The team over at SEOmoz has selected IntelliContact.com as the first place winner for best marketing website. We’re constantly working to the make the website better. It’s awesome to see that others are taking notice. Thanks guys!
I’m excited to announce that we will be transitioning the name of our software from IntelliContact to iContact in early June. We’ve been grateful to have massive success with the IntelliContact brand, quickly growing to over 10,000 customers in the last four years, but we’re not done yet. This is another step in taking our application to the next level and continuing to help our customers grow their businesses.
So why are we changing the name of the software?
We have to continue expanding our capabilities and continue our goal of helping our clients easily and effectively market to their customers and prospects. We’ve been hard at work shaping the future of our software and staying one step ahead of our current and future customers by delivering an application that’s cutting-edge, affordable, feature-rich and easy to use. We’re so excited about the future of iContact and continuing to help our customers grow their businesses. Thanks goes out to all of our customers and the entire IntelliContact, ahem - iContact team. Stay tuned!
Read more about the transition here.
I just returned from Ad:Tech San Francisco last night. This was our second year exhibiting there and I love that conference. We’ve decided to exhibit at Ad:Tech Miami as well, which is June 26th-27th, so if you’re attending be sure to drop by our booth there.
We usually stay at Maxwell Hotel in Union Square. It’s a decent hotel for the price and it’s in a central location, however this year I thought “hey, let’s try something different” and I decided to book us at Renoir Hotel on McAllister. If you’re ever going to San Francisco and you’re looking for a good hotel at a decent price avoid Renoir Hotel. The place is a dump and smells horrible. The cab driver told a couple guys with us that he hasn’t driven anyone there in years and asked if they were armed for their own protection. Seriously, if you’re staying in downtown San Francisco and you’re looking for a decent hotel at a good price I recommend Maxwell Hotel in Union Square. The rates are around $130/night. So, we’re heading to Miami in late June, any recommendations for hotels there?
One thing that I’m noticing about these conferences is more and more people are coming up to us saying “hey, I use IntelliContact. I love you guys!.” It’s awesome to meet our clients and it’s certainly a sign that we’re getting the word out about our application as more and more people are approaching us at these events having used our software. It’s a great feeling when you see your hard work paying off.
Congrats to our CEO, Ryan Allis on making the cover of Fortune Small Business for the month of February. And congrats to the marketing team for helping to make that happen. The issue features a great article on entrepreneurship, how it has become a national obsession, and highlights a number of entrepreneurs from various backgrounds.
We’ve launched IntelliContact Enterprise and improved our Public Newsletter Archive!
Today we introduced our latest offering with the launch of IntelliContact Enterprise. We have received a number of requests for additional service offerings which is the reason we decided to launch IntelliContact Enterprise. With this launch we now offer services such as:
We have also launched an improved Public Newsletter Archive(PNA). The PNA allows our clients to publish their email newsletter to an archive that includes all of their newsletters. This is a great benefit for our clients as it allows you to:
1. Easily organize your newsletters.
2. Build your lists by sharing your content with more visitors.
3. Gives you access to quality content from other publishers.
Our new enterprise offering allows us to share our knowledge of email marketing with each client that signs up for IntelliContact Enterprise and the Public Newsletter Archive helps clients grow their lists, something we haven’t really helped with until this point. Very exciting!
We returned from Park City, Utah Sunday night around 11pm. The brainstorming weekend in Utah was a wonderful experience. There were 13 of us in Utah and we discussed, for the most part, product vision and goals for the future. We have a lot of exciting things planned for the future of IntelliContact and after this weekend we are all even more excited. Friday night we went tubing at Gorgoza Park and Saturday most of us went skiing at Park City Mountain Resort – I’m still sore. Sunday we wrapped up the brainstorming sessions and boarded a plane for Raleigh-Durham at 5:20pm.
Most of us returned on Sunday, however Ryan Allis (CEO), David Roth (VP Business Development), and Aaron Houghton (Chairman) remained in Park City for the Email Insider’s Summit that began on Sunday.
We’re continuing to prep for the launch on Thursday of this week that will extend our offerings and improve a current feature. So stay tuned…
Things have been hectic around the office this week. I’ve
been working with the team to finalize the messaging for our upcoming launch
next Thursday. This is an exciting launch for us as we’re adding an additional
offering and greatly improving a current feature. I’ll provide details here when
we launch next Thursday.
The messaging I’ve been working on includes copy for the
website, blog post announcing the launch, newsletter announcement, and collateral
- in this case a postcard the marketing team will hand out at Search Engine
Strategies Conference and Expo in
to Park City, UT to brainstorm the future of IntelliContact and what we can do
to continue serving our customers to the best of our ability and giving them the
tools to power their campaigns.
So I’m boarding a plane to Utah early tomorrow morning and will return on Sunday evening. It’s exciting to brainstorm with the rest of the gang and shape the future of not only IntelliContact, but the market itself.
We’ve been working hard and we’re very excited
about the upcoming launch on December 7th!
I’m heading to San Jose next week for Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo. I’ll be attending a few sessions and we’ll be exhibiting IntelliContact.
The past few weeks have been pretty busy. Besides preparing for Search Engine Strategies, we’ve welcomed Chuck Hester to the team as our Director of Public Relations (over 30 employees now!), launched the full beta of IntelliContact 4.0, and continued preparations for the launch of the full version next week. So stay tuned!
PS: If you are attending Search Engine Strategies in San Jose be sure to stop by our booth; #320.
Several months ago we began brainstorming various ways we could
improve our website. The copy was a bit out-dated, the overall look
didn’t fit with the direction in which we were taking IntelliContact,
and quite frankly – we knew we could do better. So Friday afternoon we
launched our newly designed website at http://www.intellicontact.com
When
arriving at our homepage you’ll immediately notice that things are
dramatically different. Overall, we wanted to make the homepage easier
to read and ensure you can find the information you need. We’ve done
away with the pop-up login form and replaced it with a form in the
upper-right of each of page. If you’ve lost your password, that’s not a
problem. You can now click the “Lost Password” link below the login
form and reset your password. We’ve kept a few elements from our old
homepage such as the trial sign-up form and the clients Flash in the
lower left.
As you navigate through the website you’ll
notice we’ve added secondary navigation on each page along with screen
shots of IntelliContact –something we lacked on the old website. We
have also added a Resources section where you can find white papers,
newsletters, articles, and additional information to help you increase
the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. We will continue
adding resources to this section and we encourage you to please let us know what information you’d find most valuable and we will provide more resources on that topic.
These are only a few of the changes we’ve made to the IntelliContact website. Be sure to take a closer look for yourself. Enjoy!
We have launched the full beta of IntelliContact 4.0. We have been in
limited beta since July 7. This means that all trial and paying users can now
test out the beta version. To try out
IntelliContact 4.0 Beta simply log
into your account and click the link at the top of the page to switch back
and forth between the old and new version.
A special thanks goes out to all of you who participated and provided feedback
during the limited beta. We received lots of valuable feedback and we’ve read
every message you’ve sent. Our development team is working throughout July to
implement many of the suggestions and fix any bugs that remain. We will be
launching the full version of IntelliContact 4.0 in early August.
So what’s New in IntelliContact v4.0?
Redesigned User Interface
The biggest and most recognizable change is the redesigned user interface.
We redesigned the interface to make IntelliContact even easier to use, uniting
behind the theme of "We Simplify Email Marketing." We believe the new
version is much more intuitive and you’ll be able to create, send, and track
email newsletters, autoresponders, surveys, and RSS feeds with even greater
ease.
The largest change you’ll see will be in the tab structure. We’ve reduced
the eight tabs we had before to just four–My Contacts, Create, Send, and
Track.
RSS Feeds
Communication is about getting messages through to your recipient via
channels that actually get the message read. IntelliContact allows you to send
your message via email and RSS, allowing you to provide a traditional version
of your message for those who prefer email, and a feed version of your message
for your subscribers that prefer to receive their communications via RSS
readers.
At its core IntelliContact’s role is to allow you to easily create your
message and get it to customers, prospects, and subscribers that have requested
to receive it. Whether you want to send an email newsletter, survey, or autoresponder
or update a blog or RSS feed, IntelliContact gives you the power to manage all
your multi-channel emarketing communications in one simple, central, and
on-demand web-based tool that allows you to take advantage of every possible
opportunity to get your message through to your desired audience.
So what is RSS?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it is another way for people to
view your messages. Now, instead of arriving only by email, your messages will
be available to your contacts and other people in their feed readers. RSS can
be confusing for some, but no worries. We’ll provide additional resources to
help you gain a greater understanding of how it works and how it can help you
increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
How will people access my
RSS feed?
They use a program called a feed reader or a feed aggregator. These sorts of
programs are becoming more and more popular. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7
has one built in, as do FireFox and Thunderbird. Lots of other feed readers are
available in the marketplace. You can learn more about
feed readers or aggregators here.
Public Newsletter Archives
Our goal is to make email marketing easy while helping you grow both your
list size and your sales. To this end, we provide a Public Newsletter Archive
feature that allows you to immediately and simply publish your newsletter on
our web site in a search optimized format. Once published, this newsletter
becomes part of a searchable index on our web site that helps you get
additional exposure, increase your newsletter subscribers, and RSS subscribers.
Dive right in and take
IntelliContact 4.0 for a test drive. Be sure to let us know what you think
by clicking the Feedback button in the upper-right of the interface. Enjoy!