Our editorial staff evaluates products and services independently, but Best Review Guide may earn money when you click on links. Read our advertising disclosure.
PROS:
CONS:
Doing more things for the same amount of money is the main idea of iContact. It is a fully dedicated email marketing platform with a huge number of features and supportive services which are sold as options in customized plans. Icontact is trying hard to remain afloat as one of the top few email marketing services, through offering much more than just email marketing.
Large and comprehensive, iContact is the proof that one provider can cover all aspects of a service. A plethora of integrations with social media, CRM and other tools can make your email campaigns evolve into complete and multi-channel marketing efforts. You can sync Facebook, Salesforce, Wordpress, Twitter. Even if you use some software that is not integrated, you can rely on iContact’s open API to build a custom integration or application. iContact’s main power is that you can tailor any part of the system and make it by your marketing needs.
The long list of features begins with a basic pack, consisting of autoresponders, a campaign tracker, and A/B testing support. A spam detector is there to warn you if a certain type of content would let recipient’s server mark the message as spam before you send it. This checker system is intuitive and is up to the latest in spam prevention and avoiding.
List management lets you make groups for sending different content on the different kinds of templates. If you’re not satisfied with the existing template library, iContact’s designer team can make custom ones for you for a fee.
The whole system can be managed by multiple users who can have access to multiple folders. When you send your campaign emails, Google Analytics will track their behavior.
Expert Services are special addons which can be purchased with either plan. These span from email marketing expert consultancy through email design testing to 90-day action planning. Addons include salesforce synchronisation, deliverability advocacy, lead scoring, custom in-depth reporting, advanced analytic tools, premium customer support, personalized training and inbox troubleshooting. There is no fixed pricing for any of these, quotes are generated separately for any individual case.
Email Creation and Sending
iContact’s interface enables users to create high quality and compelling email messages and newsletters. The existing templates are sorted by business/industry type. If you want unique templates, iContact’s design studio is there for you. Services offered by the designers include creating new templates on order, converting many files into messages and various other HTML code interventions. Of course, you can come up with your own templates and codes, too.
The spam checking process is extremely simple. iContact’s spam prevention algorithm will track your entire mailing content to find things which are not in accordance with regulations and single out anything in your text that email servers recognize by spam rightfully or wrongfully. If you think the servers might be wrong, you will have an option to certify the content as non-spam. By doing this, the message will pass through a more advanced check by the provider. For every spam flag spam checker will offer an explanation and solution, so you can make sure you’re on the right way to eliminating high bounce rates.
The campaign tracking suite is able to recognize the behavior of all recipients: is it bounce, opened and read, whether any links are clicked through and if the message is forwarded. Additionally, whenever you send mass mail, e.g. newsletters, you will receive a message copy for distribution to social networks and other publishing formats.
List Options
Multiple ways of importing mailing lists exist: uploading contact list files, adding single entries, or simply copy and paste. The sign up interface is easy to set up, and surveys can be made to add custom information on every subscriber. That information is useful for targeted, personalized campaigns.
BOTTOM LINE
iContact is an absolutely superior bulk email service thanks to a vast number of features and possibilities. However, making an effective campaign with it requires time. iContact’s ideal user is a company that bases their marketing primarily on email, or where email plays an important role in the overall marketing strategy.
Along with Social Media Sharing, all the features mentioned above are included in the basic “Email Marketing” plan. The plan cost is:
The Pro Automation plan automatizes much more than just sending and receiving email messages. Engagement tracking with behavioral targeting features pave the road to full automation of the whole marketing process. With triggered messages option, this system can replace real human communication for many basic things. This would be ideal for companies that tried email marketing before, but felt the limitation of email as a marketing channel. This Package strives to lift all these limitations and make email marketing fully customizable and direct. Among other features worth mentioning here is social monitoring and integration with Zapier, a third party cross web app integration platform.
The pricing for this plan is not quite friendly for those with short contact lists. The cheapest package is available for $99 for lists with 2500 contacts or less. There is no 500 or less option, so if you have 500 or less users, you’ll still pay the price for 2500 users. Larger packages are:
Custom quotes for longer lists
Contact form: https://www.icontact.com/contact
Phone: US: (877) 820 - 7837
International: 1 (919) 957 - 6150
Social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iContact
Our editorial staff evaluates products and services independently, but Best Review Guide may earn money when you click on links. Read our advertising disclosure.
By: Miroslav | Last updated April 17, 2017 
