iContact vs. Metadata.io

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

Metadata is well suited when you have a really large ad budget (>50k per month at least). This is because the power of metadata lies in the ability to quickly set up and run a large number of experiments (combinations of channel, audience, creative, and conversion assets). To evaluate these variations, all of them need a large number of impressions, clicks, and conversions to be statistically relevant. If your budget is smaller, you will either have a very small number of experiments (not fully utilizing the power of metadata), or your experiments will not have enough clicks to make informed decisions. We had expected a better explanation of this from metadata before signing up.

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

• Best paid ops tool I've ever used (and I've used a lot): we can launch a new LinkedIn & Facebook campaign in minutes.
• Lead gen ops: no more dealing with broken zapier zaps, we are able to automate pushing native lead gen leads directly to our CRM.
• Attribution: see influenced & triggered opportunities/CW deals
• Multivariate testing: Metadata scales audience, ad, creative testing so you learn what performs much faster than manual process

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

• If you don't have a large budget and audience it's hard to meaningfully optimize. If I have 4 ad creatives, to 2 audience groups on FB and LinkedIn, that creates 16 experiments, each of which needs an ample enough budget, say $40/day, that's now $640 per day or $19K per month.
• Limited ability to edit ads after they've been launched. You usually have to stop the ad, clone it, and launch a new campaign.
• Can't add new ads to existing campaigns which limits the ability to optimize. If I start an MD campaign with 4 ads, and in a few weeks we see that one is working well and the other 2 are not performing, I can pause those (or it can autopause by rules), but I can't add 2 more new creatives to the mix against the high performer. I'd have to either stop the high performer, and recreate it in a new campaign (losing likes and comments), OR - leave the high performer in the first campaign, and create. a second campaign with the new ones, which will only optimize against each other.
• Limited to a single conversion event on a landing page. I'm not able to choose either a Demo Request OR a Sign-Up conversion, I can only choose one.
• Google search ads are doable but aren't necessarily more feature-rich or easy-to use than native, so there's no value added to doing it through Metadata in my opinion aside from unifying ad reporting.

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.

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.

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

Metadata's customer support is a difference-maker! They really do care how well your campaigns perform and will help you improve them.

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

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.

We chose [Metadata.io] because it was a smaller company and could get more personalized attention. The price was better and they seemed more eager to support us. The feature set was what we were looking for and not more - it was exactly as robust as we needed it to be. Didn't want to pay for features we weren't going to use.

Incentivized

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 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

• Huge decrease in CPLs, CPMQL and Cost Per Opportunity
• Big improvement in MQL to SQL rates
• 90%+ of our leads from paid social now have valid business emails, before it was like 30%
• Saving us hundreds of hours over the course of the next year doing daily manual optimization and budget management tasks for us so we can focus on strategy and testing new things

Incentivized