I’ve mentioned before that I’ve used a quite a few different email newsletter and list services over the past several years. Aweber is the email service I am setting up the majority of my new lists on.
I originally started with Aweber because of how easy it is to set up sequential emails or news lists, otherwise known as autoresponders. What I love is how detailed and granular their statistics are. Seriously, their stats are on steriods.
When I logged in today to set up a new list, I saw that they have expanded their broadcast notification system. The option has been available to notify Twitter for awhile, now you can post a notification on your Facebook profile as well.
This allows Aweber users to notify three sets of contacts with the publication of one email blast: email subscribers, Twitter followers and Facebook fans.
Update September 23, 2010
When I originally posted about this feature, aWeber only provided an option to post to your personal profile. However, they just announced an update that will allow you to select a Facebook fan page to post the notification to.
So if you’ve been on the fence about which email service you should go with, take advantage of their $1 for the first month offer and give aWeber a try.
Thanks for this post! I came here from Google as I was trying to get my head around aweber because I notice a lot of marketers using it online, but have always preferred services like mailchimp myself as I’ve always seem aweber to be a bit “spammy”. But this is a really good explanation of what some of the benefits are, so I may need to rethink!
I am searching about email listing and I come across your site. This is the first time I heard about this aweber,.I think I should try this also thanks for imparting the info.
Thanks for the awesome post,I never new about aweber notifying Twitter followers and Facebook fans that’s awesome,Im going to look more into this
Hey Carla,
Thanks for the kind words about AWeber! “Stats on steroids?” I like it. 🙂
We’re really excited about adding the fan page integration… hope you and all of our other customers get a lot out of it!
@Brand Police – I’d love to hear more about why you think AWeber is “spammy” (as we certainly don’t permit spamming with our service). Drop me a line here or on Twitter if you’d like to chat.
Hi @justinpremick,
No offense meant regarding your service, as I said it was a perception only not a statement of fact, and one where I am starting to see the benefits of your system.
Basically the difference I see with your system vs say Mailchimp that my comment related to was the fact that mailchimp does not allow any email campaigns that in any way involve multi level marketing, whereas I see products advertised all the time from so called “Internet Marketers” that in some cases appear to me fall into this category.
You can pick them a mile away, they are always sent in plain text with obvious aweber links, full of promises and sales pitches. The sort of businesses that have sales pages full of highlighted yellow text, testimonials written in courier new, sales pages that go on forever, that type of thing. I’ve never worked out why, but 95% of the Aweber powered emails I receive are always plain text.
Mailchimp on the other hand is very restrictive in who it allows (it actually didn’t allow ANY affiliate marketing until recently). For example, Mailchimp completely bans ALL purchased lists, where Aweber simply discourages them. The following list of guidelines from Mailchimp disallows or discourages a lot of things I see coming through from Aweber subscribers:
http://www.mailchimp.com/kb/article/is-my-list-okay-to-use-in-mailchimp/
Again please do not take this comment as having a go at your company – more just an observation of the emails I receive from some of your clients which may not be representative of your business or overall subscriber base.
Matt
Matt,
That really has more to do with the type of lists you are on rather than the service itself. My eNewsletter through aWeber is not plain text.
I know what you’re talking about because I’m on a lot of those lists too. But for those who do internet marketing (which is different than multi level marketing) for a living, their money is in their list . . . and I think the fact that the majority use aWeber is telling. So businesses that rely on email getting through go with aWeber.
I’m not sure why so few IM emails are HTML other than maybe it makes it more likely to be caught in a spam filter and that it can be a challenge getting everything to display the same way across multiple email readers. Or maybe it’s that they want to focus the reader on the offer rather than getting distracted by a bunch of flash.
I will say the one thing on my wish list for aWeber is the ability to save your own newsletter template and apply it like you do their predesigned templates. You can copy old mailings where you have used your template, but a personal template library would make it easier.
Carla
All good points Carla,
I’m well aware of the difference between Internet Marketing and Multi Level Marketing, but I definately have seen a few that blur the line come through.
I guess my point was that I mainly see Aweber being used by Internet Marketers and affiliates, many (but of course not all) who come across as a bit “all hype and no substance”. On the other hand I mostly see Mailchimp and Vertical Response etc being used by brinks and mortar businesses and those selling their own product. Others like Constant Contact somewhere in the middle.
As per my previous message I’m not saying Aweber is bad because of their client’s, it’s just a perception (wrong or right) of who the service is suited to.
Matt
@Matt –
Thanks for clarifying – and no offense taken!
We do have some different policies than MailChimp, although I’m not sure where you got the impression that purchased lists were in any way OK at AWeber – we prohibit them across-the-board:
http://www.aweber.com/antispam.htm
http://www.aweber.com/service-agreement.htm
Sounds like we may need to reinforce that more vocally, though. Thanks again for sharing your view on us!
Carla,
I agree – being able to save your own template would be awesome (and it’s on our list of things to add)! One thing you can do in the meantime is save a “template” version of your email as a pending broadcast, and then use the “copy” link that appears next to that message to create new messages using that as a template.
We are currently using aweber autoresponder for our newsletter, It Is an awesome feature and has worked very well updating Twitter and Facebook when we send out a newsletter blast.
Getting followers pretty much always equates to credibility. I feel like in modern day society that many entertainment people are judged by how many follower they have. It’s kind of sad, but true. Whether it be pinterest, twitter, or anything really.
I manage social media for a medium-sized business and I found a pretty cool website that “sells” followers. There are many websites that do this (surprisingly!) but this particular one has targeted followers too: mysocialanswer
PS- Just don’t tell your boss you bought the followers 🙂
Francisco,
Yes, there are a lot of places where you can buy followers (Fiverr included.)
Other than “appearance,” the inflated numbers won’t do much for you if they aren’t actually interested in your topic/business/service etc.
Thanks for sharing! Enjoyed reading it! (: