As the information superhighway evolves, different means of communication are discovered / invented / implemented. Be it for personal or business use, different solutions should be available for everyone. Today we will focus on email marketing. If you type in the word "Email Marketing" on your Google search field, you will see the word "iContact" on the first 2 or 3 results.
What Is Email Marketing:
Email marketing is the process of sending commercial messages or newsletter to your target recipients via electronic mail.
Let's just say you run a business, and you have loyal customers. You send them your upcoming / ongoing promotions through email. Now what if you have 100 loyal customers for example, and you have the artistic inclination in designing catchy newsletters / commercials - does this mean you will have to send your creation to 100 loyal customers using your Google Mail or with whatever you are using? Anyway, they are loyal customers so why not do them the extra effort?
You then add all their 100 email address on your Google Mail's "To:" field, and sent them two brochures of whatever your bestsellers are - only to find out in the end that your IP address is tagged as being owned by a spammer. Worst is that your Google Mail may be locked out because of this. Some of us may not know that typical email providers got some restrictions as to the number of email messages you can send. For Google Mail, an overview may be available here on https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22839?hl=en.
Even if you manage to escape from the frustrations having a blacklisted IP address, the above-mentioned idea alone would require a serious work. That's where email marketing software such as iContact kicks in.
What Is iContact:
iContact is a very straightforward email marketing software from Vocus, so easy to use it feels like you are just reciting your native alphabet. This software can only do so much for your business if used properly.
At the time of this writing iContact dashboard should show you 5 tabs - these are Home, Contacts, Email, Social, Reports.
The Home Tab:
This is the part of your iContact where you see a quick summary / quick link of some commonly used functions such as:
1. the last message you sent.
2. your "Contact Lists"
3. the last updates you posted on Facebook, Twitter, and/or LinkedIn while using iContact.
4. the "Account Health" which is comprised of the total number of your sent messages versus your total number of sending limit, total consumption of your Image Library, and total number of subscribers versus your subscriber count limit.
5. some updates from iContact, and links to free webinars.
6. you will also see the upgrade button here.
The Contacts Tab:
When you click this tab, you will see the link where you can create a list, add contacts, search contacts, and create segments. Furthermore, you will also see the link that will lead you to where you can create sign-up forms.
The Email Tab:
This tab will show you where you can create / access your:
1. email messages / newsletters or "should we call them" messages / newsletters
2. pending messages / newsletters
3. RSS In Feeds (may no longer be supported in the future)
4. surveys (creation)
5. autoresponders (creation)
6. "Image Library"
The Social Tab:
Nothing fancy for this tab. From here you can update your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn status. Saves you the time of having to open the above-mentioned social media platforms if you are logged in to your iContact.
The Reports Tab:
Last but not least, this tab brings you to a page where you can track:
1. the last message / newsletter you sent to your contacts.
2. all sent messages / newsletters you sent to your contacts.
3. the surveys you sent to your contacts.
4. how your Autoresponders are doing.
This is where you will see if your messages / newsletters are opened by your recipients and so on.
Furthermore, you can access the "Tracking Dashboard" from this tab, which will show you some graphical representations of your reports.
Now we proceed to the next page of this tutorial, where we will define some mostly used terminologies in email marketing.
