Apollo.io vs. iContact

I would place it as a 7, though it wouldn't really rate that way for any one person; it is a natural to start building an outbound business around, but one that you are likely to outgrow once you have a fair amount of data on your ideal customer profile and need higher quality pipeline data.

Incentivized

I would only recommend it if someone was a small business. I think they are the best suited for companies who will send out a coupon or offer here and there. The most recent updates made it more complicated to use for more complicated processes. It is easy to train someone on the program, and so quick to learn. But I would also only stick to the simpler things. I also think the colorful templates are great, and show great creativity. But again, it is hard to justify recommending the program when it isn't WYSIWYG.

Incentivized

• Firstly, finding the details of the potential customers that is there name, designation email and phone number since these are the most important cases most of the times I can get this data in Apollo.io
• I can pull the bulk data of the targeted organization, or I can pull the emails based on the location and job titles
• Apart from the email capture, the thing which helpful is that the email sequence can find emails and send emails in Apollo.io itself and also the report and the dashboard are so clean
• Friendly UI and UX Apollo.io was the first tool which I used. Since then I'm still using Apollo.io for easy understanding

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• There are certain features about prospecting that require updates. For example, if people switch organisations, it should be automatically requesting the new email or new contact data for a particular contact in order to be updated in the system
• The lead databases that are created if their new addition should automatically be updated in the list that I created with Apollo.io

Incentivized

• 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).

Incentivized

at this moment Apollo.io seems to be the perfect tool that has mastered all aspects of outbound marketing and CRM to handle and manage sales cycle.

Incentivized

iContact has been a quick and easy way to send any announcements and news directly to email and social media subscribers. Its tracking and reporting capabilities turn a simple email into a marketing campaign that can be used as a tool to efficiently gauge reader response and customer satisfaction, and ultimately to reach potential customers. The consistency and excellent customer service is what makes this program a pleasant experience.

Apollo.io does provide campaign setup help and made my SDRs team's life easier, with the use of lead enrichment, lead distribution, I can manage my team from a single dashboard. It also comes with CRM that helps me navigate the progress on leads and what my SDRs progress.

Incentivized

I rate iContact as an easy to use program due to its user friendly dashboard and user interface. Most companies of small to medium size do not have a dedicated marketer, therefore it is someone multitasking who may or may not have this kind of experience. iContact makes it relatively simple and can actually expand one's knowledge in the area of business promotion.

Incentivized

iContact is regularly up and running. Only once has it been unavailable for maintenance, which is to be expected and even desired for optimal performance when needed.

The team wants to solve probelms, but we are finding that they don't know how to solve the more technical issues quickly. I suspect that they don't have a mature process for escalations, and they don't have a usable knowledge base article repository. They seems to push emails around to let us know that people are working on the issues to find solutions, but this takes weeks and oftentimes still leaves us without a resolution.

Incentivized

They have always been responsive to any issues or concerns that have arisen with our account. Our customer account manager participates in our monthly county-wide communicators meetings via telephone to ensure that we are getting the most from the service. He also analyzes our lists to help us weed out inactive contacts.

Incentivized

The templates are difficult to customize, and they don't render well in email platforms

i wouldn't be using it if i wasn't satisfied. time is money

All of these platforms are good and offer valuable tools, but where Apollo.io is different is how this one platform does the job of several different ones. It is nice not having to use multiple platforms to get things done and makes integration and analytics issues occur less often. It is user friendly and constantly working to improve.

Incentivized

I didn't have a say in the decision because I wasn't with the company at the time. I listed HubSpot here because I know we used it in conjunction with iContact for email automation, but HubSpot Email was only recently built-out to the point where it is today. Now, iContact and HubSpot are no longer integrated.

iContact stays the same with the number of users added or taken away. It certainly remains reliable despite increased usage, and so, can be considered scaleable in that aspect.

• It provides more opportunities to gather more clients.
• It gives more results and better results in targeting our sales.
• It is a more effective way to provide information to a large number of potential clients about the events/ projects the company is offering.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized