AWeber Autoresponder - Spam Compliant Follow Ups and Newsletters

At 1stChoice one of the most common questions we are asked is what mailing list system do you recommend or what is the best newsletter system to use.

After trying many of them ourselves we stumbled across Aweber which was recommended by one of our clients who does a lot of mailings and follow ups. Aweber is a remotely hosted system which means that you are not at risk of loosing your ISP or your hosting space due to complaints from Spam Cop and other organizations which are getting tighter and tighter unless your list is double opt in and complies with closed loop opt-in policy, as described at http://www.spamhaus.org/mailinglists.html.

One of the things that we found useful with Aweber is the support system which comes with flash demonstrations for almost every task you could want to accomplish. A very nice touch for those new to these types of tools.

The Aweber interface has a tabbed view for navigation and includes descriptions of all the major sections. Aweber is very easy to navigate unlike other auto responder / newsletter systems we have used in the past for our own business

Aweber has all the features you would expect from a professional autoresponder, including: unlimited autoresponders, unlimited campaigns, unlimited follow-ups, unlimited broadcasts, a sweet inline message editor, message scheduler, and much more. Aweber also has several features that many other products neglect

As expected creating your user list is a breeze. You can manually enter contacts, import them, snag them via your inbox, or like most of us collect them via a form. Aweber also has the best form generation tool in the business allowing pop-ups, pop-under’s, on exit popups, the ubiquitous un-blockable DHTML slide in pop-up, and more. Creating your form for email collection is simple and requires only 1 line of javascript in your web site to operate. Additionally Aweber supports 25 custom forms for collecting useful data like your subscribers name, gender or location. Where Aweber really surprised me was its ability to segment my email lists based on criteria. For example I was able to single out all of my female users and name a list based on this choice for use in my mailings. Super handy.

Building my actual emails is always a pain and something i have tended to put off until now. I’m happy to report that Aweber is an all-in-one solution with a great inline editing tool. Creating a message for my autoresponder (Aweber calls this a follow-up) was as simple as using any typical WYSIWYG editor like Microsoft Word. As an added bonus Aweber recently included a handy spell checker eliminating the need for an external editor completely. Also included is the ability to easily add any of your custom fields to your emails adding a real personal touch to your efforts. To finish up your autoresponder you can choose when the message will be delivered, ie: immediately or after x number of days. As mentioned you can have an unlimited amount of these follow-ups, dramatically increasing your effectiveness.

Along with the autoresponder you also have access to the broadcast feature. Broadcast messages are messages that you can compose and send to your entire list of AWeber leads at any time. Broadcast messages are independent of the autoresponse and follow up messages that your AWeber account sends out. Sending broadcast messages does not in any way effect your autoresponder or follow up messages. If you are using your AWeber account as a mailing list tool, to send newsletters or ezines you will use the broadcast message feature frequently. Its worth pointing out that some products do not include this ability and operate solely as an autoresponder.

Now for some advanced features. Aweber includes the ability to record if your email was opened, or if anyone clicked any of the links in your message. You may also add attachments to your mailings which may be essential for some users. I think one of the most useful features I have not seen anywhere else is Aweber’s ability check your message based on its Spam Assassin score. Spam Assassin is a spam filter employed on many webservers, so if your message passes the filter you are likely okay. This is very good stuff and should increase your delivery success rate a great deal. Some other advanced features include: An email parser allowing you to extract data from emails into your lists, and some automation tools allowing you to remove a subscriber from one list and add them to another based on a pre-determined action, ie: a sale. Initially many user’s won’t use some of these features but it sure is nice that they are included.

Last I will cover Aweber’s reporting tools which were hands down the best I came across in all my reviews. When you click the Reports tab you are presented with a beautiful graph detailing everything you could want to know about your campaigns including: daily, weekly, and monthly new leads, broadcast stats, subscribe method, and even verification times. Any stats junkies will be nodding their heads in appreciation when they come across this page.

We highly recommend Aweber to any of our clients and could probably write an ebook on it.

Why not visit the official Aweber site and take it for a free trial