iContact Review – What is iContact Email Marketing Service?

iContact Review – What is iContact?

iContact Review Introduction

When it comes to email marketing solutions there are more than a few email service providers to choose from and it’s getting tougher for these companies to separate themselves from the pack.

This review will answer the question, “What is iContact?” and why iContact could be the right email marketing solution provider for you. We will cover things such as the services they offer, their ease of use and of course, their pricing structure.

Contents iContact Review

• What is Email Marketing
• What is iContact?
• iContact Awards
• What are the Main Features of iContact?
• Who Uses iContact?
• iContact Email Marketing Service Price Structure
• Why Use Email Marketing Services?
• What to Look for in Email Marketing Services
• What do You Get with iContact?
• iContact and Email Marketing
  • Message Builder
  • Message Coder
  • IContact and Email Delivery
• Campaign Management Features
  • Autoresponder Triggered Campaigns & Scheduling
  • Surveys
  • Opt-in Forms
  • Email A/B Split Testing
  • Tracking
  • Image & File Hosting
• Social Media Management
• Tracking and Reporting
• Premier Services From iContact
  • Advisory Services
  • Large Sender Services
  • Design Services
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
  • The Good
  • The Bad
  • The Ugly
• iContact Review Conclusion

 

What is Email Marketing

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating. Email marketing typically involves using email to:

• Acquire new customers.
• Enhancing the relationship of a merchant with new, current or previous customers.
• Build customer trust and loyalty
• Solicit sales, donations, repeat business.
• Enhance brand awareness.
• Convince customers to purchase something immediately.

Email marketing can be done using either cold lists (not recommended) or the current customer database.

Researchers estimate that United States firms alone spent US $1.51 billion on email marketing in 2011 and will grow to $2.468 billion by 2016. [US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011 To 2016]

What is iContact?

iContact Corporation is an international online provider of email marketing services and social media marketing to small, medium and premier businesses. iContact is a service of Vocus.

• Vocus (NASDAQ: VOCS) is a leading provider of cloud-based marketing and PR software.

iContact allows customers to create, track, and send HTML-based emails and social media messages. It is considered to be one of the top leading email marketing service providers in the US, the company has over 70,000 customers and over 1,000,000 users.

• iContact is well known for being one of the few companies who offers Salesforce integration as well as Google Analytics integration.

Whilst some email marketing services can seem overwhelming, iContact keeps things simple and intuitive. Whether you’re an email marketing professional or just starting to design your email marketing campaigns, iContact provides you with all the tools you’ll need. You don’t need HTML or web-design experience as iContact provides hundreds of ready made email templates to get you going.

Before you press the send button, you can spell check your work and even see if it passes the SPAM tests. When you’re ready, see what your customers will see by sending the email campaign to an email address of your choice.

iContact Awards

2008: iContact received the CED’s (Council for Entrepreneurial Development) Entrepreneurial Excellence Award.

2009: iContact named Software Company of the Year by North Carolina Technology Association.

2010/11: iContact named Salesforce AppExchange Customer Choice winner for Mass Email.

2011: iContact named 2nd fastest growing company on Fast 50.

2011: iContact’s Customer Service and Tech Support won the International Customer Management Institute’s (ICMI) Global Call Centre of the Year Award.

2012: iContact rated the #1 Email Marketing Service Provider according to Website Magazine (10/2012).

What are the Main Features of iContact?

iContact provides users with hundreds of fully-customizable email templates (600+) from single-column emails to postcard-style templates. The Message Builder feature allows even inexperienced users to create professional-looking emails from templates with integrated drag-and-drop customization. HTML coding is also available through Message Coder with both code and preview windows.

• Email Templates: Over 600+ free, customisable, inbox friendly, email templates.
• Message Builder: Drag and drop email writing.
• Message Coder: Import your own HTML templates or create from scratch.
• Email Delivery: All your messages go directly to your clients inbox, every single time. Avoid their spam folder.
• Social Media: Go beyond normal email marketing solutions, publish directly to social media sites.
• Contact Management: Easy-to-use tools keep the relationship between you and your customers, stronger than ever.
• Customer Support: Award winning customer support, tips and advice.

iContact’s offers extensive support for third-party add-ons, including email sign-up support for WordPress and Joomla websites and the ability to create and track campaigns from your iPhone, iPod Touch or Android device.

Who Uses iContact?

iContact clients are mostly small and medium-sized businesses, probably because of their straightforward plans and excellent customer service. Though, as iContact can cater for over five million subscribers, anyone who needs to email large lists could also use this email service provider.

iContact Email Marketing Service Price Structure

Product Name:	iContact Email Marketing Services from Vocus
Headline:	Your Professional Email Marketing Solution Starts Here
Price: Monthly	Up to 150 subscribers £6.50 ($10) Up to 500 subscribers £9.10 ($14) Up to 1000 subscribers £12.35 ($19) Up to 2500 subscribers £18.85 ($29) Up to 5000 subscribers £30.55 ($47) Fees for iContact’s products and services will be charged to your credit card in USD irrespective of local currency. Annual pricing gets additional 15% discount. 20% discount to all non-profit organizations.
Other:	30-day free trial.Free plan for up to 100 subscribers (600 emails per month).A maximum of six emails per month per individual recipient is allowed as part of the iContact email marketing service to help prevent spam.

 

Why Use Email Marketing Services?

Increasingly, email marketing services are taking the place of direct mailers. Why spend time, resources and money on creating print marketing campaigns which simply end-up in the bin when you can combine your social networking marketing efforts with effective email campaigns.

With the correct email marketing solution you can analyse your marketing efforts at the touch of a button, see who is opening your emails, which links get the best response, how many email addresses bounced and how many people unsubscribed from your email campaign. Using your email campaign reports, you can quickly identify which marketing tools are working and which need to be improve.

• After using the iContact email marketing service you’ll wonder why anyone ever used direct mailers or snail mail.

What to Look for in Email Marketing Services

Creating email marketing campaigns should be as easy as adding names to a database, selecting your email template, then analysing how effective your email campaigns were.

When reviewing email marketing services I looked for services which fulfilled the above tasks as easily and simply as possible with the minimum learning curve. After all you want to get a job done not spend days on tutorials. The tools provided by the email marketing service need to be intuitive and flexible so you can adjust the content of your email marketing messages to reflect your company’s image.

Should you have queries or problems their help and support should be top-notch. The service should provide onscreen help options to get you started, a user manual and a wizard to walk you through the creation and monitoring of your email campaign. There should also be a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section, a blog, tutorials and how-to articles guiding you through creating effective campaigns. Finally, support should include the ability to contact the company by email, phone and/or live chat.

What do You Get with iContact?

As an email marketing service provider, iContact’s offers are focused on enabling your email campaigns in the quickest and simplest way. They provide all the basic services such as email marketing solutions, social media management and contact management as well as three premier services; (1) advisory services, (2) large sender services and (3) design services.

iContact and Email Marketing

The following key features make iContact’s email marketing solution desirable and easy to use.

Message Builder

The Message Builder service enables everyone, even those with no HTML coding or design experience, to quickly and easily create visually appealing email messages by dragging and dropping content directly into one of the hundreds of professionally designed email templates provided. Still not happy? Then customise the template to you own needs. The drag and drop feature makes creating customised professional email or newsletter designs simple.

Message Coder

Are you good with HTML? Like to get your hands dirty? Those familiar with HTML coding will love Message Coder. Message Coder allows you to code newsletters and emails from scratch and even use your own HTML templates if you have them.

To make life even easier you can easily switch back and forth between coder view and design view to ensure everything is laid out just as it should be. As a final check you can preview the email in a popup window to see just how recipients will see it!

IContact and Email Delivery

If you’re concerned about the deliverability of your emails due to SPAM filters, worry no more. iContact has a SPAM check service to enable clients to review their own emails prior to sending and a dedicated email delivery team to ensure white listing.

• iContact allows emails to be sent to only those who opt-in to receive them.
• A maximum of six emails per month per individual recipient is allowed as part of the iContact email marketing service to help prevent spam.

Campaign Management Features

When considering any email marketing solution it’s important to understand just what features are offered.

Autoresponder Triggered Campaigns & Scheduling

Autoresponders enable scheduled, automated emails to be sent to subscribers without human intervention after user opt-in.

This is ideal for those with regular scheduled email to send and is particularly relevant to those running membership type sites where predefined data can be scheduled for delivery a regular intervals.

• An autoresponder is a computer program that automatically answers email sent to it. Autoresponders can be very simple or quite complex.
• Autoresponders are often used as email marketing tools, to immediately provide information to customers and follow-up emails at preset time intervals.
• Autoresponders are incorporated into electronic email marketing software, to confirm subscriptions, unsubscriptions, posts, and other list activities.

Surveys

iContact provides for subscriber surveys with in house analysis of the surveys.

Opt-in Forms

iContact makes the subscription process easy by providing simple opt-in forms for use on both website and Facebook pages without the need for coding.

Email A/B Split Testing

As with any product you need to optimise performance and profitability. Split testing allows two different versions of an email to be sent to a sample audience. This enables email performance analysis. The best performing email is then sent to the rest of the subscribers on the list.

Tracking

Tracking allows you to see who opens your emails, who clicks on a link within the email and those unsubscribing from your emails. Tracking is one of the most crucial features any email service can offer since it provides a snapshot of just how successful your email campaign is.

Image & File Hosting

The service will host the images and other documents used in your campaigns.

Social Media Management

Social media has become a giant in marketing and advertising which is why iContact provides clients with a number of social media management tools including, Easy Sign-Up Forms, Social Sharebar, Facebook Posting, Twitter Posting and Social Media Tracking.

With iContact, you can combine your social networking efforts with your marketing goals. Add Tweet, Like, LinkedIn Share and Google+ buttons to your emails so your customers can easily share coupons, updates and news from your company.

Tracking and Reporting

It’s no good writing great email content if you don’t know how your email campaigns are progressing. iContact analytics will help you track data on all of the following:

• Bounced Emails
• Campaign Results Email
• Click-Through Tracking
• Forwarded Emails
• Google Analytics
• Opened Emails
• Social Media Statistics
• Unsubscribed Contacts

Premier Services From iContact

iContact offers three premier services to users who go above and beyond standard email campaigns.

Advisory Services

The advisory service consists of an email marketing professional to advise you in the overall email marketing process. They will get to know your business, research your competitors, and design a marketing strategy customised to your individual needs. They will troubleshoot any problem areas in your marketing strategy and offer viable email marketing solutions. Their aim, to improve your ROI (return on investment). You’ll also get personalized training on virtually every aspect of the iContact system. If you want to branch out into email marketing but aren’t sure you can do it alone, this email marketing advisory service is well worth considering.

Large Sender Services

Clients with large sending requirements have specialised needs. Deliverability is a major concern. iContact will assign a personal advisor to create an optimised sending strategy and monitor deliverability of messages.

Design Services

Are you useless at design? If so iContact has a team of designers ready to do your bidding. You can start the process with the free design templates which can be customized and edited to meet your needs then call on the designers for advice or even have them repair broken code, adjust tables and resize images to ensure that every email looks perfect.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good

• Great social media marketing tools.

Social media is an increasingly important method for building customer relationships and creating new business opportunities. iContact’s excellent social media marketing tools provide everything you need to harness the potential of social media to your business advantage.

• Simple menu, clean overall design.

iContact has a straightforward account dashboard and intuitive campaign design tools. Navigating is very easy. If you value simple yet powerful design, you’re going to love iContact.

• Access to strategic advisor.

As an iContact premier account customer you’ll get access to a great assistance program that pairs you with an email marketing expert whose job is to help you take full advantage of your marketing opportunities.

• Solid tools and resources for large senders.

Whether your sending hundreds or millions of emails per week iContact provides the tools and resources needed.

• Diverse integration options.

iContact offers a variety of tools to integrate your email campaigns with popular customer management, e-commerce, and analytics services. The list of supported services is extensive. Those with programming skill can even build their own tools using the iContact API.

• Free resources to help improve your marketing knowledge.

iContact provides many free resources to improve your email marketing skills. Everyone will find something of use here, there are so many useful tips, user guides, video tutorials, webinar courses and in-depth articles to help you take your marketing to the next level.

The Bad

• Missing some contact importing options.

Do you already have a substantial email contact list? Do you want to upload the list to your iContact account? If you do, you might have a problem if you don’t have the list in XLS or CSV file format because those are the only formats iContact will accept. Given the technical expertise inherent within iContact this is a little surprising. More flexibility in this area would be nice.

• Image library limited to 5MB free space.

For some unknown reason, iContact has a very restrictive image upload limit. Although they provide five megabytes of free storage space, this is really not enough to meet modern needs. You can of course upgrade, though this will incur additional costs, i.e., a 10-megabyte image library will cost an additional 10% on top of your regular monthly fee.

• Conversion Rates Statistics.

If you are looking for statistics regarding conversion rates, you’ll have to use the Salesforce CRM application.

The Ugly

• Luckily, there is no ugly.

iContact Review Conclusion

iContact has a broad list of features and reports that will help you increase the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. Whether you’re a web designer, marketing guru or a beginner, iContact has the tools you’ll need to succeed.

If you are still unsure whether iContact is the right email marketing solution for you why not get started with a free account (no credit card required).

Well, I hope you found something useful and enjoyed this iContact Review.