Customer.io vs. iContact Pro Select

This tool is well-suited for companies looking to run email marketing campaigns or send out newsletters regularly to their users/customers. The workflow setup is especially useful for companies who want to send specific emails based on user behavior - i.e. they've not logged in recently, have bought a specific product, haven't opened any emails, etc. This could also be useful for freelancers like me since you can create different workspaces within Customer.io. I have configured it this way to handle email marketing for a few of my clients, and the software keeps everything organized and separate. This might not be the best tool for small businesses, considering the price. It may be better to start out with a cheaper email marketing tool, and then if/when necessary, scale-up with a tool like Customer.io.

If you use PRWeb already and are looking for a tool that integrates well with that program and offers additional functionality with email and social media then Vocus is great. If you don't use PRWeb or prefer an email tool with more functionality and ease of use, Vocus is not the best choice.

• Managing users, attributes and events. You are easily able to modify any user, based on their ID, and add or remove attributes, assign events to them. That makes it very easy to segment later and to assign them to several campaigns based on behavior. Just a warning: this integration isn't so easy (at least it wasn't for us).
• Creating workflows of campaigns is very easy. You can quickly create behavioral campaigns based on attributes, segments and add elements to the workflow. You can send an email, then wait, then send another, then exit the campaign if they converted, etc. The workflow is easy to configure and very powerful for automation.
• We don't use many email templates (we make them in MJML) but it's very easy to add senders, to change templates and in general to test designs.
• Deliverability works very well, at least for us. It sends emails pretty fast and without issues.
• Exporting is very quick and easy. Importing wasn't a feature until recently, but it works well too.
• Seeing activity it's also useful. In general, logs are awesome (be it of a customer, of activity on the site, email sends, etc.).
• We don't use environments, but it might be very useful for a bigger company.

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• Social Media Listening e.g.: Recommendations, Identify influencers for a selected topic, based on actual influence, or number of reposts and/or references, rather than the number of followers.
• Campaign Management - Landing Page and Web Form Templates
• Email Marketing -Delivery Tracking and Spam Analysis

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• I may be missing it in the UI, but a place to see the list of emails who qualify for a certain email.
• One easy to view chart of all our automated/lifecycle emails to see what a given user would see over their customer journey. (This is really just a feature request/idea - the product itself is really awesome.)

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• Vocus can do a better job communicating with us. The representative made promises to us that I have not seen be fulfilled such as getting us national media hits through connections that he had.

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Now that we have had the opportunity to try an enterprise wide marketing solution, I think we should look at other tools and programs that have greater flexibility and ease of use. If the tool does not happen to have PR Web then so be it. We may not see the cost savings with PR announcements but if the other tools have increased email functionality then we can part with more money on the PR side like we have in the past

It is really difficult to leverage all the neat features without a developer. I actually think the base software could be really great for a small business if the price is right, but there are so many things you *can* do but have to know how to do them or have access to your website and the ability to code.

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Customer.io was really the first pure, full-featured drip email program on the market and as far as I know, it's still the simplest and best overall for that specific function. SendGrid has also added drip campaign features, but I would seriously evaluate Customer.io against any other drip email provider because they really have all the key elements you need to make it work.

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I've used MailChimp before to generate emails and found Vocus to be a better option because it is an overall suite providing the tools to create customizable emails as well as many other features including press releases, social media etc. Vocus is an all-in-one platform for marketing which makes things more efficient for the user by being able to handle all marketing through one outlet.

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• Positive impact on the sales side. I'm not sure about the specific ROI (you have to include the designer and the time it takes to set up) but you certainly get back the investment in a few months, once you are able to scale your email marketing.
• Customer experience is way better by having more segmented, contextual and accurate messages sent to them.
• Integration is costly and it will take several days or weeks to be fully achieved. Expect to invest some money on this.

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• Much more targeted email marketing. Spam analysis helped improve our overall email performance.
• Increased customer engagement through social media listening.
• Scheduled emails increased email open and click-through rates by 120%!

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