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
Iterable
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Iterable is a growth marketing and user engagement platform. It is designed for B2C markets and supports all types of marketing campaigns (blast, lifecycle, transactional) across all messaging channels (email, web, mobile push notifications, SMS).
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.
Iterable is great for email marketers that are not advanced/technical in emails. They made it very simple to create emails and run campaigns. Everything about Iterable is very easy - from creating emails with drag and drop functionality, segmenting and creating send lists, and even setting up a journey. The only downside with Iterable is that it's mainly meant for larger companies. There are better platforms if you're using email in a very simple way.
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.
It makes designing and deploying great looking emails easy with their drag-and-drop technology and framework.
Iterable allows for great customization and time-saving with the use of their handlebar snippets. This has revolutionized how we are able to monetize our editorial audiences using clear logic that helps us get the most for each of our conversion efforts.
The various ways that you can run and view reports is incredibly helpful, and easy to customize. This means we can find most of the data we want and need across our various departments with their differing goals without having to piecemeal together crazy solutions or waste time reinventing the wheel.
Some of Iterable's user interface in Journey is a little confusing. This is a personal preference.
Their image uploading is very basic - but they are working on releasing a new version soon.
It's difficult to look up a specific contact by only being able to search their email. I wish I could search by name without having to use segmentation
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.
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.
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.
Iterable is there like 99.9% of the time. However, when it goes down, it grinds us to a halt. Most of the time, outages are an hour or less, but if that's at a peak time, it can be a nightmare. That said, when the worst does happen, there are frequent updates and an easy situation tracker that give you an estimate of how much longer you'll have to wait for the issue to be resolved.
The API is super quick. The UI can be a little sluggish depending on what you're loading, but overall Iterable performs great. Iterable appears to do a good job of making processes async so that one action isn't blocking another.
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.
I've never experienced any issues with Iterable. As I and my colleagues have learnt the system and it's features, response to questions and advice from our account manager is always quick. Kevin knows the product well, and with the few tricky questions has hasn't been able to answer he's been quick to get back to us.
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.
The visualization tools in iterable for creating journeys are so much easier to use and adjust than in Marketo, Mailgun, or Mailjet. We have better performance metrics tracking in particular than in Mailjet or Marketo. It is also easier to see where we have made mistakes in emails and to adjust the code visually than in any of the other platforms
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.
We've never run into any issues with volume. Iterable is always able to handle everything we throw at it. We utilize webhooks and emails. Both perform very well. Webhooks actually perform too quickly and downstream systems need to be able to handle the volume throughput that Iterable can send.
This is a hard thing to qualify with the short amount of time we have had on the platform and with the changes that have occurred since onboarding. iOS 15 was released, so we are learning new ways of measuring the ROI.
The ease of integration with other tools has helped us begin to break into more personalized emails for our customers. We have really only scratched the surface and have so much farther to go!
