Aweber Review

Posted by Miles Evans

Aweber has been in the autoresponder business for 6 years and they are the first program I tested a number of years ago, when I first got involved with online marketing. Since then their remotely hosted solution has become more and more powerful, making it a top choice for those seeking a solution managed by a third party. Prices are very fair at $19.95/month allowing anyone to be up and running within minutes.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4/5
Visit Aweber’s Home Page

One of the things that I really like about Aweber is they have some of the best help/support in the business. When I first got started with autoresponders I was completely lost. I was surprised to find that an Aweber professional answered all of my questions very promptly and efficiently. Even better Aweber has recently added 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. I found it very easy to navigate and find the tool I was looking for. The initial landing page contains some quick stats, the help videos I mentioned, and a step by step user guide. It is completely recommended you go over the help feature, which as I said is very good.

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 which we will touch on later.

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-unders, 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 website 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 in the keyster with most services offering lackluster editors or none at all. 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.

Setting up a Mailing List	Broadcasting a Message	Check out these stats!

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 users 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.

I seriously cannot come up with any negatives for Aweber. I think Aweber is a phenomenal tool for anyone looking at automating their lead management or follow-ups, and I am happy to recommend them. As a veteran in the business Aweber in almost every case is leaps and bounds beyond their competition.

Check out the Aweber website for more information on their autoresponder service.

This review was published with permission from the author of this original Aweber review.

Posted Nov 12, 2005 at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Trackback URL | Del.icio.us | DIGG!