Don’t let that image fool you, this is my honest review of the Aweber autoresponder service.
Let’s start with the basics for anyone that is new to online marketing.
What is an Autoresponder?
An autoresponder is an email service provider that helps you manage your mail list, creates/distributes your newsletters, ezines, promotions, sale offerings and general updates to your customers. The word “auto” is the key here, with small and home based businesses, we need all the help we can get with automatic systems that run themselves and let us concentrate on other tasks.
Take a few hours and you can set up an entire series of email updates to go to your customers automatically! The part I love? When someone joins your list, they are automatically started at message number one so they don’t miss a thing and for those customers that joined 2 months ago you can have them well tiered into your sales and affiliate promotions.
What Can Aweber Do For You?
The features are many but here is a list of my favorite ones:
- They have html templates pre-made
- Push button easy, no techy experience needed
- Easy list segmentation- meaning you can have different lists for your buyers/non-buyers/different niches
- Flexible optin box creation- you can have lightboxes, flyins, inline
- Integrates with Feedburner
- Integrates with Twitter- NEW! Another way of getting your newsletter in front of hundreds/thousands of people that are not on your list!
- Send different messages to different lists or send one message to all lists by checking a box
- Free Training Videos!
- Amazing Customer Service- do to my own learning curve, I’ve used CS a couple times and have always been impressed with how helpful & responsive they are
- Unlimited campaigns
- The ability to pre-schedule messages and create e-courses
- many more features… but those are a few of my favorites!
Why Can’t I Send Emails From My Own Email Account?
One word.. SPAM… email services are getting so keen to spam that you run the risk of your emails not even making it past your customers spam filters. What good is a promotion when they don’t even read it? Aweber has earned a priceless reputation with all the email clients because they don’t tolerate spam and follow double optin practices so email clients have a relationship with them and they have a 99% deliverable rate.
I don’t know if I want the monthly fee
Yes, there is a monthly fee but if you can put your affiliate promotions and keep in touch with your customers automatically it will more then pay for itself and this shouldn’t be a concern. Just think, if you build your mail list and once a month you send out one affiliate promotion for a $20.00 product all you have to make is a couple sales (and if you’ve done a good job at building your relationship and providing quality referrals that fit your customer this shouldn’t be hard) and it pays for itself plus profit!
Go Ahead, take Aweber for a free test drive below and see what you think!
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Aweber has a great blog that they update with well researched and useful information, here are are few of their latest posts:
December 18th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I am trying to set up autoresponders in aweber and I don’t find it to be intuitive at all. I don’t want to spend a day learning this. I think vertical response is easier but no autoresponder option. Can you believe I am putting an ad on craigslist to try to hire an expert quickly on this?
December 27th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
I’ve tried a few autoresponder services and I have been pleased with aweber. They offer teleclasses to learn how to maximize the use of their site, and their blog is packed with information. They also have an option for people to subscribe and receive your RSS feed through email. In all, pretty happy with services, and it’s a great way to build your email list.