Initial Review of Aweber

Email Marketing Software, “Aweber” – The Initial Review.

INITIAL REVIEW – IMPORTANT NOTES:
As I review email marketing software, often times, I’ll give my raw “Initial Review”.  It’s not very structured — it’s just what I experienced when I tried it for the first time.

I like to think that I’m a pretty good judge of character in people — and a good judge of software.  First impressions are important in both — so, I want to give you my first impressions.

So, without further adieu, here is my “INITIAL IMPRESSION REVIEW” of Aweber.

AWeber:  The Initial Review…

Summary:  Pretty much ever marketer I know in the Affiliate Marketing Space is using Aweber.  It’s inexpensive, very easy to use and apparently has GREAT Delivery.

My take:  “Nice and simple — but, since it’s targeted to small businesses, you’d think a few things would be easier.”

I signed up, and within an hour I had already setup 3 webforms, and deployed 2 of them on 2 different sites.

The interface was relatively simple and easy to understand. The layout is very intuitive, and they offer a good “getting started” welcome screen that should help most beginners.  Better still, they offer “how to get started:  live demo” on Tuesdays & Thursdays.

Also, I liked how they remind you that you must complete a certain step that corresponds with a task you’re completing.  Like:  You haven’t set a “reply to address, (you need to do this now)”, etc.  Very helpful.

There are plenty of getting started tutorials, in the format that you prefer: videos, an HTML version and a PDF version – so you can follow along with the help to get started as you see fit.

There seem to be some pretty comprehensive “advanced” features that are applicable to many small businesses –  like “email parser”:  This feature lets specific shopping carts, or paypal, etc., send receipts to your Aweber address for your customer list, and will parse out the data from their receipt into your email system.  That way, you know what they purchased, who they are, and they’ll receive your followups for that list.  Pretty nice and simple integration with a cart, if you ask me.

But, I do have a few critiques.

Using my home address by default in the footer.
I entered my personal information upon signup, because the instructions read “just for billing purposes”, won’t be shared.  However, upon receiving my first broadcast sent from Aweber, I saw my home address in the footer.

YIKES!  That was freaky, because as of deploying my webforms, I already had a couple subscribers — and they have my home address now.  Whew – glad I caught that!  (It’s actually very easy to set the global property of “footer” — I just wish they’d have asked first, or warned me to check it.)

Expected some additional simplification.
Also, since “everyone” I know uses (and many of them Love) Aweber, I really thought a few things would have been much easier. Like:

1) WebForms – No Good “Plug and Go” Templates.
You can easily create webforms via the included editor software (basically, like MS Word).

However, I expected to see several template options (nicely designed, with selectable button texts, editable headings, body text and / or call to action.

2) “Name” vs. “First name” and “Last Name”
By default, webforms use “name” and “email” as fields.  Is “name” the full name, or the “first name”? I couldn’t tell.

I want to be sure to have first and last names in *separate* fields.  The easiest way, that I could uncover, was to add a custom field for “last name”, and change the label of “name” to “first name”.  It’s odd to create a custom field for “last name”, as it’s a global field.  There is just no way of selecting the global fields that are available, and editing the label.

3) WebForm Popup Options – Missing one important frequency filter
I like the multiple popup options for the webforms.  There are plenty.  I happen to prefer the “Lighbox Hover” version.  I also like how they offer A/B testing of your WebForms — very important in optimizing your subscription conversions.

They also offer a few options for frequency of the pop up per visitor – but, they miss one important one, which is (narratively):  “Don’t show the popup to my current subscribers”.  Why would I want my subscribers to be inited again to subscribe?  It’s just confusing.  But, for those who didn’t subscribe in the last 3 visits — sure, I want to re-suggest that they subscribe.  It’s a catch 22.

Templates are available, but, hmmm.
I guess I’m being extra picky here.  They have plenty of templates, and these should work for most small businesses.  I don’t know..  I just wasn’t too impressed.  But then again, I need to give it another look.

What?  No Surveys?
I was expecting to be able to send followup surveys to my subscribers.  I don’t know why I expected it — surveys are not on their feature list.  But, Aweber has been around so long, it just seemed natural that they’d provide surveys for lists, so list owners can learn more about individual subscribers, and set targeted followups to these subscribers based on their survey responses.

Hmmm… Targeted followups?  I’ll have to check, but I don’t think that’s a feature that’s in the software.

Reporting is simple.
If you’re looking for a powerhouse reporting system – I didn’t see it.  However — the basics of *what you need* are there.  So, if you don’t need crazy analytics, then the default reports are very sufficient.

Branding – well, kind of…
You can set your own “please check your email and confirm” page, on your own domain, as you can with the “thank you for confirming your subscription”.  That’s a great first step.

However, it doesn’t appear that there is any branding of the click URLs, or the unsubscribe urls’.  (NOTE:  I was wrong about this, see the comment below from Justin, a really nice guy from Aweber, who explains how it works.  So they DO have branding, I just didn’t know it during my initial review.)

Now the good news:  DELIVERABILITY.
Since delivery is such an absolutely critical element of email marketing software — I must say:  Even though you can’t brand your messages as much as I’d prefer, they seem to have a strong handle on their mail servers, and ensuring delivery into the INBOX of your subscribers.

At the end of the day — inbox delivery is the only thing that matters.

All the branding in the world is nothing, if your subscribers never see it.

Since all subscribers to your lists in Aweber are double opt in (meaning, subscribers must confirm via a link that’s sent to their email address before they’re officially on your list):  (a) your lists are “clean” with valid email addresses of subscribers who took the extra step to confirm their intent to receive your communication, and (b) Aweber can have good relations with ISP’s and such — because they can ensure to everyone that all mail coming from their servers are sent to subscribers who have explicitly requested, and confirmed, their consent to receive email from those lists — and, Aweber doesn’t clog up ISP’s with invalid email messages.  This, in a nutshell, means:  Good Delivery to the Inbox of your subscribers.

Well, this is my initial review.  I’ll have more, I’m sure, as I explore Aweber further.

However, my gut says that this solution will work very well for most small businesses — particularly if (a) you don’t mind using their defaults, or (b) you’re a little tech saavy and can make cosmetic changes on your own.

I say:  Give it a try!

A good friend of mine often says, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”

In this situation, I agree with him.  Really – Give Aweber a test drive, by filling out the form below.  I may have been a little harsh on the review, but I’m very picky.  This software works for a majority of internet marketers that I know, and almost 50,000 small businesses.  Seriously – try it.  (AND PLEASE — let me know what you think!)