Getting Started With iContact Email Marketing
iContact is a very popular email marketing / marketing automation platform. iContact has a very intuitive design and layout, making it very easy for businesses to design and deploy their own email campaigns. iContact comes with two different products; their basic email marketing platform, and their Pro Automation version of the product. Here’s all the details on iContact email marketing.
iContact Plans and Pricing Information
iContact has two options available; standard Email Marketing and Pro Automation. Pro Automation is required to access the most robust features, such as marketing automation, conditional content and other more advanced features. Here’s the pricing for the different packages.
iContact Monthly Subscription Rates:
| Subscribers | Email Marketing | Pro Automation |
| 500-2,499 | $14 | $99 |
| 2,500-4,999 | $32 | $99 |
| 5,000-9,999 | $52 | $129 |
| 10,000-14,999 | $79 | $189 |
iContact also has high-volume rates not publicly available on the website.
iContact Email Marketing Features
Here’s a list of the features provided in the basic email marketing plan. If you’re looking for the Pro Automation features, they’re listed after the basic features.
Manage Lists and Recipients
iContact makes it simple to manage lists, contacts and specific segmentations. The contact and list management is incredibly intuitive and easy to use. The one nice feature of iContact is being able to conveniently access all of your segmentations. If you’re constantly using the same segmentations, having this easily accessible is definitely a plus.
Regular Email Campaigns: Template, HTML or Plain Text
iContact allows email marketers to create three different type of campaigns; from template, HTML or plain text. Most likely, you’re going to be using an email campaign from a template. If you’ve got an online version of the newsletter, you might simply scrape the HTML from that page and use it to build your campaign, in which case the HTML email campaigns will come in very handy.
Campaign Builder and Visual Email Builder
The campaign builder and visual email designer makes it insanely easy to build your own email marketing campaigns. The campaign builder will take you through the different steps to planning and deploying the email. The Visual email builder makes it incredibly simple to design the look and feel of your emails.
The visual email editor is fairly intuitive to use. It’s module-based, meaning you’re able to create new modules and drag and drop the different modules to rearrange the content quickly and easily. If you want something more advanced, you can switched over to code view and directly modify the email HTML.
Huge Template Library To Choose From
iContact has a huge selection of prebuilt email templates that you are able to choose from.
The template library contains tons of templates designed for specific industry verticals, templates designed for specific holidays and more. Find email templates for newsletter, special coupons, announcements and other event-specific emails. Everything you need to quickly deploy an email marketing campaign.
Segment Your Lists For Increased Relevancy
iContact allows for advanced list segmentation. You can use multiple if/then statements and set logic on whether all the criteria needs to match, or if all records that match any of the criteria should be included.
Outside of being able to use database fields to segment the lists, you’re also able to use a wide range of other criteria. This includes actions from previous campaigns, social media interactions and web-based signals.
Automatic Social Media Sharing
When you’re ready to launch your campaign, iContact will ask you if you’d also wish to share the link over social media.
If you connect your social media accounts with iContact, you can enable the automatic social sharing. iContact will prompt you to enter a message to go along with the link to the web-based version of the email.
Analytics and Reporting
iContact offers full reporting for all your email marketing campaigns. In addition to email analytics, you can also use iContact to monitor your social media, landing pages and more. The iContact analytics monitors all the important metrics you’d expect an email marketing platform to track. The added analytics for the other products is a bonus. (Note: social media and landing pages are pro features)
iContact Pro Automation Features
Here’s a list of additional features provided in the Pro Automation plan. Keep in mind that the Pro Automation plan also contains all the basic features mentioned above.
Marketing Automation / Drip-Campaigns
The Pro Automation version allows you to create fully automated drip-campaigns.
Drip campaigns take a while to build right, but are incredibly effective. With drip campaigns, you can use conditions and logic to send out a series of emails. With if/then statements, you’re able to use data, campaign interaction and other signals to choose who receives emails and which emails they receive. This way, you’re only emailing the recipients the type of content they want to receive.
Landing Pages
iContact Pro Automation also comes with a landing site builder. This allows you to easily create landing page for your email marketing campaigns.
iContact has tons of different templates to choose from. There’s also a landing page editor that makes it easy to customize the different templates or build your own. iContact will host your landing page for you, or provide an embed code that makes it easy to add the landing page to your website.
Advanced Social Media Marketing
With the basic version of iContact, you’re able to push your email message to your social media. With the automation version of iContact, you’re able to do much more with social media. Monitor different social media feeds directly from the dashboard.
Lead Scoring
This is a feature that is more popular in B2B verticals than it is to B2C. B2C can still leverage this helpful feature. With lead scoring, you’re able to apply scores to the recipients in your marketing databases. This lets you know how interested each recipient is in your product or services.
Get Started With iContact Email Marketing Today!
Ready to get started with iContact? Signup today! iContact gives all marketers a free trial. This allows you to test-drive their platform and make sure it’s the right solution for you. No credit card required. Try iContact risk-free and check out all the platform’s features for yourself. Get started now!
Compare iContact To More Email Marketing Solutions
Want to see how iContact compares with the competition? Check out our email platform comparison chart! Our comparison chart displays valuable information about all the different email marketing platforms. See how iContact compares to the competition as you compare all the different options side-by-side.
Learn More: Compare Email Marketing Platforms