Act-On vs iContact

• Act-On's customer service is exceptional, they are quick and thorough when you are needing help. For example, we could not figure out how to automate a birthday date for our birthday campaign and the representative was able to walk through the process with myself and another team member. This is a strength of Act-On because many other companies do not have customer services that will speak with you, they direct you to blogs or informational sessions.
• The landing pages that Act-On has created for use on the web is exceptional. The formatting is very user-friendly and the templates are great to navigate. The landing pages allow you to make the page fit whatever campaign or reason you are in need of. This is a strength of Act-On because the landing pages resolve the issue of having to create actual web pages.
• The spam feature of Act-On's emails is a great add on. This feature allows you to test how the spam alerts are triggered in your email and how you can fix it. This has helped many emails be developed in a way so that they reach many more people than they would have without this feature. many other programs do not have this feature.

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• Contact management. iContact is really great for entering all your contact. You are able to put them onto different lists, and let them choose which lists they would like to be a part of as well. There are many data fields provided to fill in information.
• Emailing. We use the email feature at least once a month. They are always improving and adding new features, which is very helpful in presenting content in a new and exciting way to our readers. There are many options with remade templates and themes, or you can add your own.
• Insights. It is really helpful being able to have the data to see what is working and what isn't. It is nice to be able to go back and see how things went in the past compared to now. Opens, clicks, shares, etc.

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• Landing Page Design. The drag and drop builder is OK. But it feels very limited for someone who has a good knowledge of HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc. Inevitably, there will be something that you simply can't do in Act-On that you could do in a standard web design environment.
• No Server Side Scripts. There isn't any way to retrieve data in your lists and add it to a landing page. Basically, you can't use any data stored in an Act-On list and add it to a landing page.
• It's limited. There is simply some data you can't pull from Act-On and into a 3rd Party Reporting app.

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• We also would like to send transactional messages which don't require an opt-out, this is a challenge with iContact. (May be a feature with pro?)
• The regular version of iContact doesn't support event management or logic flows for automated messaging.
• Custom form fields have limited field type options (can't build a drop-down).

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• Increased employee efficiency for sure, I am able to churn out so many more emails than if I did it manually.
• Better customer service - we honor opt-outs and unsubscribes automatically, ensuring that our prospects do not receive any more emails than they want.
• ROI - the ability to schedule emails and plan ahead helps us stay on top of our marketing calendar and produce more marketing messages, leading to more sales. Well worth the investment.

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• We have a template for webinars that we send every month. We just edit it and send. This couldn't be easier (once you know where to find it).
• We like the breakdown of statistics in the dashboard. They're easy to read.
• iContact isn't a comprehensive solution, so it is only one of a few products we use for marketing.

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