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
Marketo Sales Connect
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Marketo Sales Connect (ToutApp) is a sales email tracking tool that includes tracking, templates, click-to-call, and analytics. It also includes a Calendar to streamline bookings. It is presented as a "swiss-army knife" for sales development reps, account executives, sales ops, sales managers, marketing teams, and customer success teams. Its template library can be used as a content repository, to upload Powerpoints, case studies, etc. The recommended templates feature allows users to…
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.
We are solving our small sales team problem. I am the only SDR in the company and Tout helps me manage, send and follow up with many of my leads automatically. Tout is more focused on “success or failure” of emails than Yesware is. They are going in different directions – as you can see that they’ll probably have some features from one another.
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.
Track leads opening emails and clicking links. We could easily see if a lead forwarded an email to a large group of people for instance, because the stats would show it.
Connect our email and CRM to log email activities onto Leads and Contacts.
Keep users inside of our email system instead of copying and pasting email templates from multiple places.
Reporting is clunky and challenging to use at times. They were recently purchased by Marketo, so I'm hopeful that Marketo will be able to address some of these concerns.
The ToutApp interface is not the most intuitive and does not provide a deeper understanding/analysis of the data.
The ToutApp integration with Outlook has created intermittent problems in usability/access.
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.
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.
It was tough to reach their support team. On average, it would take over 24 hours to get a response. Agents would ask us to perform repetitive tasks and take lots of screenshots instead of looking at our system and helping us fix issues.
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.
Marketo Sales Connect (ToutApp) was nowhere near as dynamic as the other listed tools that I mentioned. There was not any Sequence or Cadence you could follow. It was missing dynamic fields. A bit cumbersome. The other tools had much prettier interfaces too.
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.
