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I’ve been using Aweber for my mailing lists across many of my sites for a number of years. I have an internal list processor that I use for Sunshine Rewards (combined with Mandrill for delivery), but I use Aweber for everything else. I know a lot of affiliates and bloggers go back and forth on which newsletter companies to use, but here are some of the reasons that I keep my list on Aweber.
Customer Service
I won’t lie and say that I haven’t had any problems at all with my newsletters. When I have had problems, Aweber has given me MULTIPLE ways to contact them. I’ve talked to them via email, on Twitter, and even on the phone when I was really having problems. When I am paying for a monthly service, I want to be able to get in touch with someone to get my problems resolved! So far, they have helped me resolve every problem that I have had.
Affiliate Marketing
Aweber is a pretty integral part of the affiliate marketing community. Their terms (unlike some other newsletter providers) do not exclude affiliate marketers. In fact, they exhibit and speak at Affiliate Summit, have their own internal affiliate program, and even allowed me to moderate a panel on affiliate marketing at their first conference last year (ASCEND Summit). When affiliate marketing is your business, it’s good to have partners that understand as much about it as you do.
Reputation
I’m not alone in my love of Aweber. I see so many of my friends using them and when I ask other people what they use, Aweber is one of the top 2 or 3 that always get mentioned. The ones who do NOT use Aweber usually say it is because their list was not double opt-in. But Aweber has done away with the requirement that imported lists be double opt-in. So I bet even more people will now be switching.
Tools
I’m not incredibly high tech, but I have some high tech demands for my sites. I need WordPress integration, widgets, light boxes, blog broadcasts, and more. In fact, I even found a way to turn my deal posts in my VBulletin forum into an RSS feed that is now a Daily Deal email on Sunshine Rewards. Talk about repurposing content! (You can see how I did that in my post Combine Tools to Streamline Work and Reach Customers.) I also like the archive pages for my newsletters and the ability for them to be shared easily.
Price
When I started out, my lists were VERY small. It was nice to be able to pay a small monthly fee when I wasn’t making much off of my lists. As my lists have grown, I have not moved up very much in my monthly fee but I have been able to really expand to offer multiple lists for different sites. I can control my costs by deleting out unsubscribes, undeliverables, and people who just aren’t interacting with the emails (especially for my niche sites where I use contests to generate signups).
And what is the very best price? Free!! Because that is how much their trial is now. You can sign up for free and get in there and really get your hands dirty seeing what it can do for you. You actually get an entire month free (which is longer than a lot of free trials these days). Or you can take an even bigger discount by getting a whole quarter for only $32.67 (versus $49).
So what are you waiting for? Jump in there and grab your free trial and see if Aweber is the email marketing solution for you.
It was great to read about Aweber. But it is a bit expensive than other email marketing tools. As per my personal experience, Getresponse rocks.
I’ll need to give this a shot. Email lists are like gold in my area. For whatever reason, people really, relly love them for digital marketing. I think it just makes more sense to the old-timers than, say, digital billboards and search marketing.