iContact Versus Constant Contact
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- The Good
- Easy-to-use dashboard interface
- Use social media to build list of email contacts
- Create an unsubscribe list and do-not-contact list
- Unlimited number of emails
- The Bad
- Limited auto-responder functionality
- Small image storage at 5MB
- No Google Analytics
- Hard to cancel accounts
iContact is a well-designed alternative to standard email marketing campaign tools. It offers ease of use and is great at delivering your messages. It is an email marketing software with an appealing selection of design tools and campaign management features. It is an easy-to-use application that offers businesses the features they need to grow their customer lists and successfully reach their customers’ inboxes. On the downside, there is no feature for importing contact from services such as Gmail or third-party address books
- The Good
- Built-in templates
- Affordable
- Import contacts from Gmail and Outlook
- Mobile app available
- The Bad
- Dashboard sluggish
- Default storage limited
- Auto-responder capabilities limited
- Only allowed one sign-up form per account
Constant Contact is a good choice if you’re inexperienced with email marketing. It offers customers some of the most impressive instructional resources in the industry. The built-in templates make email construction simple and painless. The program offers one of the largest libraries of free templates, with over 400 available.
- Price
- 500 subscribers
- $14.00/month
- 2,500 subscribers
- $32.00/month
- 5,000 subscribers
- $52.00/month
- 10,000 subscribers
- $79.00/month
Prices vary depending on the number of subscribers you have on your list and the plan you choose. If you’re interested in prices for Premier expert services, you’ll have to contact the company for a quote on that cost. The prices listed for iContact are competitive with those of their competitors. Basing pricing on number of emails sent seems to be the standard for the industry.
Free Trial: iContact offers a a 30-day free trial so you can try out its features.
- Price
- 500 subscribers
- $15.00/month
- 2,500 subscribers
- $35.00/month
- 10,000 subscribers
- $85.00/month
- 50,000 subscribers
- $295.00/month
The cost for Constant Contact is dependent upon the size of your subscriber bases. The pricing is contact-based instead of email based as other services. This allows you unlimited email sends to all the email addresses in your contact lists. If you plan to send more than one email to the same list of contacts per month, then contact-based pricing may prove advantageous to you.
Free trial: Constant Contact does offer a free trial period of 60 days. During this trial, you’re allowed an unlimited amount of emails that you can send to up to 100 contacts.
- Email Features
- Image library offers 5MB of storage
- Mobile app for iOS and Android products
- Choices of delivery schedules
- Online surveys
- Social media scheduling
- Features list management options
iContact offers its users hundreds of email templates that are mobile friendly. You can personalize these with text, themes using drag-and-drop and brand colors, all without HTML coding know-how required. iContact offers a wide range of features across the spectrum of its pricing ranges. iContact features integrated social media features designed specifically for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It also integrates well with other programs like Salesforce.
- Email Features
- Event templates and by industry
- Email newsletters templates
- Seasonal templates
- Multilingual templates
One of Constant Contact’s strongest features is the variety and quality of its email templates. It offers templates for just about any scenario imaginable. Constant Contact offers the tools you need to easily stay in touch with your subscribers. You can set up your own customized email and newsletter schedule to send to your readers. You can also get notification when readers open your email. Constant Contact even offers you statistics on social media activity, allowing you to track your marketing efforts on Facebook, Twitter and other social sites.
- Contacts Features
- Customized templates for emails and newsletters
- Signup forms on website or Facebook pages
- Automatic responses to basic queries
- Send birthday wishes to subscribers
iContact’s design allows it to interface easily with the tools you need to edit text or images in a template. There’s a “help” button if you hit a snag. iContact makes importing your contacts easy. You can easily upload a file of contacts and add them individually, or you can copy and paste a list of contacts. The software will fill in the information automatically in the fields for you.
- Contacts Features
- Reports on unsubscribers
- Manually delete unsubscribers
- Manually add subscribers
Constant Contact gives you the option of importing files of contact lists or inputting them individually. To help your list grow, you can create sign-up forms through Constant Contact and can add any new subscribers to your list. The program notes those who unsubscribe so they no longer receive emails, while they remain on the contact lists.
- Extras
- Individual reports for each message
- Reports number of subscribers who opened emails
- Tracks shares emails received on social media
- Reports number of click-throughs
- Include social sharing buttons in emails
- Auto-responder greets new subscribers
Perhaps one of the best features of iContact is the tracking service it provides. iContact tracks your emails in real time and provides data on its interface. iContact’s goal is to serve smaller businesses, making it possible for you to send, track and manage emails while your list of subscribers is growing.
- Extras
- General business promotional themes
- Informational messages
- Designs for retail businesses
- Arts and entertainment venues
Constant Contact offers its EventSpot service for those who want to use email marketing to promote their special events such as nonprofit functions, charity events, educational seminars, sports competitions or arts and entertainment shows. Constant Contact provides over 400 templates for you to choose from when designing emails from scratch. You can search through the template library, refining your search according to different themes.
- Customer Service
- Telephone, email and chat support
Telephone and chat support is only available Monday through Friday. While the overall customer support services rate highly among users, the lack of live support during the weekend is an often-cited negative. iContact’s customer services garner positive marks in customer reviews available online. The company offers tutorials and guides, webinars through their website, a help portal and a blog for their customers.
- Customer Service
- Phone, email and live chat
Constant Contact also offers a toll-free number for support, although it is only available during the week from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., and from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekends. If you’re more an online chat or email type, these customer support venues are available.
For on-site help, there are information icons next to options and there are fields to explain what they are. There is an extensive collection of articles to explain just about every feature.
iContact: User Reviews
Constant Contact: User Reviews
iContact: Comments
Constant Contact: Comments
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It isn’t a difficult process to send an email. However, it takes a bit more finesse to create, send and then track the different types of targeted emails your business needs to drive customers to action and to generate real sales. Because iContact is web-based software, it is an attractive option for small businesses as well as large senders. It is an easy-to-use method for businesses to manage all aspects of their newsletter and email marketing programs.
How Does iContact Work?
iContact is a powerful software platform for email marketing. It is a great fit for most businesses, educational institutions and nonprofits. The easy-to-understand technology lets users with a variety of technical skill levels comfortably use the software to create persuasive email messages.
iContact pricing is reasonable when compared to comparable services. It offers a wide range of prices, from very low to high-end that are customizable to meet the volume of email traffic your business is generating. The amount of analytical data the service provides is arguably in the top ranks for email marketing services.
With the emphasis placed on social media interfacing in today’s email marketing services, iContact’s excellent social media marketing tools are top notch. The tools allow for integration right into the campaign design process.
You can set your system to automatically post to your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn accounts. Enabling this feature in iContact allows your customers to easily share your campaigns with friends and across social networks. You can then use your iContact social media tracking tools to record how many people are interacting with your campaigns as word of your business spreads.
What Makes iContact Stand Out?
iContact lets users create emails and newsletter using either templates or HTML. It offers a variety of advanced solutions that can help in growing any business or nonprofit. Most email service programs offer tools to help keep growing email lists under control, but iContact’s SpamCheck™ tools reviews each message to make certain it will reach its target destination.
iContact offers a variety of reports that can help users to better understand how their email lists are performing. They can review reports generated automatically by iContact using data it collects from your business’s ongoing marketing campaigns.
With iContact Pro, any size business can reimagine the way they do marketing automation. Users of iContact Pro can schedule triggered messages which have been uniquely tailored to target the needs of each contact.
iContact’s drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to use. If your business engages in a high volume of email sending, you can take advantage of iContact’s capability to easily manage subscribers numbering 5 million or more.
Common Reviews of iContact
One of the more frequently cited positives mentioned in review of iContact is its ability to make creating and tracking email campaigns an easy undertaking. The customer support provided by iContact is also frequently mentioned as a positive aspect of the product.
Many brag on iContact’s ability to sort contacts into different groups. This feature helps in targeting specific audiences with customized messaging. The reports generated from tracking email are another often mentioned plus to this software. The ability to track which customers opened the emails, how many and who has forwarded the email, and data showing who did not open the email is a great asset to any business.
iContact is a capable software package for your business if you want to know if your targeted audiences value your messages. An additional bonus is the ability to resend a previous message, negating the need to recreate a message from scratch.
There have been negative comments made in reviews about the inability of customers to cancel the service. This problem seems validated by reports filed with the Better Business Bureau that point to difficulties in cancellation. All of these complaints, however, are now resolved.
Others have complained that the image editor doesn’t offer a selection of images, either free or through a subscription service. Other describe the editor as “rudimentary.” However, iContact allows importing of images from other programs such as Photoshop.
Is iContact for me?
If you are looking for a powerful tool to tackle the email marketing aspects of your business, iContact is certainly worth a serious look. Its easy-to-use format makes it perfect for small businesses or nonprofits that lack an in-house information technology department. There is an abundance of support options available on the website and through contact with customer service if needed.
As a small to medium business or nonprofit, you should be able to use the internet to your advantage. Email marketing campaign services is just one of the tools that can help your business move to the next level.
iContact is one of the better services available. By offering ease of use, reliable message deliverability and SalesForce integration as part of its package, it ranks as one of the better choices out there for any business looking to grow.
Constant Contact is one of the top-rated email marketing solutions and it is a ranking that is well deserved. The attention to detail that Constant Contact offers sets it above most of its competitors. Constant Contact provides email marketing software and services to a client base of over half a million users.
Its option for event registration and its contact list management options are some of the best features available. Constant Contact offers unique tools and a truly helpful support system that help shorten the learning curve for this software system.
Constant Contact provides detailed reports on rate of emails opened and forwarded, number of clicks and bounces. It creates reports that detail number of unsubscribes as well as the top performing links. There’s also a spam report.
Constant Contact’s reports are also integrated with Google Analytics. This allows for monitoring of readers’ traffic as a result of your email campaign.
How Does Constant Contact Work?
Constant Contact is an easy-to-use application but some of the tools may present some difficulties. Trying to import old email campaign materials into the software to edit and refresh for another release can be a bit tricky. But there are help options available to deal with these sticking points.
Some of the most helpful tools are the image-editing ones. You get the option to edit the saturation of an image or change the contrast. You can add a frame or not. These features eliminate the need to pay for other software to edit images.
What Makes Constant Contact Stand Out?
One of Constant Contact’s exceptional features is its event hosting tools. Constant Contact makes managing everything you need for the event easy, quick and organized. The email marketing service will create a separate email list of registrants for you. This allows you to contact them whenever necessary.
You can also include a link to accept PayPal payments for your event through Constant Contact.
As one of the most versatile email marketing services available, Constant Contact extends past its competitors by embracing surveys, deals, event marketing and social media opportunities.
Common Reviews of Constant Contact
Constant Contact enjoys descriptive terms such as “solid tool” and is frequently recommended for small businesses new to the email marketing world. Constant Contact is a good starting tool.
Email marketers and businesses that have already amassed an email contact list find Constant Contact to be a great option for their needs. Its ability to pull contact lists together and compile them into one organized, customized list is one of its favorite offerings.
Reviewers who use online customer management services like Salesforce tout Constant Contact as one of the best collections of email marketing management tools on the market. You can simply upload a spreadsheet or text file for automatic processing through Constant Contact’s management interface.
Constant Contact users sing the praises of the company’s customer support staff in online review forums. The main options praised as positives are the ease of navigation through the system and the easy-to-use organizing and sorting tools to manage contact lists.
In many reviews, the ready availability of helpful resources is frequently cited as a major positive for Constant Contact. The free workshops are a popular feature that allows users to also make connections with local consultants and advisers.
Is Constant Contact for Me?
Constant Contact is a great fit for companies or individuals who are looking for additional features that many of the other email marketing services don’t offer. Features such as great templates, multilingual templates, email archiving and premium image hosting are an extra plus offered by Constant Contact users.
Constant Contact has more of a “professional” feel to its templates and finished creations than many of its competitors. Constant Contact is a great choice for anyone planning newsletter or email marketing campaigns.
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