Additional Information:

Customized Hosted Database: Topica’s foundation is a hosted database that helps you collect, store and manage leads, customers, their click behaviors, conversion, transaction and purchasing habits, and an unlimited number of demographic and interest fields. It updates instantly, and it includes API for remote importing and exporting.

Tracking Conversions: Add snippets of code to your website and collect and generate reports on tons of transaction data, such as:

• Page hits

• Document downloads

• Email campaign success

• Landing page success

• Products purchased

• Product categories purchased

• Price of purchased items

• Quantity of purchased items

• Recentness of purchase

• Frequency of purchase

• Shopping cart abandonment

Advanced Email Automation: Set up marketing programs that trigger automated email campaigns based on user-defined rules like:

• New contacts added

• Data-collecting forms submitted

• Opened campaigns

• Clicked links

• Purchases, downloads, or other site transactions

• Shopping cart abandonments or successes

• Changes to field values in your database

Collecting Prospects and Building Databases: Capture valuable data on visitors to your website and grow your database of prospects and customers, with:

• Customizable data capturing forms

• Landing pages with additional data capturing forms

• Hosting of documents for download (ie catalogs, coupons, etc.)

• Individual, detailed prospect profiles

• Customized branding of all your forms and landing pages

Segmenting Databases: Target relevant content to specific segments of your prospect and customer pool, breaking down your database into segments by:          

• Interest

• Demographics

• Campaigns opened or clicked

• Campaigns not opened or clicked

• Time since registration

• Items purchased

• Amount of purchase

• Recentness of purchase

• Shopping cart abandonment

Creating & Managing Email Campaigns: Develop professional, effective campaigns with the help of the following features:

• Manage multiple lists

• Personalize any database field

• Customized branding

• Schedule mailings

• Set up recurring deliveries

• Cut-and-paste sent campaigns

• Format emails in text, HTML, and multipart formats

• Send test messages before initiating a mailing

• Test isolated segments of your list

• Handle bounces and retries

• Subscription confirmation footer

• Integration with PayPal, Amazon, and eBay auctions

• Customizable HTML templates

• Forward-to-a-Friend links

Web Analytics & Reporting: Measure the ROI (return on investment) of your campaigns and measure the conversion success of your site. Query and report, as well, on any database field or combination thereof that you like. Topica tracks and reports on:

• Website transactions (purchases and downloads)

• Shopping cart activity and performance

• Campaign delivery success

• Unique opens and clicks

• Growth of contact database

• Demographic distribution of contacts

• Unsubscribes

• Individual details on who performed the actions tracked (ie exactly who opened a particular email)

Topica is CAN-SPAM compliant, offering all the necessary features for ensuring your emails get through to their intended recipients, including:

• Bulk unsubscribe

• Integrated unsubscribe links – for putting the power to over their subscription in your subscribers’ hands

• Automated processing of unsubscribe requests

• A Never Mail list – for making sure you don’t accidentally send mail to someone after they’ve unsubscribed

• Content checker – for flagging keywords, phrases, and combinations that might trigger spam filters to kill your messages

A 14-day trial of Topica is available for download from their site. You’ll be limited to 1,000 contacts and certain features – sending more than once per day, support, training and consultation, and lead generation services – will be disabled.

Topica’s price varies tremendously, depending on how you plan to use it. Factors include:

• Number of contacts

• Mailing frequency

• Whether to include conversion tracking of website purchases & downloads

• Whether to include dedicated IP addresses for outgoing mail

• Self-install or assisted install

• Lead generation services (prices for this feature alone start at $2,500)

Lead generation notwithstanding, Topica’s price starts at around $249.95 ($200 one-time setup fee + $49.95/month for 5,000 names)

A calculator is available on the site for estimating your cost based on your specific needs, but many selections will result not in a cost estimate, but in an invitation to contact Topica to inquire about volume discounts and complementary services.