iContact Review

Email marketing software remains one of the most valuable tools you can use to market your products, even in our age of social media. One of the best known companies in the email marketing field is iContact. TopFiveAdvisor decided to give their services a closer look, and we’ve concluded that this is one of the best email marketing companies out there, well worth considering if you’re looking for your newsletter solution.

iContact is a US-based service which has been around since 2003 and has proven to be a strong company ever since. Their solutions are targeted toward small and mid-sized companies. They are a subsidiary of Cision, a provider of cloud-based marketing and PR software with more than 100,000 customers worldwide.

Newsletter Features

iContact’s email marketing software features include more than 500 email templates, a great way to get started with designing a customized professional newsletter to send out to your mailing list. You can easily brand your newsletter using your logo, images, colors, and fonts. The newsletter templates have been extensively tested and look great in different inboxes of major email clients. There are also a variety layouts which you can use to arrange different elements of your newsletters.

With the MessageBuilder™ Toolbar, you can easily modify your messages by adding images, adjusting margins, and switching colors. The user interface is friendly even to beginners and doesn’t require a knowledge of HTML to use effectively. You can drag-and-drop blocks of text, images, and other elements to get them where you want them. The templates for iContact’s newsletters are really beautifully designed and look very artistic and professional, which is a great reason to consider them for your email marketing software.

If WYSIWYG editors are not your thing and you want to code your own email template, iContact has you covered with their MessageCoder™ feature as shown above. This option features the ability to edit tables, preview your messages, color swatches and many more tools.

Social media features are also available. You can set up iContact to add social media sharing buttons to your messages so that your customers can spread the word quickly and easily. You also can have the program post updates on Twitter, Facebook, and other sites whenever you send out an update to your email newsletter subscribers. This reminds other subscribers on your sites that you have an email list they can subscribe to as well. Analytic information provides you with details on the success of your social media integration so that you can figure out which messages generate the most dialogue on social marketing sites and also which sites you receive the most attention on. Sign-up forms are available not only for your website but also for your Facebook page so that FB users can sign up for your newsletter without leaving the social network.

Subscriber Management

Subscriber management is one of the most important features of any email marketing platform, and iContact provides excellent tools for managing your list. You are given bounceback handling, analytic reports for each of your contacts, tools you can use to import new contacts, message forwarding, customizable data fields which you can use to personalize your emails, and full email list segmentation capabilities.

Email segmentation allows you to send out unique, targeted emails to users based off of their interests, demographics, location, language, and more. You can ascertain your customers’ interests and demographic information from a short survey when they sign up for your newsletter, and you can also segment based off of shopping and browsing behaviors.

Once your campaign is segmented, you will only be sending out relevant emails to the people who are interested in reading them. As your campaign unfolds, you’ll receive feedback in the form of analytic information which you can then apply to your campaigns. Once you figure out how different segments are responding to different targeted emails, you can further tweak your campaigns by sending out more and more relevant information. You can also choose to segment your users according to how often they wish to receive your emails.

Email Reporting

Detailed email reporting information provides you with the analytic information you need to streamline your campaigns. The dashboard provides great ease of access and makes it easy to see instantly what’s going on with your marketing campaigns. You can then view individual statistics for messages you’ve sent out and look at graphics which show you how well your messages have been received and whether they are resulting in sales revenue. See how your messages are performing in terms of not only conversions but also in terms of social media integration. Find out whether your emails may also be generating indirect revenue.

Customer Support

iContact is really impressive with their support options and education materials. The first thing we found was an awesome 30-day starter plan PDF that includes 17 pages that trains you the process of email marketing and methods. Additionally, iContact offers social media contact points, a company blog, email help and a full glossary to help you on your way.

Need to give iContact a call? They have you covered with a toll-free telephone support number, toll number, UK number and more. Their answer telephone calls from 4AM-10PM EST Mon-Fri.

Live chat is available during the same time as telephone support if you’d like to use that method instead.

iContact Review Summary

iContact offers affordable plans for different sizes of companies. Their lowest cost paid plan is $10.00 per month for up to 250 subscribers. Their next plan up costs $14.00 per month and allows you to add up to 500 subscribers. For $19.00 you can send your newsletter to as many as 1,000 subscribers. There are also plans available for larger businesses with more than 15,000 subscribers, but you must contact the company in order to get pricing plans. There is also a free trial, and you can receive 15 percent off on any plan if you pay annually instead of monthly. Non-profit organizations can receive 20 percent off of any plan.

The only major drawback to the pricing scheme is that there is a substantial fee if you want to customize your email footer of your emails, currently a $99 fee. iContact has everything you’ll need to start your email campaign. From a very powerful email editor to clean email templates, iContact will perform as you expect to increase conversions for your business.