iContact vs. Get Response : NEED Final Warrior Decision

I use aweber but I know a lot of marketers who use iContact but don't know that many who use GetResponse with iContact you can get up to 500 subs free but with GetResponse you get up to 500 subs for $14 a month so it is really up to you what your going to do

I'm actually testing both.

I have an iContact Enterprise account and a Get Response 360 account.

So far here is my pro's and cons as I'm testing.

Icontact:

pro: deliveribiliy is usually good (they have their days and issues)
they support uploads with ease
customer support is quick and nice to work with

cons: VERY pricey
the sites move very slow
unseen delays happen all the time - but still delivered.

Get Response:

Pro: Cost- very low
Uploads super easy to do
Mailings are super easy

Cons:
Deliverability is okay so far.. still testing
Support is slower to respond
Interface has a lot of quirky features that make it annoying

So my final decision right now..

I have both BUT - I probably will move to one or the other. Fact is.. it costs me 4X the amount to have icontact over get response.. and that's an issue.

I been using aweber and never had a problem with them.

Getresponse and Icontact are both good autoresponders.

Like Anik mentioned above there's pros and cons for both of them.

Thanks Anik. I guess I'm a groupie of yours so I hang on everything you say.
I am trying Aweber right now and I'm happy so far but I wanted to try Get Response for another business I am developing a site for and I was on the fence. Get Response is less expensive to start but they look like they even up pretty much once you start building a substantial list. If you are trying Get Response then I will give it a whirl as well.

Gail,

I was going to ask why you wouldn't go with Aweber, but now I see that you are trying it with a different business. I would then say go with GetResponse based off of the price and the good things I have heard from other marketers!


Tim

I have been using icontact and I really like the interface. I felt like it wasn't delivering very well though, but it was a low volume of emails. Do you guys find that Aweber has the best delivery or is it about the same?

Been using GetResponse for 3 years or so. Love em. I also tried iContact. You can read about my experience here. http://www.warriorforum.com/internet...tml#post176676

Does anyone have any insights on the split testing, list segmenting, triggers & automation features with GetResponse?

I'm thinking about getting an account with GetResponse, but I'm especially curious about how well it handles those things.

I'm not terribly worried about deliverability...it seems like it varies only a few percentage points even with the biggest providers and changes from day to day. They all seem to be 99%+ most of the time.

I'm more worried about the effectiveness of their split testing, segmenting, triggers, automation rules, and thoroughness of their statistics for campaigns and autoresponders.

Here's what my experience with a few other ESPs has been:

I was on Aweber until recently when I got booted with no notice for spam complaints on one of my lists. It caught me by surprise, because they don't show spam complaints on autoresponder emails, so there was no indication.

None of my other lists were getting any spam complaints at all. This one was about 50,000 people, with 500-700 new double opt-in subscribers being added daily.

I took all the precautions...1 promotional email to every 3 emails of solid, high quality content. I included unsubscribe links at the top and bottom of each email. I got tons of thank you emails daily from my subscribers for the content.

The problem is that it was in the spirituality niche, which has a good chunk of people who aren't very tech savvy, so rather than unsubscribing, they clicked the spam button...for an email list they double opted in for! But Aweber wasn't even open to discussion. Just booted me without notice. They gave me my lists, but I lost tons of split testing data...and I had dozens of lists on there with only one troublesome one.

So I switched to Imnica, but I am very disappointed. I haven't imported the spirituality list, because I'm a little gun shy right now. But I have been using it for my other lists.

I was really excited about all the advanced automation rules and triggers they have for segmenting your lists, but although they all look good in theory, they don't work well at all. They're missing the most basic of information.

Here's an example:

They allow you to set up automated split testing campaigns. You can create multiple email variations and send them out to a specified portion of your list. You set the duration of the test. At the end of the duration, they send out the winning email to the remainder of your list, based on either the most clicks or the most opens...whichever you specify.

Sounds awesome right? In theory, yes. In reality, no.

It doesn't show you all the stats:

-It doesn't tell how many of each email variation was sent out.
-It doesn't tell you the percentage opens or percentage clicks for each variation.

It shows you only the total opens and total clicks of each email...but get this...

It doesn't show you the totals from only the initial test...it includes the totals from the winning email that was sent out too. So you're not even comparing the total number of opens or clicks for the same number of emails sent.

It's totally useless data, because it's incomplete and offers you no context for comparison.

You can't tell how much better the winning email did than the loser, so you have no idea if it's even statistically significant.

So if one email gets one single open more than the other or if it gets 20 more opens...you have no idea, because they don't tell you. It's like split testing for morons.

They don't even show the sent stats for the autoresponders. What good is the number of opens and clicks if you don't know the number sent? They don't give you the percentage opened or clicked either, so again, it's like statistics for people that don't care about statistics. Might as well put nothing.

I am very disappointed, because in theory, all the features looked awesome.

I like to do a lot of split testing. Aweber had very limited split testing capabilities. It's all manual...but at least they have the stats. What good is a split test without the stats, right?

I like to set up a lot of automation rules. Aweber was very limited on their automation capabilities. Essentially, you can add or remove someone from/to a list when they sign up for another. That's about it.

With Imnica, you can set all sorts of automation rules and triggers. For example, you can set it up to subscribe someone to another list if they click on a link or open an email.

That way, you could automatically send a series of follow up emails only to those that show their interest by taking a specific action first. That's very powerful.

I see that GetResponse has split testing and triggers. Does anyone have any experience with using these features?

Any in-depth insights beyond deliverability rates and colorful interfaces?

I've got a few launches coming up, and I want to make sure my email service provider is up to snuff for some advanced sales funnels.

NOTE - Aweber was better with their stats, but why on earth are their stats not displayed as unique opens and unique clicks, but rather overall opens and clicks? That's just stupid. If you dig deeper into the percentages they display, you'll realize that some people register 4, 5, 12 opens or clicks, and they're all included in the open rates on the summary page. They're totally useless unless you click through each individual email and look at the unique opens and clicks.

What good is it to think you have 50% open rates when actually only 30% of the people opened it? So, so stupid. They intentionally display their stats so they look better in terms of deliverability, but in fact, they screw up your perception. It's a shady tactic.

Everybody raves about Aweber, but aside from their colorful interface, I don't get what all the fuss is about.

I know this will be funny, but I actually recommend AWeber, because this is something that I use, lol.

However, if you do not have a lot of money, then go with iContact, but AWeber truly has best delivery rates.

cool thanks to all for answers. I will go with GetResponse right now. Me and my wife have 9.000 list at aweber but a lot of people got too many warnings and some even lost their list data because of them, so finally I decided to switch. This thread really helped. I appreciate all of you. cheers

I like get response layout better.