iContact stands among America’s most popular email marketing services. Being headquartered in Morrisville, North Carolina, iContact has helped various small and medium-sized businesses turn into enterprise-level organizations. On top, the provider claims to offer top-tier workflow automation and results-oriented email marketing services. iContact aims to serve clients looking to run dynamic email marketing campaigns, targeting massive audiences in different regions of the world.

This iContact review will dissect every offer, campaign, interface, email creation tool, performance, and provider claims. In addition, we will provide you with an unbiased and impartial review of iContact. Read along to discover everything about the iContact email marketing service.

Pricing Plan – iContact Email Marketing

iContact email marketing service offers two pricing plans, i.e., Essential and Professional. iContact believes in charging clients, according to several subscribers. If an email address is included in two separate lists, it’s counted as different users.

In addition, iContact offers a 30-day free trial limited to about a hundred contacts and four hundred messages. If a user wishes for enhancement in the limit, he must pay for a subscription.

On top, iContact email marketing software offers a generous fifteen percent discount on prepaid annual subscriptions and a twenty-percent deal for 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations outside of the NC. Besides, all the non-profit organizations located in the state are eligible to avail of free-of-cost service from iContact.

Surprisingly, the provider imposes a cap on image hosting at 5mb irrespective of any account. That said, subscribers could upgrade their account to either 10 or 25mb by paying additional charges. The additional charges vary from 10 to 20 percent of the monthly fee. Below are the current prices of iContact’s plans:

Campaign Creation

When creating an email campaign, you’re provided with two design tools: Message Builder and Message Coder. The Message Builder is a WYSIWYG editor that offers about seven hundred templates. On the other hand, the Message Coder allows you to code a message through HTML. IContact offers you both options to either select from one of the templates or get one developed by someone who knows HTML coding.

While examining more campaign creation features, we discovered that iContact’s image editor is too basic, offering word wrapping solely and resizing. In addition, users can’t copy some page elements, nor can they create buttons.

However, users get an option to wrap text around images. Putting it simply, the editor is handy to use yet often faces unexpected bugs. When considering message composition, one can preview it on various devices, including mobile phones, tablets, and computers.

Sending Emails to Recipients

Sending emails is a vital aspect of every email marketing service, and clients tend to choose a provider that keeps the email sending process as simple as possible.

iContact has kept the contact entry process simple, and clients can perform the task in three ways. They could fill out the contact information form, upload an excel file, or copy/paste an email address in a block. Besides, you’ll be required to certify if all the recipients have agreed to receive an email from you.

While setting up a list, you’ll be able to see an option for setting up an autoresponder email of welcome for fresh subscribers. In addition, iContact offers an opportunity to double opt-in, an automatic message ensuring every new subscriber agrees to receive a newsletter from you. In this way, a list becomes legitimized and thus has fewer chances to face spamming complaints.

Overall, the email sending process of iContact is hassle-free. Not only this, the provider offers an option to run an email through a spam checker, ensuring an email is free from red flags that could move its spam folders. Afterward, a client could opt for a list to which he wishes to send an email. In addition, a user can also post an email to an integrated social media network.

List Management

List management is vital in every email marketing service, and almost every provider tends to make the contact import process hassle-free. iContact has made the process even easier by allowing clients to upload a contacts file or add contacts manually.

In addition, subscribers could also copy/paste a list, making a list populate automatically. However, iContact’s sign-up form is quite limited, offering no option to add an image. But, there are vast fields to fill in contacts’ information.

Tracking Campaigns

Irrefutably, email marketing isn’t about just starting a campaign. It requires one to have detailed knowledge about whether the recipients are reading and responding to an email or moving it to the trash without seeing it.

IContact offers a robust reporting system that provides clients with an in-depth tracking of campaigns’ performance. The tab provides results and information on all campaigns, auto-responded messages, click rate of a campaign, and much more.

In addition, through this reporting system, clients could view bounced and opened emails. Not only this, but clients could also monitor a campaign’s reach on various social media channels, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and many more. Also, there’s a pie chat representation of the ratio between an email opened and clicked.

However, we couldn’t find a button for a refresh. Thus, clients need to refresh an entire page manually. Besides, the lack of Google Analytics integration is something iContact needs to look into.

iContact Email Marketing Service Features

iContact is, without a doubt, a feature-rich email marketing service. With a well-versed set of features, iContact maintains a massive subscriber base. Now, below are the features that make iContact stand apart from the competitors:

• Subscribers’ List Management

With subscribers’ lists being one of the essential gems in email marketing, iContact offers robust list management tools that allow email marketers to manage contacts without hassle. Whether a website or social media channel, clients could freely import subscribers’ lists from various areas.

• One-Touch Message Creation

With robust message creation tools like Message Builder and Message Coder, iContact ensures the creation of enticing emails that catch subscribers’ attention with an instant verve. Besides this, the sleek, elegant, and modern-day interface of iContact assists clients in creating optimized emails.

• Personal Customization

Irrefutably, an email address is a gateway to communicating with the audience. iContact takes subscribers’ analysis a one-step ahead by letting clients analyze subscribers through their preferences at sign-up. Clients can create effective engagement by featuring more personalized and tailored emails through this feature.

• Social Media Integration

With a wide range of social media channel integration, iContact offers the extended reach of campaigns on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Facebook, and more platforms. Adding a share button on emails, iContact enhances a message’s reach.

• Robust Reporting System

With a just-in-time reporting system, iContact ensure that reporting activity never becomes boring for clients. From email tracking to analyzing recipients’ behavior, iContact’s reporting tools understand how to keep clients updated with the most valuable stats.

iContact Marketing Automation

iContact email automation focuses on offering complete email marketing services, and their Marketing Automation software serves as a handy addition to their product range.

They claim to provide robust and affordable marketing through Marketing Automation software. We examined its features to ensure if it’s worth trying. Below are the characteristics of iContact’s Marketing Automation software:

• Enhanced Email Marketing

The Marketing Automation software offers nurturing emails by segmenting them in a timely and customized manner. This way, clients can take a step ahead of others and create a personalized experience for their target audience.

• Handy Workflows

With handy workflows, clients become empowered to target an audience with the most optimized content at just the right time.

The content is created based on audience type, location, and interests. Clients could take the lead among competitors by using iContact email automation to send subscribers more targeted and personalized emails.

• Efficient Reporting and Tracking System

To run a successful email marketing campaign, it’s essential to understand what drives the success or failure of a campaign. iContact Marketing Automation software helps clients assign points to every marketing campaign and activity, providing more optimized stats.

• Social Networking

Social media has become a significant gem of digital marketing in the twenty-first century. In addition, leveraging social networks for email marketing can lead to powerful reach and results. iContact Marketing Automation software claims to offer integration across all major social networks, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and many more.

Customer Support

Customer support is a prime mode of assistance during troubleshooting and issues. iContact email marketing service offers a wide range of helpful customer support systems. Currently, the provider claims to provide subscribers with live chat support, a helpline, resources, and a FAQs section.

We tested the iContact email marketing service chat support system for our editorial review. To our surprise, we were connected to one of the support agents within two to three minutes. The agent was supportive and provided an excellent response to our query about iContact Message Builder. Thus, we rate the iContact email marketing software support system fairly.

iContact Review – Final Thoughts

iContact is a valuable email marketing service. Their service features are befitting to fresh and moderate-level marketers. On top, the user-friendly design, helpful support system, and advanced reporting systems are attention capturing.

However, one should pay attention to the number of subscribers when opting for iContact email marketing software as the fifteen thousand limits could be hit soon to face a price increase. Overall, we rate the iContact service with a 10/10 score in our iContact review.

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