I am thinking about switching to aweber at the time of this writing. The only problem is that I currently automatically add buyers into another autoresponder with my current email software.

asking for a second time after they buy may be an issue.

Franck
Franck Silvestre´s last blog ..Commission Blueprint Two By Steve Clayton And Tim Godfrey

I’m thinking of signing up for Aweber at the moment, even though my blog is still small, and I have VERY small numbers of traffic. Still not sure that I want to pay for a service yet… (unless the numbers pick up anyway, and until I’m sure that I’m going to make money from all this Internet stuff anyway!)

It’s so easy to spend a heap of cash in this industry – hosting plans, keyword research tools, article spinners, blog networks, links, auto-responders… I’m guessing if things are free, it’s for a reason, but it can soon add up!

So I was thinking about trying out a free one in the meantime. are there any that you recommend, or perhaps that could be a future blog post? I love stopping by your blog, your posts are easy to follow and understand. Good luck with the Internet venture, wishing you success.
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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.

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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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.

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

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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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

@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.

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.

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

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.

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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Good job they happen early on I think.

@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.

- PMG

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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

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

@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.

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

Heartfelt thanks.

Evan

Evans last blog post..How to Communicate

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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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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.

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I love your wordpress theme – what is it?

Rick

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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

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!

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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

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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