In my last post, I reviewed MailChimp, a marketing automation software that, despite its funny name, packs a serious punch for email marketing. Having reviewed Drip and Constant Contact as well, today I’ll move onto reviewing iContact, another email marketing program. You can keep yourself up-to-date on all the email marketing reviews available by visiting our email marketing series for lawyers page.
Review of iContact for Attorney Marketing Automation
iContact is a relatively new marketing automation software that arrived on the scene in 2003. Based in North Carolina, this software is the brainchild of two University of North Carolina undergrads who met in an entrepreneurship club. With an idea for a product that would help small businesses handle their email marketing, iContact was created and has continued to flourish, recently becoming a subsidiary of Cision, a large public relations and social software company. Since its establishment, iContact has received a number of awards and recognitions.
Below, I’ll analyze how using iContact can benefit your law firm.
iContact’s Features
Here are some of iContact’s features that can help your practice prosper:
Email Templates and Design: Like the other marketing automation software I’ve covered in our series, iContact also allows its users to choose from hundreds of templates, drag and drop, or code their own design. Templates are organized by theme, and they have a number of industry-specific choices.
List Management: iContact allows its users to manage lists in ways that are advantageous to law firms. You’re able to segment your users based on subscriber data, which will allow you to target their specific interests. For example, if you’re a law firm that handles DUIs, you might have a client who loves your emails about safe driving tips but isn’t interested in your emails on topics such as whether a second DUI will affect the outcome of a pending case. In this way, you’re able to provide your readers with the information that they’re most interested in, and you’ll avoid clogging their inbox.
Autoresponder: If you’ve got a series of emails you’d like to send out from your law firm, autoresponder will help you do it. This feature gives you a way to send sequenced messages when you want them to be sent, saving you the hassle of having to send them out yourself. Furthermore, you can get detailed information on the emails you’re sending out with this tool, which will help you tailor your marketing to meet your clients needs.
Spamcheck™: This feature ensures that your emails reach your readers — not their spam folder. This tool works by analyzing your email content against known factors that cause emails to be automatically sent to a spam folder, and will stop your content from being sent if it meets too many criteria that would classify it as spam to an email client.
Social media integration: Just as we saw with other marketing automation software I’ve reviewed, iContact also allows its users to bring their social media accounts into the mix. This feature allows you to schedule messages on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
iContact’s Pricing Structure
Here’s an example of what iContact’s basic and Pro pricing looks like for small businesses:
Advantages for Law Firm Email Marketing
iContact has a variety of features that are useful for email marketing at your law firm. Being able to create tailored lists to cater to your subscribers will provide them with content that’s relevant to what they want to see, which means they’ll look forward to (and read) the emails you send. Tools such as Spamcheck™ give you peace of mind about where your content is going. You can be sure your content — which you’ve put time and effort into — actually reaches your clients. iContact offers tools that help reduce the amount of time you spend doing tedious, menial tasks. With features that keep your focus on producing substantial content, you’ll avoid wasting your energy on sending messages manually, for example.
Being able to integrate your content with social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn gives you an advantage in promoting your content in various ways and reaching more potential clients.
Furthermore, as you can see in the above pricing structure, iContact is competitively priced with other marketing automation software, at either its basic or upgraded levels, depending upon your law firm’s needs.
iContact’s Potential Drawbacks For Law Offices
As I’ve previously mentioned with marketing automation software such as Constant Contact and MailChimp, you may run into choice overload issues when faced with iContact’s numerous template designs, as well as the risk of getting lost in designing a template yourself. Additionally, while they provide a number of industry-specific template options, they don’t have a section dedicated to legal emails. However, users will likely find an appropriate template choice in the “General,” “Basic,” or “Finance and Insurance” template options.
While iContact has great features, the company’s explanation of which features are included in their various packages can be a little confusing. For example, iContact’s site lists segmentation as a feature of their Pro plan on the Pro features page. However, it also seems to be included in their starting setup, too — though that’s not mentioned explicitly on the basic iContact page. (It does, however, show up on the page that compares the features — but even then, we see that only behavioral segmentation is included in the Pro plan.) For those trying to make a quick analysis of what’s what, the site can be a tad unwieldy.
Law firms may want to check with iContact to see exactly which features are offered in each plan before they decide what monthly plan will best meet their requirements.
Summary of iContact for Law Firms
Overall, iContact has the basic tools and beyond that you’ll need to do outstanding email marketing at your law firm. This is definitely a marketing automation software worth trying out.
Learn more about marketing automation by reading our email marketing for lawyers series.
