aweber review

Aweber Review – The Leading E-marketing Solution

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In this Aweber review, we take an in-depth look at one of the most popular solutions for designing and sending HTML e-newsletters. We’ll go through the pros and cons of Aweber and discuss its pricing, features, templates, interface and more.

Overview

AWeber’s suite of easy-to-use email marketing and automation tools has helped more than 1 million entrepreneurs, small businesses and nonprofits. Turn passive prospects into loyal customers with mobile-responsive email newsletters, engaging automated email campaigns, subscriber segmentation and management, subscriber signup forms, and more.

Take advantage of our award-winning 24/7 customer support, 450+ integrations and free mobile apps to grow and manage your email lists.

Overall rating: 4.5 out of 5

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what is aweber

Overview of AWeber 

AWeber is a very popular marketing solution even for the most hardcore of email marketers. The platform comes with superior autoresponders that make customer engagement and interaction easier than before. The system also boasts with advanced options for integration, including leading business tools and systems such as Zendesk, Salesforce, WordPress, PayPal, LeadPages, and WordPress, to name a few.

Customer support is also a huge highlight for AWeber. The company deploys a team of email marketing professionals who are highly knowledgeable, responsive, and effective. For those who are new to email marketing, AWeber offers regular live webinars for added instruction and training.

Access to data and reports also gives you the insight you need to make better decisions, devise and implement better strategies, and achieve success.

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But how exactly does AWeber support your team? You can use it to manage contacts in a flexible and effective way, create successful and visually attractive campaigns, and create personalized subscriber lists. On the list, you can add 10 contacts per form, inserting their records full of contact and behavior information.

Nevertheless, AWeber will do more than simply categorizing contacts – it will provide you an insight on where customers are coming from and whether they’ve bought a product or subscribed for a service. Thanks to such historical overview, the user can make smarter and more informed business decisions.

When it comes to creating campaigns, AWeber offers a slightly different mechanism than similar marketing systems. You can use it to create follow-up series and autoresponders, and build your own, personalized messages with a handy drag-and-drop tool.

Premade templates are available, but users are encouraged to design their own, more business-specific ones.

how does Aweber work

How Does AWeber Work?

AWeber offers a service to help businesses communicate more effectively and profitably with prospects and customers. Our customers utilize our permission only email marketing service to establish and maintain profitable relationships.

How does AWeber help small businesses?

Whether you’re an entrepreneur operating an on-line business or on location, paid advertisement can cost a pretty penny, often with a low conversion rates.

What are you doing with the expensive prospects that arrive at your doorstep?  What if they take a look at what you offer and aren’t ready to purchase immediately?  Do you have any way to follow up with them?

AWeber provides a service to help build relationships that convert first-time visitors into loyal customers.

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features of aweber
AWeber Features

  • Awesome Customer Support

The backbone of AWeber’s appeal is its dedication to helping you use their stuff. They’re equipped with a friendly support team that’s available 12 hours per day, 5 days a week.

They have customer support agents that available via phone, live chat M-F (8 am – 8 pm EST)  Weekends (9 am to 5 pm EST) and email support that gets real answers in less than 24 hours.

I’ve contacted Aweber customer support several times to ask questions, and I’ve always found their staff to be very knowledgeable.

  • Simple Drag and Drop Campaign Builder

Aweber allows you to create very simple automations with its campaign builder.

The builder allows you to create automated follow-up sequences using an easy to use drag-and-drop interface. Where the automations come into play is the ability to add (or remove) tags.  Tags can be automatically added to subscribers who either open an email or click specific links in an email.

Then based on the tags a particular subscriber has, you can create a more targeted follow-up sequence.

While not as powerful or flexible as other competitors, I found the UI to be quite intuitive and an improvement over their old legacy interface.

  • Create Multiple Forms

Probably the easiest method for growing your email list is the idea of using a content upgrade.

A content upgrade is a highly relevant bonus content like a cheat-sheet or checklist that’s closely related to one of your blog posts. People can get access to that it in exchange for their email address.

While Aweber uses an outdated list-based system, it does allow you to create multiple forms for each list. This ultimately enables you to have multiple content upgrades on your site and have everyone go to the same list.

Compared this to Mailchimp, where you are only allowed to create one form per list which forces you to create a list for every content upgrade you offer on your site (not fun).

>> Try Aweber & See Its Awesome Features by Yourself! <<

  • Creating Automated Campaign

AWeber treats emails a little differently from other services. There are different processes for creating Follow-up Series, which are essentially the auto-responders mentioned above, Broadcast messages, and Blog Broadcasts. Follow-up emails are sent automatically every time a new user is added, and Broadcast messages are one-time messages, such as newsletters.

Blog Broadcast grabs posts from a blog and compiles them into a newsletter form. You can also create your own mail templates using the Email Template Manager, where you can customize existing templates or write your own using AWeber’s API.

I decided to create a Broadcast message. AWeber opened a message builder where I could drag in elements and change the text. I had become so used to working with email templates that this new builder template threw me for a loop for a bit. But it was still easy to create and test my messages.

Once you’re satisfied with your newsletter, you can send it right away or schedule it for a later time. I couldn’t find an option to send campaigns at a specific local time based on a recipient’s location, as you can with GetResponse.

  • Tracking Campaigns

Once you’ve sent your broadcast, you can track its success through the Reporting tool. For each campaign, you can see the open and click rate as well as the number of replies and unsubscribes. There’s no Google Analytics integration, but there is a very helpful step-by-step guide on how to use Google Analytics on a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) basis with AWeber.

AWeber has one of the most extensive sets of reports I’ve ever seen in an email marketing tool. Available reports include list opens over time, list clicks over time, new subscribers, subscriber growth, ad tracking, subscriber location, follow-up statistics, and more.

  • User Interface

The AWeber user interface is clean and pleasing to the eye. There is a logical menu, and there is always help on hand.

I’ve broken the home screen into four sections so you can see what I mean.

The first section highlights the main components of the system: Messages, Lists, and Subscribers. The information on this screen gives you an overview of your account across these areas. And it has contrasting green buttons so you can take action.

The second section highlights three different types of help that are available: Webinar, Video and Online Guide. This shows AWeber catering to how different people prefer to learn.

The third section gives you a quick overview of your subscriber stats. Each List displays its own stats, so be sure to choose the correct List at the top of the page. You also get a glance of upcoming Broadcasts (the name AWeber use for the different types of email message you send to your subscribers).

And finally, the fourth section provides information on any recently sent broadcasts plus the latest stats on your selected List (top of the page).

  • Message Types

Messages in AWeber used to be called Broadcasts. Now they use the term Broadcasts for one type of message.

From the main Messages tab in the top menu you can access each of the different types of message.

  • Drafts

The Drafts page is like a holding page where you can store your draft messages, plus it also shows your active campaign messages.

I love the ‘Copy to List’ feature. If you happen to have created a message under the wrong list, you can copy it to the correct one. Believe me; this is an easy mistake, and this is a quick solution!

What I also like is the fact that the system saves your messages to this draft status. From here you can send a test, schedule a broadcast or add to your follow up series.

  • Legacy Follow Up Series

Follow Ups are also known as Autoresponders. For most people, they are a fundamental part of email marketing automation.

For example, you can use these to start a welcome series of emails to new subscribers, or to deliver a subscriber-only email course like the Snackable Writing Course from Henneke.

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aweber pros and cons

AWeber – Pros & Cons

Pros

First, let’s look at some of the advantages of using AWeber. There are quite a number of them, which is hardly surprising. After all, AWeber is one of the most popular email marketing software, especially among bloggers and Internet marketers.

  • Simple to Create and Deliver

In general, email marketing tools are great because they provide an alternate and simplified marketing process. They kind of revolutionized the marketing industry by providing a faster yet more affordable way of communicating with customers (existing and potential).

I mean compare traditional marketing like TV and print ads to email marketing and you will realize that email marketing offers a faster and more flexible marketing tool.

The only thing is that you (and your team) would need to run the campaign yourself. Hence having an easy-to-use tool is crucial. AWeber understands this and has developed a control panel that makes navigation simple.

  • Customizability

This is very true in AWeber’s case, where they have over 150 customizable professional templates, where you get to decide if you prefer a single or multiple-column design or whether blue color scheme is more appropriate than red.

If you prefer to create an email template of your own, by all means, go ahead. AWeber even provides you a drag and drop interface to help you do so!

  • Easy to Manage

Features like subscribers management & tracking and segmentation are some of the benefits that you can expect from AWeber.

You would want to view the analysis results of your email campaign in order to plan your subsequent steps as well as enhance your future campaigns. Information like which links were clicked and how much revenue was generated are pretty important in influencing business decisions.

AWeber provides these analyses through easy to understand charts. You will be able to see what worked and what didn’t, visually!

  • Maximum Delivery Results

One of the biggest concerns of email marketers is un-deliverability. In layman terms, your emails failed to deliver! You want as many of the emails to be delivered to your recipients rather than sitting in their spam folders, right?

This is where AWeber comes in handy. Compared to many other email marketing tools (especially free ones), AWeber’s deliverability is pretty amazing. While it generally depends on a few things like the nature of your products and how you word your email subject and content, some entrepreneurs reported up to 98% success rate, which is fantastic.

You see, AWeber proactively analyze the email campaigns for potential spam issues and thus, you are able to edit them BEFORE it becomes spam. Aweber’s servers also have very high credibility and thus helps in getting your emails through spam filters easily.

Cons

Now, not all email marketing users have the same requirements and budget. Therefore, there are bound to be some who find AWeber’s features inadequate or irrelevant. Some of these potential disadvantages may include the following.

  • Pricing

There are a few other email marketing tools which are cheaper and even offering their services for free, for example MailChimp and Constant Contact. AWeber doesn’t have any free trials. Their best offer is a $1 trial for the first month. Even this is applicable for their monthly plan only and not their quarterly and yearly plans.

  • No Videos

You are unable to send videos through the emails on AWeber. Instead, you will need to upload it onto a video sharing website like YouTube or perhaps your blog and then send these links in the emails. Actually, this is not much of a problem unless there is a special reason why you insist the video to be embedded in the email.

is aweber scam

Is AWeber a scam? No.

If you’re looking for information about our features, take a look at our features page. You can always review our terms of service or anti-spam policy if you would like to see a full explanation of the kinds of things that we allow and do not allow.

For anyone who has more general questions about the nature of our business, here’s a quick overview of what we do and don’t do here at AWeber.

What Does AWeber Do?

  • AWeber is an email marketing service. We help small businesses build, maintain, and send to email mailing lists. They only send email to subscribers who have requested information from the sender directly, and do not permit any customer to use our service for the sending of spam or any unwanted or unsolicited email.
  • Aweber offers email marketing analysis, news, and advice on our blog, covering topics ranging from newsletter design to overarching marketing strategy.

    Start Building Your Email List Today

What Doesn’t AWeber Do?

  • Aweber does not provide products for sale by our customers – they generally assume that their customers already have some kind of business plan and are using our service to help them promote that plan and educate website visitors about their organization.
  • Aweber is not a “business-in-a-box” service. They help customers manage their email marketing campaigns, but other aspects of their business (their website, their products or services, etc.) are up to customers.
  • Aweber does not trade, rent, or sell subscribers’ information or email addresses. As their business is built on reputation and trust, it is in their best interests to keep customer’s information private.

What About Spamming?

AWeber has turned out to be “THE” auto responder of selection for a lot of network marketers as well as companies However there is a good question to be considered, is AWeber spam? also is it probable this autoresponder may damage your company? In today’s article I go through in extra detail whether this may genuinely enhance your online business and how?

AWeber can dispatch emails of your choice on a daily routine to a chosen group of people completely on autopilot that may save marketers hours and hours posting emails to separate prospects. This is fantastic however how could you be sure these emails are not thought of as AWeber spam also could you along with your business finally acquire the chop?

AWeber’s crucial beneficial factor is it provides you the equipment in order to build a list of interested leads and customers. It subsequently allows you to continue marketing to every one who has registered their name plus email address into the opt in box which will be placed on your website. Once you have completed all your relevant content, emails are sent each and every day/week / month or at whatever time you choose.

This enables you to mail frequent reminders to all on your list that you still have fantastic products/services & significance etc that you and your business could give. If your business is online Marketing/Blogging etc your autoresponder emails will give guidance on ways to expand a Internet based business using tools like go daddy domains, Traffic Geyser etc (do not overlook to incorporate your affiliate links).

If your business is advertising products your emails possibly will consist of how your products are a must have. If your business is some type of service your emails would reflect why your service could be the greatest option for the consumer.

People might not continually purchase on first sight which means as soon as they are ready then they will most likely recall you and could be capable to get in contact easily. By marketing in this way you could be able to go on marketing to prospective customers and prospects which can be valuable for any type of business.

So is this considered as AWeber spam? “NO” customers and leads choose to opt in with there name and email address so this will not be considered as AWeber spam.

However! there will be still rules and procedures which must be followed to avoid being given the chop. If somebody opts into your site thinking that are receiving info beauty and hair products, if prospects all of a sudden receive details on ‘the wild adventures of Ron Jeremy’ then you could be in trouble, this is AWeber spam and you may loose your list plus your site reported as spam.

Altogether customers and leads have the opportunity to unsubscribe from your emails which enables this completely compliant regarding spam regulations.

In closing, used appropriately and courteously AWeber is a fantastic tool. It is a must have for all websites which means if you dont have one you need it. Why wouldn’t you want to catch in some of that traffic that passes by your website every day. You will have the option to put an opt in box in most locations on any website and have as many lists as you want, It is also very straightforward to use with step by step directions.

My experience with AWeber has been excellent, I would strongly recommend you take the $1 test drive. Respect the rules to avoid trouble and create list after list that you shall resume marketing with very minimal effort and time.

AWeber Spam does not have to be an issue for you. Have you heard the expression “The money is in the list”? This will be a great start to building your list.

How does Aweber’s pricing compare to that of its competitors?

In general, Aweber is,

  • significantly cheaper than Campaign Monitor
  • considerably cheaper than iContact
  • roughly the same price as Mailchimp
  • marginally more expensive than Getresponse
  • considerably more expensive than Mad Mimi (note: Mad Mimi’s feature set is much more basic however).

In some cases of course we are comparing apples with oranges, however — all these competing products have different feature sets on each plan, and subscriber limits that will occasionally make Aweber cheaper, occasionally more expensive.

But generally I’d say Aweber is priced roughly in the middle of the e-marketing solution scale. Of course, pricing is not the only factor you should base your decision on…the more important thing to work out is what bang you get for your buck.

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aweber pricing

Pricing

There are 5 different plans on offer — the pricing structure is as follows:

  • Hosting and emailing a list containing up to 500 subscribers: $19 per month (First Month FREE)
  • 501 to 2,500 subscribers: $29 per month
  • 2,501 to 5,000 subscribers: $49 per month
  • 5,001 to 10,000 subscribers: $69 per month
  • 10,001 to 25,000 subscribers: $149 per month

If you have 25,000+ subscribers on your mailing list, you will need to call Aweber for a quotation.

A 14% discount is available if you pay quarterly; a 15% discount is available if you pay annually. There are also some discounts available for students and not-for-profit organisations.

One aspect of Aweber’s pricing structure that potential users might like is that all features are available on all plans — unlike some competing products, you don’t have to be on more expensive plans to unlock certain functionality. The differences in pricing are to do with mailing list size only.

That said, the functionality available on Aweber — as we’ll see below — not necessarily as extensive as you might find in competing email marketing solutions.

what other say

What Others Say About AWeber?

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conclusion

Conclusion

Overall I would say Aweber is a solid email marketing tool.

It’s not the absolute best product of its kind available, but it is reasonably priced, easy to use and contains most of the key features you’d expect from an email marketing solution.

The main aspects of the product that would nudge me in Aweber’s direction are its ease-of-use, web fonts, AMP for email functionality and comprehensive support.

The support aspect may be particularly important for users who are starting out in e-marketing without many technical skills (because problems, should they arise, can be dealt with by talking to a real human being on a real phone line!).

Additionally, Aweber is not too expensive by comparison to some competing products, especially Campaign Monitor and iContact.

The main things that would dissuade me from using Aweber are its relatively basic automation features and the way you can’t broadcast to multiple segments of data at once.

I hope you’ve found this Aweber review. Thank you for spending your valuable time to read this review article and I would be more than happy to see your thoughts in the comments below.

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sources: stylefactoryproductions, capterra, smartbusinesstrends, emailtooltester, pcmag, trustradius, ecommerce-platforms, betterbuys, bloggingwizard, softwarepundit, getapp, fool

14 comments

  1. Hey Ali,
    This was a great site to tell all the pros and cons of the Aweber platform that helps you build your campaigns and make great ads so it can help one other business in the long run. autoresponders are the best thing that people can use when you have such traffic like that.
    So there are great things that come out of all this when you can use it for great campaigns that count into making more conversions awesome topic to help others out to make them get more. This is very informational to all would like to get something like this but a little costly for me right at this moment, but I will be back to get the Aweber E-mail marketing to see if it is something that I would really use.
    I would like to try for myself I don’t judge off of what everyone else does I read and do my research and find the best fit for me and this looks like something that we would use.

  2. Hello – this is a very in depth, detailed review of AWeber. You introduce this email marketing company, give us a very good look at the tools that AWeber offers. You compare these tools to other similar email marketing companies, formats AWeber offers to set up your emailing campaign/s. Also naming another company that has a feature that you didn’t find on AWeber that is very useful. You showed the pricing verses other similar companies, so the viewer could see the affordability. You made a suggestion on how to work around connecting a video to the email, Pros and Cons, highlighting AWeber customer support. This is a very good presentation for AWeber.

  3. Excellent article, Ali! I am new to the online business world, but I am already understanding the importance of garnering and maintaining an audience. It definitely goes without saying that utilizing email and social media will assist in maintaining our current audience and attracting new customers. I had never heard of AWeber before reading your article, but you do an excellent job of breaking it down and outlining its’ pros and cons. I am looking for an effective email directory-based program that will allow me to reach my client base as efficiently (and affordably) as possible. I have bookmarked your website, I am going to share it with my friends and family, and I will certainly continue to visit your site for more content! God bless you!

  4. Thanks for a very thorough and convincing review of AWeber. I have been reading reviews of similar products recently as I will need to venture into the realm of email marketing at some stage, though at present I am still building content and there is not enough traffic yet on my site. I know that for myself I am very resistant towards unsolicited email so when I do this I will be adopting a cautious and I hope respectful approach. You did note that AWeber does not integrate with Google Analytics. I am wondering how confident you can be with a system like AWeber how much of your commissions would be due to this service. Or is it another reflection of one of the oldest sayings in advertising – I know that 50% of my ads have no effect, unfortunately I don’t know which ones. Thanks again for a great review. Andy

    1. Thank you for your comment Andy. Actually there are several platforms for email marketing but my choice is AWeber.
      It’s easy to use and I’ve really seen a positive effects on my revenue after using it. Of course it’s the nature of email marketing but you do need a good email marketing platform as well to put everything in the right place.

      Best,
      Ali

  5. Hi, i must thank you for a very thorough and deep going review of Aweber e-marketing product. This side of online business is completely new to me.
    By your review i have actually learned what this type of marketing is all about. Kudos! You have written the article in a very readable format and i just love the way that you explained the product from both your own experience as well as compared to other similar products. Further the pro´s and con´s are described thoroughly and in my opinion will make a good basis of choosing to try it or not. The article is very clear on what could be improved with the, presented in a very honest way.

    The comparison of the price plans Aweber offer is clear as crystal, which is essential information. There is no doubt what each plan has included. This not always the case in other products.

    Finally, i have to thank you again for an honest article and review of Aweber. From what you have written i would be completely comfortable to take Aweber for a trial run when i am at that specific point in my own online business developement.
    kind regards,
    Roy

  6. Great post. I’ve been meaning to spend more time on email marketing for my business. At the moment I am using MailChimp, however, I am still new so I don’t think i am using it to its potential. Thank you for sharing this great alternative. I will check it out.

  7. Fantastic in depth review from somebody that uses the product so much information on the product the pros and cons what you can and cannot do with the autoresponder I have been looking for a auto responder and will I will giving his one try

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