Acoustic Campaign vs. iContact

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Acoustic Campaign
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) is a scalable, SaaS-based, cross-channel, digital marketing platform providing digital marketers the ability to implement and manage email, mobile, social, and lead management campaign processes.N/A
iContact
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
iContact is an email marketing solution that was acquired by Vocus in 2012. The product is integrated with Facebook and Twitter and is aimed at SMBs with unlimited sending as a key feature.
$14
per month
Pricing
Acoustic CampaigniContact
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
1500 Users
$15.00
per month
2500 Users
$25.00
per month
5000 Users
$45.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Acoustic CampaigniContact
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Acoustic CampaigniContact
Considered Both Products
Acoustic Campaign
Chose Acoustic Campaign
Constant Contact, Icontact and mailchimp and honestly there is no comparison. Silverpop is way a head of the game!
iContact

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Acoustic CampaigniContact
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
7.0
10 Ratings
11% below category average
iContact
6.6
26 Ratings
21% below category average
WYSIWYG email editor4.010 Ratings7.024 Ratings
Dynamic content8.07 Ratings7.021 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content7.58 Ratings5.021 Ratings
Landing pages5.18 Ratings7.014 Ratings
A/B testing7.010 Ratings5.017 Ratings
Mobile optimization6.97 Ratings7.021 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting8.010 Ratings7.025 Ratings
List management8.09 Ratings8.025 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences8.08 Ratings6.015 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
7.4
8 Ratings
4% below category average
iContact
-
Ratings
Lead nurturing automation6.18 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading7.97 Ratings00 Ratings
Data quality management8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks7.54 Ratings00 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
7.0
8 Ratings
9% below category average
iContact
-
Ratings
Calendaring6.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing7.44 Ratings00 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
6.3
5 Ratings
17% below category average
iContact
-
Ratings
Social sharing and campaigns6.54 Ratings00 Ratings
Social profile integration6.25 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
4.5
10 Ratings
50% below category average
iContact
8.0
26 Ratings
2% above category average
Dashboards4.210 Ratings8.026 Ratings
Standard reports4.210 Ratings8.025 Ratings
Custom reports5.18 Ratings8.015 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
5.7
10 Ratings
28% below category average
iContact
-
Ratings
API5.29 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals6.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizability5.95 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com4.38 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM5.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-Send Testing
Comparison of Pre-Send Testing features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
-
Ratings
iContact
7.0
1 Ratings
19% below category average
URL Validation00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Link Tracking00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Image Validation00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Inbox Display00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Email Accessibility Tools00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Spelling and Grammar Check00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Spam Testing00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Email Previews00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Acoustic CampaigniContact
Small Businesses
Vbout
Vbout
Score 9.4 out of 10
ReachMail
ReachMail
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
VerticalResponse
VerticalResponse
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
Emma by Marigold
Emma by Marigold
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Acoustic CampaigniContact
Likelihood to Recommend
4.1
(40 ratings)
8.0
(45 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.5
(30 ratings)
3.4
(19 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(6 ratings)
8.0
(6 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(2 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
5.9
(5 ratings)
9.9
(9 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(2 ratings)
1.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.4
(4 ratings)
8.5
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Acoustic CampaigniContact
Likelihood to Recommend
Acoustic
Silverpop is a powerful and comprehensive tool for digital marketers, and is apprprioate for companies of varying sizes, as well as both B2B and B2C models. It's particularly well-suited for companies with large, accurate customer databases and the ability to track customer actions on their websites to use as marketing automation triggers.
Read full review
iContact
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.
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Pros
Acoustic
  • Automated Messages - we currently have over 70 automated messages going out on any particular day through feeds and API calls that we pass to Silverpop. We rely on these automated messages to communicate to our customers and can rely on Silverpop to always be up and running to get these messages out.
  • Robust query building - We can target customers easily based on a combination of demographic profile data, as well as email and site behavior and purchase behavior, allowing us to finely segment our audience
  • Deep dive reporting - the UI reporting, as well as the available reports to download through the API give us tremendous insight into how our subscribers are responding to email.
Read full review
iContact
  • 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.
Read full review
Cons
Acoustic
  • Data syncing and errors - Silverpop does not do a great job of getting data to sync regularly with our CRM (Salesforce.com). The data had to flow back and forth several times before being added to campaigns and in some instances, it took days to update leads! Also, failed lead syncs get stuck in an alert list but it does not notify you otherwise that a lead failed the sync.
  • Design issues - we use custom HTML to build emails and landing pages, and we were unable to render background images on our campaigns. Also, once you toggle between design and source (code) view to make edits, it often broke the code and threw off the design.
  • Administrator alerts - when sync fails altogether between systems, there is no email alert sent to the system admin (me/my team) so we at times have found that we have gone 18 hours until we stumble across the fact that the system sync has failed.
  • Reporting - it is not very comprehensive and we had difficulty generating the level of reporting that we need to have.
  • Support - there are a few gems in the support team who know what they're doing, but largely calling support is a lesson in frustration.
  • Product bug fixes - in two instances, my open support tickets were identified as product bugs. One related to incorrect cookie tracking which was causing our leads not to be scoring properly. They determined that this wasn't critical enough to build into their product fix road map. This is core to an automation system working properly.
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iContact
  • 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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Likelihood to Renew
Acoustic
SilverPop is a great marketing tool that integrates with Salesforce to provide customers and employees a great buying and selling experience. The software takes some very difficult tasks and makes them easy to accomplish. With proper setup and management, Silverpop gives you the tools to gain insight into the productiveness of campaigns.
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iContact
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.
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Usability
Acoustic
This is a little bit difficult to rate because Silverpop is gradually updating its interface to improve usability all around. I know users are able to do their job with minimal assistance. However, some of the interface is dated, and the Programs interface, while functional, has a bit of a learning curve.
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iContact
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Acoustic
While several of the other reviews have mentioned poor performance in this department, we have only had one situation where the system was down (although it was down for several hours). Silverpop segments its clients on different servers, and I know that the problem we experienced only occurred on our specific server (maybe other servers have had their own problems?) but our service has been reliable otherwise.
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iContact
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.
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Performance
Acoustic
The throttle time for sending emails would vary depending on how many other campaigns were going out that day, which I found inconsistent
Read full review
iContact
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Acoustic
The Salesforce Integration support team is fantastic. I'd give them greater than a 10 if possible. The rest of the support team can be extremely frustrating to work with. Too often they try to blame something obscure and refuse to escalate or look into the issue. And on occasion when you find system glitches they don't seem to care about fixing them
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iContact
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.
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Online Training
Acoustic
The online trainings are very detailed (for the most part) and really walk through the entire system. They are a little dry, but they are usually broken up into segments to allow you to skip to the parts you need.
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iContact
The templates are difficult to customize, and they don't render well in email platforms
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Implementation Rating
Acoustic
Based on recommendations from Silverpop we made some implementation decisions that we later regretted pretty substantially. In hindsight we should have started a pilot implementation earlier so we could learn and then start over. The big issue for us was that Silverpop recommended a non-keyed database, or at least a database that doesn't use email address as primary key. This is resulted in a large number of duplicate email addresses so that the end user is forced to unsubscribe multiple times to stop receiving emails.
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iContact
i wouldn't be using it if i wasn't satisfied. time is money
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Alternatives Considered
Acoustic
We evaluated alternate providers less than a year into our IBM Watson Campaign contract because the system was so clunky to use (and we wanted a system that would include or better integrate with our SMS provider). Bluecore and Klaviyo were the front runners at the time, and we came close to moving forward with Bluecore. The pricing model and overall the cost of Bluecore was much higher than IBM for us though, and the timing of this was right when the IBM to Acoustic changes took place. We decided to give Acoustic a shot and are optimistic it will be enough to keep us on board once all the dust settles, though I find it unlikely we will renew with Acoustic when our contract is up again. My main email specialist is a Klaviyo expert and finds that platform very easy to use in comparison-- it might be a better fit for a team of our size.
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iContact
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.
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Scalability
Acoustic
No answers on this topic
iContact
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.
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Return on Investment
Acoustic
  • we have not experienced any currently but moving to lead automation and lead scoring could change that.
  • i'm not sure how increased employee efficiency would ever be a benefit b/c lead importing and visibility, along with setting up email templates is quite cumbersome.
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iContact
  • 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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ScreenShots

Acoustic Campaign Screenshots

Screenshot of Digital marketingScreenshot of Journey design