Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs iContact: Which is a better fit?

Rilwan: Hi, my name is Rilwan. I'm a product designer for ATIV Media Ltd. And on a scale of one to five, I give Salesforce Marketing Cloud, I give them a four out of a five times. So before we started using Salesforce, we were using Google Analytics. We still use Google Analytics, but based on the kind of business we do, we needed to add more in-depth analysis of how our customers actually relates with the platform from the moment they sign up to how they consume content. So using Salesforce, we're able to get in-depth analysis. So that was why we actually made a switch. And right now, we focus mainly on using Salesforce. Sometimes we still use Google Analytics, but the bulk of the CRM for the platform is mainly done on Salesforce. So when you're dealing with platform that's got tens and thousands of platform users, the moment there's an issue, even if it's just 1% that affects thousands of people, so you needed something that actually made sure everything was okay. Using Salesforce, we could get in-depth analysis. We could get updated leads. We can actually have an idea, "Okay, this is how these people are actually interacting with the platform. This is how long they're spending time on this section of the platform," because at the end of the day, we just want them to get to the content without adding to waste time on what they don't need to waste time on. So with Salesforce, unlike other platforms that we were using before, we could actually get a more detailed analysis, so we're able to get more detailed analysis compared to other competitions here. The reason why I gave it 4.5 is actually linked to this, one of the reasons why it's a 4.5 is mainly based on the UI and the UX of the websites. It feels a little bit outdated, so trying to integrate it sometimes can be a little bit stressful compared to using Google Analytics where it's well streamlined. That's one of the issues. But apart from the UX, everything else, once you incorporate it into the platform, once you check up your tutorials and everything is in place, the platform functions well. It does everything you need it to do. The one thing with Salesforce is the fact that it's a little bit pricey, so you need to actually figure out, is this something you actually need? Is it something your business actually needs? If you're spending that much money, what would be the return? So that's something if you've actually asked yourself these questions and you feel like, "Okay, we have the funds to actually get this software to implement into our business, and this can actually scale our business from where we're trying to get to." If you can answer these questions, then I would actually recommend using Salesforce because you would not be disappointed. And before you know what's up, your business is actually... You start seeing differences once you integrate the platform into your business.

Mary G.: Hi, my name's Mary. I'm a Director of Education. I am giving a five star review for iContact and for more details, click below. Our past product was Mailchimp and it just wasn't customizable enough for what we needed. It didn't give us as many options to change the layout, or make columns, or individualize the emails as much as we really wanted for our brand. We chose iContact primarily because of how customizable it is. You have the option to change, not only fonts and colors, but the actual layout of the emails. You can make columns, you can put in blocks and dividers, and it's very customizable to match your brand. The other reason we chose it was we were looking for a platform that would have minimal junk pickup, I guess I would call it. Our members from some of our platforms we have tried in the past, our emails ended up in junk automatically, just because they were coming from that brand and iContact seems to have a better reputation with the junk sorters in emails. iContact was super are easy to get started with. Implementation was a breeze. We didn't even need their customer support to get going, really. It's very user intuitive. Non-designers can make emails look beautiful in iContact and uploading a member list is literally at a of a button. I highly recommend pursuing iContact. I haven't found a single fault with their program. It's user-friendly. It makes beautiful emails and honestly the price point is pretty fair as well.