point and click. Most of what you want to do is right in front of you rather than hidden deep in a user interface.
iContact Spam Assassin: This feature scans your newsletter or marketing email for spam elements, helping to insure that your messages actually make it into your customers’ in boxes.
Contact list management: iContact has fairly flexible contact management. You can segment your lists in a relatively easy fashion, enabling a number of different uses, including A/B testing (although there is no built-in A/B testing function with this application), list optimization and localized or category targeting.
Autoresponder: The autoresponder feature lets you provide immediate feedback and results to subscribers – although this functionality is provided by the majority of their competitors.
Social media integration: Each outbound (sent) email can contain a social share bar or Like and Tweet buttons directly in your email messages – nothing significant though, as most email vendors are now providing this level of social media integration.
Mobile app: iContact review offers a mobile app for both Android and iOS. The app allows you to do a number of things, including scheduling messages and viewing performance metrics on your email campaigns.
Third Party Product Integration: One of the major strengths you’ll find with an iContact review is that their platform integrates easily with a number of other technologies. It supports SalesForce integration for CRM, synchronizes with Magento and BigCommerce (two popular ecommerce platforms) and integrates well with both Drupal and WordPress for content management.
Application Program Integration: iContact offers an API which allows third parties to create a variety of interfaces, connectors, and add-on applications that can enhance the usage experience for busy marketers or business owners.
What is iContact pricing? Like most of the major competitors in the field, iContact uses a subscriber-based monthly subscription model for pricing:
Number of Subscribers |
Monthly Cost * |
|---|---|
Up to 100 |
Free |
Up to 250 |
$10 |
251 to 500 |
$14 |
501-1000 |
$19 |
1001-2,500 |
$29 |
2,501-5,000 |
$47 |
5,001-10,000 |
$74 |
10,001-15,000 |
$109 |
15,001-25,000 |
$149 |
25,001-35,000 |
$239 |
Over 35,000 |
Special/negotiated |
*iContact offers a one-month free trial, with the subscriber limit being based on the iContact review landing page through which you subscribe.
Overall, iContact pricing is on the low end of average for most tiers. Pricing falls within 20% of the median pricing offered by other email marketing platforms.
Features and functions we liked:
This is a powerful (lots going on under the hoodl) email marketing platform with tremendous features that make it stand out from some of its direct competitors.
Guaranteed email delivery.
A deep template library that is much larger than all of its direct competitors (over 500). Significant integration with SalesForce CRM product and a number of ecommerce platform providers; this is great for larger businesses (corporate entities).
Customization capabilities are just about endless with iContact – if your are actively emailing to large lists this customization will come in handy.
Great mobile phone integration with the platform, which is handy for some on the go email marketers!
Some things we didn’t like about iContact Review:
iContact has generated some negative press for not being responsive for customer service issues and for shutting down accounts that had a very small number of spam complaints.
There is no integration with Google Analytics, which is important for most businesses.
Like some of the other email marketing management platforms, the company’s logo cannot be removed from the emails you send out.
iContact review: receives 8 out of 10 stars as a small business email marketing solution.