iContact Review
iContact can provide you with a quick and easy way to publish email newsletters, and also provides useful tracking and reporting features which can help you to analyze results and improve your email marketing campaigns into the future. Email marketing is an essential aspect of any online business, as it can help you to secure repeat sales and encourage visitors back to your website to complete purchases with you, rather than your competitors.
iContact Top Features and Services
iContact provides one of the most comprehensive and user friendly email marketing services currently available, and offers a number of features which make it easy to create and manage robust, effective email campaigns. The three step process is very straightforward and suitable for both experienced webmasters and also beginners, and the interface panel is easy to navigate around. The first step to setting up a new email marketing campaign is to click on the ‘Create’ tab, and then you can choose what format you would like (there are a number of pre-built templates to make this stage even easier). Once you have finished designing your campaign then all your need to do is preview and save a draft of your work, and then select your email list and send. This is a very quick and easy process and there are a number of additional features such as autoresponders, customer survey options, blogging and RSS feed tools that can further enhance your email campaign:
• Autoresponders – this feature allows you to schedule a number of automatic messages, which is a very quick and easy way for you to stay in constant contact with a large number of customers and visitors to your website and maximize your brand name exposure.
• Customer Surveys – not only are email campaigns good for marketing purposes, but they are also useful ways to find out more from your customers, and this can help you to quickly and easily gather essential feedback regarding your products and services. This will enable you to understand whether or not you are targeting the right market and also if there are any key issues with your online store that may be putting buyers off in the future (such as not enough payment options, slow download speeds etc.)
• Reporting – iContact offers customers a number of reporting features including conversion tracking and Google Analytics integration.
• SpamCheck – Spam blockers can cost you a lot of wasted time and effort, so the great SpamCheck feature from iContact can help you to reduce Spam wastage by reviewing your email marketing campaign to identify any issues with the subject line or email content that might trigger your recipients Spam filters, so that you can amend any problems before you send the campaign out.
• Email Filters – this useful feature can help you to break down your mailing lists into specific demographics and allow you to direct personalized campaigns to certain recipients without having to set up new, separate lists. For example if you just want to send out a campaign to those contacts aged 35 years and over then you can use the email filters to quickly create a new list and start issuing your emails straight away.
Help and Support
iContact provides extensive help features, from the start up wizard which guides you step by step through setting up an account, through to the live webinars and active online community, which provide a whole host of information about the services and features. Phone, email and live chat services are also available if you have any more questions you want to ask.