TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. OVERVIEW ... 3
2. HOW IT ACCESS FROM APPOINTMENT-PLUS ACCOUNT ... 3
3. SETTING UP ACCOUNT ... 4
4. UPLOADING CUSTOMER LIST ... 5
5. ADDING "BOOK NOW" BUTTON (OR LINK) TO E-MARKETING MATERIALS ... 8
1. Overview
The Appointment-Plus-iContact strategic relationship offers a dynamic new way of creating, distributing and managing your customer e-marketing campaigns and messages. Subscribers have full access to all of iContact’s newsletter templates, e-mail messaging tools, surveys, analytics and other features necessary for successful and accurate customer marketing and outreach efforts.
The integration between the two services can help businesses keep their appointment and reservation calendars full with the following benefits:
Effortlessly pass your Appointment-Plus customer lists to iContact and accurately manage your customer lists using iContact tools. Once uploaded, iContact will
automatically manage any “unsubscribe” or “opt-out” e-mail addresses. It also eliminates the need to manage two separate e-mail databases for e-marketing campaigns.
Quickly add the Appointment-Plus “Book Now” or “Schedule Now” button to your newsletters, e-mail messages and other e-marketing materials. Make it easier for
customers, clients, patients and students to schedule their appointments or book their reservations by allowing them to access your Appointment-Plus scheduler right from the iContact e-marketing piece. They will not need to manually open a new browser window or type in a URL. They simply click on the “Book Now” or “Schedule Now” button to instantly access your business’s Appointment-Plus scheduler.
Easily track customer activity and success with iContact’s analytics tools. You can
quickly access such important statistics as number of opens, number of click-throughs, bounce rates and number of unsubscribes. These figures would be difficult—if not almost impossible—to decipher, sort and analyze if done manually.
Low Cost. iContact offers you tremendous flexibility, functionality and legal
compliance for your email marketing and newsletter campaigns, and iConact does all of this at a very low cost. Prices start at less than $10/month.
2. How To Access iContact From Your Appointment-Plus
Account
(figure 1)
3. Setting Up an iContact Account
The system will prompt you for your iContact account information the first time you run the report and select the iContact format option. If you don’t have an existing iContact account, you will have the option to learn more or sign up for the service.
Once you complete the set up your iContact account, go back to the Export Customer Data page (figure 2) and enter your credentials into the system on the left hand side. See figure 3 below:
(Figure 3)
After entering your iContact username and password, you can now begin exporting your customer data (name, email address and phone number) to your newly created
iContact account.
4. Uploading Customer List
Once the customer report is run, a predefined report of the following information will be displayed:
Customer’s first name
(Figure 4)
To review the list, click on the “# customers” link on your report (see Figure 5 below). By clicking on the “10 customer” link, you would then see your customer’s data:
(Figure 5) You can now:
1. Create a new email list in iContact .
(Figure 6)
If you select to merge customers into an existing iContact list, you will only be able to merge new customer data. If certain data already exists in the iContact system, you cannot duplicate it (see Figure 7). In Figure 7, it shows that only “2 unique contacts” were added. That is because the other eight from the list of 10 are already included in the mailing list.
5. Adding “Book Now” or “Schedule Now” Button (Or Link) To
E-Marketing Materials
Adding a “Book Now” or “Schedule Now” button to your emails is easy. After you have created a new email list or merged customer data into an existing list, you have the option of adding a button or scheduling link to your iContact newsletter. By selecting the “Create Book Now Button” option from Figure 7 above, you will arrive at the following page (Figure 8).
(Figure 8)
(Figure 9)
6. Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is my data secure?
A: Yes. The data passes from Appointment-Plus to iContact via a very standard Web services
format called JSON. In addition, all data passed is done so using SSL and is encrypted.
Q: Who do I call if I have a problem with the iContact newsletters?
A: For any issue relating to the iContact newsletters, you would contact iContact.
Appointment-Plus created an integration with iContact; however, they will continue to support their product.
Q: Can I set up multiple accounts and link them to Appointment-Plus?
A: No. You may only set up one email account at this time. A future release may
include the ability to set up multiple accounts or even accounts with other providers.
Q: I use another email marketing service. Can I integrate with them as well?
