iContact delivers professional email marketing features to ensure that it provides extensive features and tools across different stages and sizes to get real results for your campaigns. The platform is ideal for small businesses to want to leverage better campaigns with high-volume senders and subscribers.
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Segment |
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Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based |
Support | 24/7 (Live rep), Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
Training | Documentation |
Languages | English |
i contact is easy to use and a good program. Out of my price range though. Most messages do make it into the inbox and the system and email creator is very easy to use and looks nice. It is a great communication tool.
price. The price does not always pay off for the email. Newsletters no longer seem to bring in the income that would be helpful to a business. They do make a better communication tool.
My newsletters were going into inboxes which is a great success.
I like the ability to connect iContact with other tools that we use and need to have strong integrations with. Another great thing about iContact is the account manager. He calls on a consistent basis and is always prepared to offer advice that pertains to our business and to our online goals.
The one thing that was a bit worrisome was the initial stages with iContact. We had a hard time getting in touch with someone to start the process and found that they seemed to be overwhelmed. Once we were able to get in touch with someone things quickly shaped up to work very well for us and demonstrate that they have a strong value in their customers.
The biggest problem solved is integration with other tools that we use for our e-commerce. Some have been realized and others are still being put together. iContact has the capability to work with the APIs and other coding from a wide variety of other providers. This is an essential tool for us and I am sure other businesses when trying to ensure that the tools used are the best for their respective organization.
Straightforward settings, clean design templates, easy contact list management.
Would like templates to be more flexible.
Steady outreach to our customer base. People often call right after receiving email.
I've worked with several email newsletter marketing programs during my time in media and iContact is hands-down my favorite thus far. The drag & drop editor makes shuffling around content easy and better yet, the templates automatically reformat for optimized mobile consumption. The emails look great on both desktop and mobile devices and we're not even spending additional time preparing that optimized mobile format. Our strategic advisor is also very responsive when we need assistance and offers a lot of insight into the analytics and trends of our databases.
The only thing I wish we had was direct 2-way communication between our business website member databases and the iContact lists for synchronized newsletter opt-in status. Subscriptions get communicated from our website to iContact, but unsubscribes from the emails sent by iContact do not get communicated back to the member profile on our website.
The biggest problem we're solving is time spent on producing emails. We send a lot of various emails to our multiple website databases (including various sub-groups within each website database) and we can't afford to spend tons of time producing these emails when there are so many other production tasks we need to fulfill. Building emails used to be one of the more time-consuming projects we deal with. They are taken care of much faster now that we have the simple-to-use email builder.
Their customer service is always very responsive and helpful. Whenever I have an issue it is usually resolved in less than 24 hours.
Sometimes the design editor can act really funky and I have issues formatting text and images.
Our company does a lot of email marketing and this has streamlined the process so much that we have been able to increase business.
Very easy to use, with access from many different employee users. We have had fantastic results with this software!
We have many departments who use this software. It would be nice to simplify a unique log in for each different user so we can track who has sent one.
Email blasts from our company headquarters
iContact has a fairly easy process for uploading CSV files and setting up email blasts. We use iContact regularly to send out reminders to our clients and it works effectively. Lists can be separated and organized quickly and assigning, searching for, and managing the contacts in your email list is straightforward.
The interface takes a bit of time to get used to.
iContact makes communicating with large numbers of contacts easier. Tracking and organizing emails and lists becomes a much simpler process.
The stats are easy to measure, and the platform is simple to use. I called customer service for assistance and all was explained - it was very easy to get started with our campaigns. I also love the "re-use" this campaign feature!
sometimes the fonts and color changes get a bit wonky.
reaching our buyers is key and this makes for an efficient way to do so
I would be lost without iContact. I run a small bespoke B2B agency in the Middle East and it helps me to communicate to segmented audience. I have created newsletters for our clients and helped to monitor. Sometimes the social media APIs are a problem but that could be the main social media platforms and not iContact. They are very prompt with responses to resolving issues and while they are not perfect, they are as perfect as I need to be.
Its not really a dislike but the inability to do Arabic for my region is a bit of a setback but not enough to stop using them.
I am able to send targeted messages to a target audience.
They took the time to answer our questions and guided us to improve our customer database.
Unfortunately they do not have support in Spanish, our case we are located in Mexico and that is a limitation.
We used it for the mass mailing, our problem was with the database, a negative sending caused our account to be blocked, with the help of our team and the guide of the icontact team we were able to solve it and thus progress in our campaigns.
I can send a message to my client list and interesteds list in just a few minutes.
It took me awhile to find the reports on my mailings, particularly the addresses of bounced messages.
I am able to communicate with all my clients with just a few strokes on the keyboard. I tend to use the same message edited with up to date details.
Email template controls and formatting, templates.
Would like more custom field options. Maybe another 10-15 number of customization fields.
trying to make our marketing more targeted, with more sophisticated workflows and targeted audiences.
Customer service is awesome. I have lots of great examples. Often fast, with simple resolution. One not so common or simple one: Recently one tech gal went to the developers (in a secret backroom, it seemed) to untangle an issue that appeared to be between I contact and GoDaddy. My husband had service calls with each, pointing to the other. As the non-tech person, but primary account user, I had a delightful and successful call. She resolved not one but 2 glitches that were keeping my modal plug-in (for newsletter sign-ups) in limbo for weeks. She tested it herself. I wanted to send her flowers Unlike GoDaddy (and others 800#s) you can talk to a person in minutes (except afternoon Pacific Time, since they are in NC)
The templates are glitchy at times and do funny things. it's hard to pad images correctly. And the template I use is pale grey--stupid, unreadable. so always has to be adjusted. Lack of evening tech support for west coast users.
I guide women to clarity and courage to authentically step into the next big phase of their lives, by connecting with their Higher Guidance and Feminine Soul.
Solid, reliable email distribution. Both we and the subscribers themselves have control over their subscriptions to us.
In the version we use, the maximum file size allowed for images is smaller than those offered by the service we had used previously. Makes it hard to read images with text, such as aerial photo maps with street names. Also, send time is Eastern time, which is a minor annoyance.
We needed a way to get news directly to our customers and to members of the media, sometimes quickly. This program is easy to use and there are templates that fit our various needs. We have been able to keep our access to our subscriber base despite changes in personnel and location.
iContact does a great job of working with and educating the end-user to insure that all technical needs are met in order to easily distribute content via email to a list of subscribers. List set up and management is easy and painless. The library of preformed templates is diverse and offers several template options for every situation. Keep in mind, you will need to edit these templates relatively rigorously to insure that they maintain your brand identity, but that is a struggle for any template situation. The visual editor is easy to use.
Some of the more advanced features (a-b testing, segmentation, etc) are difficult to implement and/or their value is poorly communicated - They feel a bit like after thoughts. The html editor is clunky, and there is no means of testing for compliance with individual email providers within the iContact system - a serious blind spot. Having native testing and a "pre-mailer" like html/css compressor would make this a better long-term solution for any serious email marketing group.
We have been able to seriously increase our customer reach as we now maintain top-of-mind awareness with existing customers by making contacting at least three times a month, leading to 16-25% run rates over the past 6 months since implementing an email marketing plan.
I like the fact that the templates are pretty custamizable, and that they are able to be done so quickly and easily
I cant say that i dislike anything in particular, if i had to pick something i would say that you can have the same person on two lists and it counts twice against your allowed client count
getting our specials out, this helps a lot with allowing me to copy it right to face book
They system is easy to use and I prefer the design/layout options to their big competitor. I really like the customer service...I always get the right answer from someone who sounds happy to help me out!
While it isn't perfect, there's not much to complain about. My biggest wish would be the ability to edit a newsletter that is already scheduled to be delivered.
I'm making communication between my organization and its members easy, clear and useful!
Ease of use, priced right, can use previous emails and modify them quickly. Also like to see how many are opening our emails.
Would like more templates. Otherwise no negatives to report.
Splashing out new listings and price reductions to our potential buyer list. Appreciate using this list as a sort of backup list for our own company computers, too. We use the same emails to send to our customers, whose homes we have listed as a followup to show them what we are doing to market their homes.
I-Contact is great for North Carolina non-profits because it's free! We can send customized messages, surveys, and we use it to keep up with our social media. I
We can't send attachments which sometimes makes it difficult to share tools with our listserv.
For non-profits its easy to see who on our listserv is the most engaged and what people "click" on the most in our messages helping us shape and analyze our message.
The ease of use! I love how iContact makes the editing of an email so simple, but yet looks so good!
Not enough of my families looking at what has been sent out.
Able to reach more people and at a quicker pace!