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
Meta Business Suite
Score7.4 out of 10
N/A
Formerly known as Facebook Business Suite or Facebook for Business, a solution for small businesses used to manage all business activity on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram from one place. It is presented as a one-stop shop where business owners can manage all marketing and advertising activities on Facebook and Instagram. It centralizes tools that help the user to connect with customers on all apps and get better business results.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Meta Business Suite has been highly effective in exposing our brand and our clients' brands to a large audience. It is also one of the most cost-effective ad platforms for B2B marketing campaigns. The issue is filtering out low-quality leads from a B2B lead generation process, as you often receive as many poor-quality leads as high-quality ones.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Segmentation is HUGE. You can segment by almost anything you want, be it demographic, sociological, behavioral... you name it. You can also create targets based on your visitors and their actions. Even custom lists.
They are very good at optimizing your campaigns automatically. This is so important because it will improve your ROI in several multiples otherwise
Managing ads in general works fine, and the data, even though is not exactly as accurate as Analytics, it's pretty decent.
Gives you placements and different ad types so you can get the most out of it.
Pixel and catalog integration are very powerful. You can almost instantly start tracking and catalog fetches your site daily for updates.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The planner enables timings of others' posts to be seen easily, but an easier view of that content (eg by hovering over it) would be preferable
Insights gives detailed information on the performance of posts, but could be more intuitive - and it would be helpful if it flagged particularly good performers or practices.
Sometimes using @ tags is a little slow - and it's not always easy to tell which ones you want without opening another window and testing them yourself.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
We have to continue using this tool in order to be effective on this marketing platform. Though there are several changes I wish we could see, the fact is that we will still need to use this product to provide customers with the information they need.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Meta Business Suite is a solid, centralized tool that covers the core needs of social media planning and publishing. However, some limitations — like inconsistent Reels functionality, clunky previews, and lack of creative asset organization — hold it back from being a seamless, end-to-end solution. There's a lot of potential with continued improvements.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
I've only dealt with the API having issues a couple times, but as you can imagine an outage is not something an advertiser would find acceptable, especially during any ecommerce-heavy time of year. The overall platform could use some help with availability when it comes to authentication, as it struggles with consistency in authentication.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
There are a lot of shortcomings when it comes to performance. There are pages that I do not expect to have much information to load on the page, yet it takes an incredibly long time (10+ secondes). I have not had experience with the integration slowing other platforms down too much.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I've found the Facebook for Business support to be hit or miss. For billing questions they're timely and helpful. For complex questions about specific services I've often received a longer wait and a less helpful experience. I'm often redirected to their docs, which are often not particularly helpful.
Take all of the training offered through Facebook first before attempting to create a page on the platform. Learn all of the capabilities available to you. Learn about the different types of audiences who might be interested in seeing your page. Create short video clips as though they are viewed at a much higher rate than anything else. Offer free giveaways or raffles to further build to your list of prospects and drive traffic to your website
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
Compared to the other tools listed above, Meta Business Suite has good navigation, great interest audience-building tools, okay ad analytics, a great messaging system, and below-average customer support. We chose Meta Business Suite for its massive user base and for its industry-leading targeting functionality (which is a result of that massive user base!).
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
This product is definitely able to run at scale, but it would be wise to have enough eyeballs to oversee it and the tools for keeping the campaigns, adsets, and ads organized could use some improvement. I can also see the UI interfering with usability at greater amounts of scale.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Overall positive ROI has been achieved using this platform. You must have a clear understanding of where your CPL maximums are to remain profitable and either optimize to success or pull the plug on campaigns that are bleeding spend.
This is a great platform to build new audiences or grow existing ones.
Building audience segments via pixel tracking is a huge win for this platform.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
