Aweber Autoresponder Review

My Experiences of Aweber

After 2 years, I can honestly say that Aweber rocks. In fact I have integrated Aweber to manage all my mail campaigns for my traffic exchange membership site. I’ve never had any problems with deliverability or service and there are more advanced features that I’m growing into.

But first of all, let me mention some drawbacks of Aweber so you have a balanced opinion.

1. You cannot import your old contacts very easily

If you want to add your existing subscribers to Aweber, you’ll need to get them to subscribe again so you may lose some members in the move. This has never been a problem for me and it actually helps to maintain the quality of the service and stops spammers from importing purchased lists and loading them up.

If you do need to move your list, planning it carefully and keeping your members informed in advance will help you stay in contact. There’s no harm in losing a few subscribers anyway – it can be good to consolidate your list and only your most active and responsive members will follow you. Sweet.

2. Aweber doesn’t endorse advertising in traffic exchanges

This only really applies if you’re an affiliate. Aweber claim that traffic exchanges don’t target the right audience and don’t like wasting their bandwidth !? This is a crazy blanket policy because traffic exchange members are often fledgeling marketers – just the demographic who will soon be signing up. This doesn’t really matter if you advertise wisely and promote Aweber through other channels like your email list. Aweber have no problem with using their web forms in traffic exchanges to find new subscribers so there really is no problem.

3. Browser requirements

Oddly, there’s no support for Safari although I never really have any problems using it. I have seen the admin panel go a bit weird in Firefox when I’m typing but it’s very rare and the data is always backed up so I’ve never lost my message.

Why Aweber Rocks

It’s just really simple and works as I’d expect it to. Adding a new autoresponder and creating a new list is super simple. The step-by-step wizard that guides you through the process and you can set up a new autoresponder in under 2 minutes.

But the real stuff I love are the advanced features that go beyond the simple autoresponder to really power up your email campaigns and list management. Sure, some of these features are available elsewhere but Aweber blazed the trail -

RSS, twitter and Blog Integration

Your emails can automatically be converted to RSS and archived on the web for indexing.

You can aggregate your blog rss feed and automatically send out scheduled broadcasts to your subscribers.

You can even post to twitter each time you broadcast an email to get extra distribution of all your content and reach more customers

Training Resources

Learn how to set up an autoresponder using Aweber’s massive free library of screencasts and pdfs. There are even live training webcasts every few days so you can get a thorough introduction to using autoresponders and email marketing.

Email Parsing in Aweber

Awebers advanced Email parsing allows you to capture email details from various web forms and third party sites. For example, if a customer makes a purchase on your site using a payment processor like Paypal, Aweber can extract the email address and automagically add it to your list.

List Segmentation

Segmenting your list is a powerful way to target specific groups of customers based on the actions they take. If a customer makes a purchase, they can automatically be added to a different list so you can market another product and they no longer receive emails pitching a product they just bought.

Tracking and Split Testing your Email Campaigns

Tracking is critical for your business so you can see what ideas really work well so you can deploy your resources effectively. With Aweber, you can track avery aspect of your email – from the delivery rate, bounces, number of users who open your email and what links they clicked on. You can even split-test different messages, to see which subjects headers work best. It’s a good idea to test things like personalisation, link placement and html v plain text.

How much Does Aweber Cost?

Aweber added a new pricing structure around a year ago so you to get started for less than $20 a month. You get all the advanced tracking data and the cost grows with your list.

There’s also a 1-month test drive so you can try it out for only $1. This is a really cute bit of marketing because once you start using your autoresponders, you’re unlikely to want to switch – especially when you see how cool it is. Even if you do decide you want to leave Aweber, most other services will let you bring your list with you.

Learn why I use Aweber or get an Aweber discount coupon.