AWeber – 6 Painful Lessons Learned

Hi Caroline,

Thanks so much for sharing this information with us. I’ve been tossing around the idea of setting up an AWeber account and actually sending a networking course through the system. I’ve been an affiliate for a short while, but have never actually used the system myself.

Unfortunately for you, but fortunately for the rest of us – your lessons learned will be helpful for those of us thinking of setting up an account or who have recently set up their own account.

I do believe in sharing this type of information as it benefits a great number of people. Thanks so much for being so open and honest with your posts!

Happy Netweaving,
Carol Deckert
Netweaving/Networking Coach
RUNLancaster.com

Caroline,

Wow. You make it seem a lot more complicated than I thought, but you take the sting out by describing the “painful lessons” so well. Thanks for this post. It’s great to see how you’re getting the early kinks out of your course.

Regards,

Kelly

Kellys last blog post..Dreaming BIG when you still feel small

Caroline,

Thanks for the mention. I appreciate it. Of course you failed to mention you had it all figured out before I got back to you!

Aaron at FullTiltBlogging.coms last blog post..Copywriting: Using the Price Drop

It is maddening that every email / shopping cart “solution” out there has gaps.

Choosing any of them means surrendering some features.

1shoppingcart makes it totally easy to migrate someone from the prospect list to a buyers list – perfect for stopping the “buy it” emails and communicating with buyers to consume the product – then upsell if you choose.

But their email delivery is notoriously bad.

You can’t move your list anymore without having to send a confirmation email all over again – with the certainty of losing at least 1/2 of your subscribers – so many marketers are stuck with them.

Aweber has more “no’s” than the last virgin in class, restricting anything but the purest rules for moving a list or adding customers – but their delivery rate is the best in the biz.

Feedblitz is sweet for blog notification – with it’s ability to let people subscribe with Twitter, aol, skype, yahoo im or straight email – but the interface is 1995 horrible – and Im finding their delivery rate is suspect.

I have 4000 PLUS on that list – the main optin on my site http://rickbutts.com – but when I looked at open rates for the subject “The 12 Biggest Whores in Internet Marketing” I had 170 people open that email?

I will probably live the rest of my life without coming up with a more controversial subject line – and all I got was 170 opens?

But, feedblitz will let you upload your whole list and mail them with out RE-CONFIRMING – (for $4.95 pro account).

If someone comes up with a comprehensive solution that meets the needs of marketers who’d like to move their list from bad delivery (1sc) and get Social notifications (Feedblitz) with great tools and features (Aweber) and let us upload lists we’ve been mailing already – (Feedblitz) they would CRUSH the market.

Rick Butts

PS: Caroline –

I love your wordpress theme – what is it?

Rick

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@Rick,

Good points.

I started out with a pathetic list server in 2001. When I realized I was not getting deliverability, I decided to bite the bullet and go with Aweber.

I had 60K single opt-ins at my old provider. It took me a few years to get that many double-opt-ins at Aweber, but it was worth it.

My advice to someone who has a list somewhere else is to keep sending to their old list, but try to get them to move to Aweber, while also putting all their NEW subscribers on Aweber.

In the long run it made me much more profitable.

My two cents.

Aaron at FullTiltBlogging.coms last blog post..Copywriting: Using the Price Drop

Thanks for sharing your lessons Caroline! I was just thinking of inserting messages into my personal development newsletter sequence!

Glad I read your post first…

BTW, here’s a website that’s offering email marketing bonuses for those interested in signing up for AWeber:

http://wealthyaffiliateu.com/aweberbonuses.html

Makes more sense doesn’t it? Lol…

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Aaron – I agree.

Rick Buttss last blog post..Twitter Purchases Summize

As is always the case, great minds think alike.

Thanks Caroline.

I want to do a course later this year so this post is gold.

Heartfelt thanks.

Evan

Evans last blog post..How to Communicate

Aweber can be a true pain that is for sure!

Caroline, given that you want to earn money so you do coding couldn’t you have written a VBA routine in Outlook that managed your lists the way you wanted? It could even be service you could sell on with all your IM contacts?

Colins last blog post..Number of Blogs

@Kelly, to be honest it was probably a lot more complicated than it needed to be! If you take the time to learn it and plan out the autoresponder sequence in advance then I’m sure it can be very simple but I was kinda flying by the seat of my pants!

@Rick, the trouble with moving people about though is that of permission. It seems like a reasonable thing to do on the surface but it isn’t. Double opt-in is there to make sure that people only get what they sign up for. If we don’t respect that then we will lose our customers!

My theme was custom designed for me by Design Farmer. Link in the footer.

@Colin, I am not interested in software anymore, my business has taken me in new directions now. And as I mentioned, there is the issue of permission. A tool like that would be gold for spammers and that is not something I want to be involved in.

Thanks for the mention!

Once you get used to aweber, the sequence will start to flow and make bunches of profitable sense. I now run over 60 aweber autoresponders – they’re very useful indeed.

Enjoy,

Barbara

Hi Caroline – Aweber can be so complicated to begin with. Don’t do what I did. My bank card expired and I was on holiday and didn’t check my email. So they deleted my account together with my entire mailing list.

Hi Caroline,

Welcome to The Learning Curve.

Any moderately sophisticated software has a system with which we must become familiar, before we are able to reap its full benefits.

One trick that I use to minimize the impact of poor email planning is to create open-ended messages. For example, instead of laying the game plan for the subscribers, I may simply inform them that they will receive “periodic updates”.

That sounds simplistic and, it is. It is no substitute for charting your course before setting out. My intention is to use this crutch with decreasing frequency, as my experience with the tools increase.

Cheers,

Mitch

Am looking for a list management solution and came across your post. I have it narrowed down to Aweber and a competitor. In spite of your struggles with it, would you still recommend it. Thanks for sharing your experiences and good luck with your latest project.

- PMG

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@Cath, hehe I have it setup to come right out of my bank account so that shouldn’t be a problem. Mind you, the credit card tied to the domain for this blog expired recently and I almost lost the blog hehe!

@Mitch, yeah I do that for my newsletter but the Stumble Rush lessons really needed a proper structure.

@PMG, yes I would. The biggest plus for Aweber that I dont mention here is email deliverability – that is what Aweber excells at. If your email doesn’t get delivered then the features don’t matter.

Things rarely run 100% problem free.

Good job they happen early on I think.

Hi Caroline

I enjoyed reading about aweber on your blog.
I have my own online marketing info blog and I love to gain knowledge about online marketing.
Thanks for the interesting read.

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Hi Caroline,

Have you tried GetResponse? I’m not sure how it compares to Aweber but I have heard good things about it as an email list management progarm.

Invaluable info, Caronline! I wish I had known this when I was starting out with AWeber years ago….

AWeber provides a valuable, reliable service, but this should be required reading on their web site!

Actually, you can move people from list to list in Aweber, it’s just a bit counter-intuitive. Here are all the steps you need to take in aweber, as well as a couple outside of aweber, to make this work:

First, you set up your main list (in this case, the free lessons) – this list should be double opt in.

Second, set up a list for your buyers (in this case, the advanced lessons) – this list should not be double opt in.

Third, set up your autoresponder messages for both groups. In your case, you send your free lessons out every 3 days, and I suppose you’d just need an immediate delivery of all the lesson links for your advanced folks (and then some follow up customer service types of emails to make sure people consume what they bought, of course.)

Fourth, set up an automation rule (click on List Settings -> Automation) that removes the subscriber from the free list when they join the advanced list.

Fifth, set up your confirmation page to do two things after somebody purchases the advanced course: (a) Provide all of the information that they need to access their lessons, which in your case you are doing with the file that e-junkie allows your customers to download. You could also use a bookmarkable page or something similar. (b) Set up your confirmation page to send an email to your advanced list as though it were coming from the customer who just purchased.

That’s all there is to it. Here is what happens as somebody goes through your sales funnel:

1. Customer visits your web page.
2. Customer signs up for free lessons.
3. Aweber emails a free lesson – repeat until all autoresponder messages sent or customer purchases advanced course.
4. Customer purchases complete course through e-junkie, lands on your thank you page.
5. Customer downloads links to all of the lessons w/the passwords.
6. Your thank you page emails your advanced Aweber list.
7. Aweber adds the customer to the purchase list and removes the customer from the free list.
8. Aweber sends out the advanced autoresponder sequence.

When I have a paying customer, I don’t feel a need to verify their email address, especially if they already belong to an existing list. That is why I add them to the mail list w/o double opt in (note that I use the double opt in for free lists.)

Also be sure to provide all the details after purchase, because they may not receive your email for one reason or another (spam filter, ISP outage, corrupted email, etc) – you are doing this but if somebody else comes along then they may not know to do that.

Hope that’s helpful.

@Evan, no a friend of mine uses GetResponse and that would have been my second choice but I went with AWeber as they have an extremely good reputation.

@Blaine, Thank you, very helpful indeed! I thought that Aweber forced all lists to be double opt-in. How do you set up a single opt-in list? In your intsructions I get stuck at number 6. How does your thank you page email Aweber? That’s the part I didn’t know how to do.

@Caroline & Blaine,

Long-time customers are able to set up single opt-in lists, but no one who opened their account in the last few years has that option. In the business I sold last year (set up in 2001) I was able to set single opt-in. With the business I launched this year I am not.

They must have changed that since the last time I set up a list; you used to have the option to be either single or double opt in (although once you chose double you were locked in with it.)

I think that confirmed opt in is very important for free content; I’ll have to look and see if there is a way through automation to move somebody to a different list when they purchase without opting in to the new list. It’s a bummer if they changed it.

As for how to send an email to your aweber list, you just need a thank you page that has some php functionality and use a sendmail script to email that opt in list (listname@aweber.com) from your customer. That will add them automatically to the list so that they don’t have to type their email address into a form. Another option is to email something from your payment processor (or from your thank you page) that contains the customer’s address in the body of the message and then parse that out using the email parser.

I’ll get back to you if I find a way around the double opt in for all new lists, but even if they have to double opt in you can still save them a step and let them know that they have an opt in message waiting in their inbox, and in the verification email you can tell them they are getting that because they bought the course.

@Blaine,

I believe if you use a sendmail script–even to sign up customers–and AWeber finds out about it they will disable your account. I believe this is a violation of their TOS.

But there is an easy way to pre-populate the registration form and all the new customer needs to do is “confirm” their information.

I have sold thousands of digital products and have used this without fail to sign up my customers. In selling to over 10,000 individuals I have only had 1 complain that as a customer they still needed to confirm their email. It hasn’t been a big issue.

Aaron at FullTiltBlogging.coms last blog post..Google SEO Tips: Redirecting Your Main Page

I spoke with the folks at Aweber, and they basically say that I can do that, but the lead needs to be involved. Which basically means that I can’t do that (”that” being automatically moving them from list to list based on a purchase.)

So, my steps still hold, except that now when they move from one list to another they need to opt in again as a purchaser, as silly as that seems. So you’ll need to give them notification that they’ll have to do that.

Sorry that I was a bit off; if you use a different autoresponder service, then you can probably follow the directions pretty closely as was. It’s been a while since I set up a new list this way.

Aaron,

I actually use the email parser for signing up customers rather than a sendmail script. I just know that that method also works, didn’t notice that in the TOS.

@Blaine & Aaron, thanks to both of you for being so helpful. I think I will stick with the way I have it setup at the moment as then anyone who signs up to the new list from the thank you page is fully aware of what they are signed up to. The only enhancement I will look into is pre-populating the form with their name & email address which should already be available somewhere.

Thanks Caroline for sharing this useful information.

It makes sense with sticking with Aweber, as it has made our lives easier as a marketer.

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I remember when I learned #4 the hard way. The timing wasn’t very good for sending out the message either.

One thing that no one likes to do (in any arena) is read the instructions. It’s moments like this that makes us realize why we should.

That’s a great ‘review’ of Aweber, thanks – I’ve been considering trying it out, so it’s great to be aware of some potential issues ahead of time, and get a idea of someone’s personal experience with the product.

#4 has bitten me in the ass a couple of times. (What can I say, I’m a slow learner.)

Aweber does have a few little quirks (some of which, like #4, are just the nature of an autoresponder), but they get the mail through, which is the important part. I actually think they’re terrific. Not being able to segment lists easily without a re-opt-in is a PITA, though. Then again, I suppose Jeff Walker and that crowd would say that getting a re-sign-in is just a way to encourage more involvement & motivation.

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Thanks for sharing Caroline and I am most agree with you.

I have been using Awber for a year now and this is what I feel:

I totally agree with you.

Aweber has a very nice feature for e-marketing purposes. Though there are alot of loopholes here and there which could be improved. But thats ok compare to its ease of use.

Their main lacking it only support Latin text. Forget about other text such as, Chinese, Urdu, Arab, Thai, Japs, etc.
I really hope the developer would take a serious matter into these. It would benefit them in many way.

Another irritating thing about Aweber is their customer service. With the amount of fees that I am paying, I feel I should receive a better customer service. Talking to them feel like talking to a robot. Help from customer service does not help at all.