Aweber Review – 33 Points To Consider Before Choosing An Email List Provider

Do you want to generate sales on autopilot?
Are you currently building an email list?
Are you following up on the people on your list?

For many years I was told “the money is in the list” but never focused on it until I changed my thinking and placed an opt-in form on my website to get people to subscribe to my newsletter. Initially I chose a free autoresponder to manage my subscribers (since the first 1000 were free) but only found out later my emails were not getting delivered. I learned my lesson..”you get what you pay for.”

After switching to the email list provider, Aweber I discovered it had a high delivery rate, my email lists were easy to manage and the tech support is highly responsive ..a must have feature if you want to resolve problems quickly.

Let’s look at the top 10 benefits for using an email list provider/autoresponder to market and manage your subscriber list.

1. Build a list of subscribers

The beauty of building a list of subscribers that are interested in your offer (ie free report) is that once they are on your list you can begin sending them quality content (ie newsletter to help them build and market their business plus you can notify them about new products you’ve created to generate sales.

Send Your First Email Newsletter Today – AWeber Communications

2. Automatic list management

When I first began marketing online I managed my list with an excel spreadsheet. Every time I acquired a new subscriber I would open up excel and add it to the list. It was very time consuming. Aweber manages your list automatically by storing all your subscribers in a database after they have filled out and submitted the optin form on your website.

3. Develop a long term relationship with the people on your list

Adding people to your list is just the first step in developing a relationship with them. If you want to get people to know, like and trust you you have to continuously send them information that will help build and market their businesses. This can be achieved by sending out a regular newsletter containing articles, tips, news on your niche.

4. Save time by scheduling

Aweber enables you to schedule a series of emails that can be automatically sent out at intermittent intervals ie every 2 days for 40 days. Once you get this set up it runs on autopilot.

5. Create an entire e-course using Autoresponders

An e-course is a series of emails delivered automatically that “drip feeds” your content to subscribers. Instead of trying to consume all the content at once (e.g. downloading and reading a 100 page document) they can consume content in small bites by receiving a new email every 2 days…much easier and tastes better.

Try AWeber’s Autoresponders for $1

6. Sell products on autopilot

An e-course may be as easy as sending a series of emails however you could also offer a video course so the email each subscriber receives includes a new video tutorial. Once you’ve set up the course in Aweber you’ll be able to sell products on autopilot 24 hours a day 4 days a week without hiring extra staff to run your business…pretty cool don’t you think?

7. Build your brand

To get subscribers to recognize your brand they have to continually be reminded of it. With an autoresponder email series you can continually get your brand in front of your potential customers.

8. Monitor subscriber behavior

If you don’t track subscriber behavior you won’t know how effective your email marketing campaigns are. Aweber enables you to monitor how many people opened your emails, who unsubscribed and who clicked on the links in your email messages. All the stats can can viewed from one simple interface within your dashboard.

9. Make more money

Most online marketers try to make money by selling products the first time a potential customer sees the offer. This is a BIG mistake. Most people need to see your offer 7 times or more before making a purchasing decision. This means you’ll sell more products on the backend (through follow-up emails) than on the front end (your sales page). Another benefit is that you can sell multiple products throughout the lifetime of your subscribers (as long as they remain on your list).

10. Store previously sent email newsletters

Instead of storing all your email newsletters on your computer Aweber allows you to store them in their database for easy access. This makes it easy to find the email newsletters you sent several months ago which generated the most sales.

Here are the Top 12 Features of Aweber I’ve
found most useful in my business:

11. Send unlimited emails without paying extra

Many email list providers charge extra if you want to send emails more than once to your list whereas Aweber doesn’t. For example if you wish to send 1000 emails every day to your list of 1000 subscribers you won’t be charged extra.

12. Email Templates

Aweber gives you 150 email templates to choose from. This means you don’t have to come up with your own design and send professionally designed newsletters that will impress your audience. All templates are customizable and you can even have the ability to create your own template.

Check out this gallery of templates

13. Automatically send blog updates

The software automatically converts your blog post into a newsletter to send to your subscribers. Simply add an op-tin form to the end of your post for readers to receive blog updates every time you write a new post.

Simple RSS to Email by AWeber Communications

14. Track results

Track who opened your messages, which links were clicked, how much revenue your message generated and how many people unsubscribed from your newsletter. This allows you to make adjustments based on the performance of your messages.

15. Schedule delivery times

This feature enables you to specify which days and what time of the day your follow up messages are delivered. This helps increase your open rates and subscriber response.

16. List segmentation

Segmenting your lists allows you to target specific groups of people. For example you may start off building a list for people who are interested in YouTube marketing. As your list grows bigger you realize a segment of your list are only interested in learning how to use YouTube marketing for local businesses. In this case you can create a separate list to specifically target these subscribers.

17. High delivery rate

How do you know if your emails were received by your subscribers?

Many internet providers constantly create filters to remove spam emails. Aweber avoids filters by checking your emails for spam-like content making sure they get delivered. Aweber also automatically removes undeliverable addresses since many people enter a false email address in your optin form without ever intending to subscribe. It also automatically removes unsubscribes.

18. Send unlimited autoresponders

An autoresponder automatically delivers emails according to a set schedule. For example your first email welcomes new subscribers. Successive follow-up emails redirects them back to your website (sequential autoresponders) or sends them to a download page after generating a sale. You can set-up an unlimited number of sequential autoresponders within Aweber.

19. Email multiple lists simultaneously

Sometimes you may want to send an email for subscribers on multiple lists. Instead of emailing each list separately Aweber can email ALL subscribers on ALL lists at the same time. This enables you to manage multiple email marketing campaigns.

Automate Your Email Marketing with AWeber

20. Social Media Integration

Using Facebook and email together gives your customers a choice about how closely they want to interact with your business. For instance the social sharing options within Aweber allow you to automatically post email broadcasts to your Facebook wall and your newest emails can instantly be sent to your Twitter followers.

AWeber also has a Facebook app which places an opt-in form on your Facebook page so you can generate new subscribers from your Facebook Fans.

How To Put Social Share Buttons In Your Emails
How Do I Add an Opt-in Form to My Facebook Page?

21. Highly responsive technical support

Most email list providers only use email for technical support, however with Aweber you can call them any time day or night if you encounter any problems.

22. Drag and Drop Interface

Creating an email newsletter can be completed within a few minutes. You can either select one of their 150 customizable templates or send a text message by dragging and dropping your images into the template. Aweber will host your images on their server so you don’t have to waste time uploading images to your web host.

The 5 Cons of Using Aweber For List Management

23. No Single Optin Option

Aweber doesn’t allow you to import a list of subscribers from another email provider without getting them to resubscribe (double opt-in). At first this annoyed me but then saw it as an opportunity to clean my list by getting rid of false email addresses and people who never read the emails.

Sidebar: If you need to import a list of subscribers without getting them to opt-in again (and losing them)consider using an alternative email list provider such as YourMailingListProvider. There is no need to double opt-in and you can sign up for a free account to store 1000 emails.

Read my review of YourMailingListProvider

24. Monthly Fee

It costs $19.95 to send unlimited emails to a list of 500 subscribers. Aweber Pricing is based on the number of subscribers on your list. As your list grows your monthly costs increase. This may seem expensive for some however you can easily cover the monthly costs by signing up a few affiliates.

Students and teachers and non -profit organizations can receive a discount. Students with a valid .edu or .ac email address receive a 20% discount. Non-profit organizations get 3 months of FREE service as well as 25% discount from then onwards.

One of the biggest reasons I switched to Aweber was that my previously email provider didn’t offer sending unlimited emails to my list. If I emailed my list every week it would cost extra.

View Aweber Pricing

25. No free trial

Most email providers offer a free trial however Aweber offers a FREE trial for one month. I think this very reasonable considering you can try out all the features within your trial period then cancel if you don’t like the service.

26. Inability to embed videos

Currently Aweber doesn’t offer the ability to embed videos within your email however the workaround is to simply include the link to your YouTube video.

Resource

How Can I Send Video Email Messages?

27. Lack of Mobile-friendly templates

In order for your emails to be viewed from any device (ie phone, tablet, computer) they should be mobile responsive (resizes to fit the viewing screen). Not all email templates are mobile responsive however Aweber provides templates with a width of 600 pixels, which are appropriate for mobile devices.

Alternatively you can reduce the width by creating a one column template instead of using multiple columns.

Resource

Mobile-Friendly Email

Here are the 5 main ways I’m currently using Aweber
in my online business:

28. E-course

I created a free e-course called “21 Highly Effective Ways To Generate Free Traffic To Your Website.” I placed 2 opt-in forms (provided by Aweber) on my blog at DrostDesigns.com. When someone fills out the form they automatically receive confirmation from Aweber asking them to check their email box to confirm their subscription. Once confirmed they automatically begin receiving a new email every 2 days using Aweber’s autoresponders.

29. Newsletter

I send out my Marketing Tips Newsletter every 2 weeks to all my subscribers. I usually set it up ahead of time then schedule a specific day and time for it to be automatically sent. I utilize one of Aweber’s professional templates to format the newsletter.

Resource

How To Start An Online Newsletter In 7 Easy Steps

30. Multiple List Management

I have several email lists where all subscribers are stored in Aweber’s database. This gives me the ability to email one or multiple lists at any given time.

31. Blog Broadcasts

Aweber enables me to automatically notify subscribers every time I add a new post to my blog.

32. Track Performance

Aweber notifies me by email every time a new person subscribes to my e-course. It also tracks how many people have signed up each day, where they came from (ie which web page) and what link they clicked on to subscribe.

33. My Final Thoughts

I made the mistake of not selecting a reliable email list provider when I first began my website design business in the year 2000. This resulted in many undeliverable emails, sloppy list management and lack of sales. I highly recommend signing my for the $1.00 trial right away so you can avoid making the same mistakes and build a profitable list.

Aweber is one of the most reliable and trusted companies in the email marketing industry. If you need a list building solution (or switch from your current one) that automatically gathers, stores and tracks your subscribers, then definitely sign up for the $1.00 trial right now by filling in the form below.

You’ll be glad you did!