iContact Email Marketing Review (2024): Are The Premium Advisors Worth It?

It’s tough for email marketing companies to separate themselves from the pack. iContact offers a strong set of features at a highly competitive price, but so do several other services. What does iContact provide that you may not find with other email marketing services?

Article Overview

• Pros & Cons
• Key Features
• iContact Price (With Promo Code)
• Customer Feedback
• What Is Split A/B Testing? (Video)
• Should I Get iContact?

iContact

8.6

Customer Service & Reputation 8.5

Pricing 8.7

Template Selection 8.0

Social Media Marketing 8.7

Autoresponsers 8.5

List Segmentation 9.0

Spam Score 8.5

Pros

• Good strategic advising support with premier level
• Competitive pricing
• Unlimited users with every account
• Offers flexible options for subscriber sign-up forms
• Seamless integration with Salesforce for stronger CRM programs
• List segmentation by demographics, interests, and subscriber behaviors
• Free Getty Images photo stock library
• Supports 5mb for online image storage
• Comprehensive contact manager with bounceback handling & history reports
• 97% delivery success rate

Cons

• No weekend customer support
• Could have more varied email templates
• RSS to email is limited and hard to use
• Integration of software/apps is fairly limited (no Google Analytics integration)

Visit iContact

15 Key Features

1. Message Builder – easy drag and drop features in WYSIWYG templates
2. Message Coder – for users who like to get their hands dirty with HTML code
3. Subscriber and list management
4. List segmentation
5. Social media sharing on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
6. Multiple message and social media analytics and real-time tracking tools
7. Autoresponders
8. Split A/B testing
9. Advanced segmentation
10. Spam checking
11. HTML editor for email newsletter templates
12. Data tracking, see who opens, clicks and unsubscribes from your emails
13. Developer portal and API
14. iPhone and Android mobile apps
15. No credit card required for free trial

5 Premier Services

Here’s where iContact sets itself apart from the pack. iContact’s premier services include all of their basic features plus some additional bells and whistles targeted for larger volume and more advanced needs.

1. Strategic Advisors: A dedicated strategic advisor researches your competitors and industry, sets you up with a marketing plan and educational resources, and digs deep into your message analytics to boost your business’s ROI.
2. High-Volume Sending Services: iContact gives you what you need to reach a broader audience, including a reliable sending infrastructure, support from a strategic advisor, comprehensive tracking, custom reports, advanced segmentation and more.
3. Custom Design Services: iContact designers assist your design needs. You get access to footers, sign-up forms, subscription pages and more. Quick message services get iContact professionals to send emails for you whenever you are running short on time.
4. Deliverability Services: iContact’s specialists will evaluate your previous email campaigns to improve their performance. They help you manage your large email lists, effectively targeting for optimal inbox placement and open rates.
5. Social Media & Content Marketing Consulting: iContact’s content writing team produces a fresh stream of engaging, brand-specific content for any of your platforms.

It’s unclear, however, how much more you’ll pay for these services since you’re required to contact customer service for pricing.

Pricing

iContact offers two email marketing platforms — their basic services and XE services — which include advanced marketing automation and email personalization as well as advanced e-commerce features. 

Their fees are very competitive compared to other providers. Its pricing is based on the number of contacts per month, and you can pay monthly — no long-term contract is required. You receive a 15% discount on monthly pricing if you purchase the annual plan. It also provides a 20% discount for nonprofit 501 (c)(3) organizations (free account for North Carolina based nonprofits since that’s where the company is based).

Compare iContact pricing plans

Customer Reviews

Here’s a sampling of user reviews we found for iContact.

Positive Reviews

A sleek system that is easy to use and also easily accessible. In addition, what I like the best is that I can use a previous email as a template which makes the process a lot faster and time-saving. It is very impactful on the communication for the business. It…offers plenty of flexibility to send rapid messages. In addition, this program exceeded the expectations of many of my coworkers. – Administrator in Higher Education, G2 Crowd 2/25/2019

Negative Reviews

Though I can definitely track some activity and leverage contact data for other business purposes, there aren’t as many built-in analytics features as I’d like. For the price, I’d expect to see a little bit more from iContact so that I can have a more complete understanding of how are emails are doing and the improvements we can make.- Mason L., G2 Crowd 3/7/2019

What’s Split A/B All About?

If you’re wondering what split A/B testing involves, iContact demonstrates the basics for you. If you want to learn more, Amazon’s Developer Console has a great nuts and bolts explanation of just how A/B testing works.

Is iContact The Email Marketing Service For Me?

What sets iContact apart is their premier services. Very few services offer personal advisors who are dedicated not only to helping create a marketing plan but are also committed to troubleshooting problems.

iContact was among Deloitte’s Fast 500 up-and-coming companies a decade ago, but they don’t seem to be growing at the same rate these days. But bigger isn’t always better. It’s worth checking out how iContact compares in our email marketing providers comparison.

Do you think it’s worth paying more for a professional email advisor? Let us know in the comments!