Every website should have a subscribe by email option.
Feedburner seems to be the standard for delivering content via RSS and email – I know I’ve been using Feedburner for years and I still recommend their service. They provide an easy option for readers to subscribe, and they render some good analytics.
So why the switch?
I’m all about growing your email list. Aweber gives me the flexibility to customize a few options, track open rates, and more. For those folks that subscribed to this blog via Feedburner, it’s still business as usual and you’ll continue to get updates there. But moving forward, I’m using Aweber for both my newsletter and the blog subscription via email.
Why I switched to Aweber to manage my blog’s email list:
1. Instant ebook delivery.
With Aweber, I can easily deliver a copy of my ebook to new subscribers. It works as an incentive piece to get new site visitors to subscribe via email. With Aweber, I can create a simple “follow up” email and deliver the ebook as a pdf attachment. In addition,
2. I can customize a welcome email for new subscribers.
I love that I can customize the content in my welcome email to new subscribers. Currently, mine reads:
You’re all set and should start receiving fresh new content just as soon (typically 2-3 times per week).
In the meantime, you might want to dive into some of my free foundational tutorials that set the stage for what I write about on a regular basis:And of course, don’t forget to check out the podcast with my co-host Stacey Soleil (@staceysoleil) for tons of great interviews with well known social media thought leaders.
Talk to you soon!
It’s short. It’s simple. It’s personal. And what’s great is that by doing things this way, I can re-direct people to my cornerstone content while they wait to receive fresh new content as it’s published.
3. I can customize the subscription process.
This is a simply, yet powerful touch. With Aweber, I can customize my subscription process. So when someone registers, they’re redirected to a “confirm your subscription” page. Then, once they’re done confirming their subscription, they’re taken to a short Thank You page. This way, with the Thank You page, I can control the content I link people to as I did with my welcome email.
4. Test emails and tack open rates.
With Aweber, I love that I can test emails before I send them. I do this with both my newsletter and now, blog updates to make sure everything reads properly and to do a quick edit. Can I improve the title? Do I need to restructure my content? Basically, I do this to see how/where I can improve my emails before sending them out.
The other thing I like is that I can track my open rates. Every time a broadcast is sent out, I get stats on how many people (and who) opened my email and how many people clicked on the links contained in my emails. This way, I know who’s responsive. From there, I can do all kinds of things. I know who’s most responsive to my emails, I can split-test emails to try different title variations and more. Though this feature is insightful, I’m also careful about obsessing over it too much. But I do like that I can gauge what’s working and what’s not based on my open rates.
Overall Aweber Features:
- You can send out automatic follow-up emails
- You can set up your subscription for instant ebook delivery
- You can send out blog updates automatically
- You can choose from hundreds of well designed web form templates
- Monitor who signs up and from where (on your sidebar, on a post, on a page, etc.)
- Test emails before you send them
These are just some of the more prominent features that I like about Aweber. There’s tons more I’m leaving out I’m sure, but these are the ones that stand out (and are important) to me. If you’re thinking of giving Aweber a test-drive, now you know what you can do…
What do you think about Aweber?
What are you using for your email marketing? Have you considered making the jump to Aweber? Do you currently use Aweber for your email subscriptions? What features do you like best?
If you have any questions about Aweber, just drop it in the comments and I’ll do my best to help.
I have been using @aweber:twitter for all of my email hosting for awhile now and I do enjoy them a lot. I just like having control over my subscribers more than anything else. Instead of just them only receiving blog updates I offer them their weekly ebook along with their “how to” email that goes over special strategies to use to increase website traffic.
Yep, I hear ya there. Ultimately, it’s the control and flexibility in doing those sorts of things that I’m a fan of.
Nothing against free services like Feedburner (I love them and will always recommend it), but it’s time to upgrade ya know.
Yeah the more control you have over your lists, blog, and technical encounters the better things would be down the line. Their are a lot of free services out there but then you don’t get the best customer service sometimes and also it just tends to get messed up somehow.
Agreed! There’s lots you can’t do with free… There comes a point where you outgrow it and you need to do just a little bit more.
So glad to see the switch! You’re going to love AWeber. 🙂
Just a quick side note. AWeber doesn’t let you import a list yourself, but they’ll do it manually if you ask them. As long as you can prove that your email addresses did a double opt-in to the original list, they’ll honor that.
You can download a CSV of your Feedburner list, buzz the AWeber staff, and transfer everything to AWeber overnight.
Yep, all set there. Aweber’s been pretty solid with me 🙂
Can’t recall how long I’ve been a user and mainly just lazy to transfer things over up until this point, heh.
Wait a sec. Now you’ve got me confused haha.
“For those folks that subscribed to this blog via Feedburner, it’s still business as usual and you’ll continue to get updates there.”
What do you mean by that, exactly? Sounds to me like your subs will be getting updates via AWeber now …
What took you so long? We’ve been waiting. 😉
Haha! Honestly, laziness. It’s been on my To Do List, amongst other things. Only now getting to it I guess.
I go through these fits where I have to tear things down and mess things up around here. I’ve finally settled on a theme that I like (the Minimum Child Theme) from StudioPress. It was time, to clean things up and set that subscription process up, heh.
I switched to AWeber about 2 months ago from Constant Contact. I had been happy with CC, but wanted to integrate email with my membership plugin (WishList Member).
I’m really impressed by the amount of information available to me, the flexibility of the features, and the amazing way I can keep in touch with my community. It’s a great service, but it’s also more of a technical challenge. I’ve used their support twice, with great experiences both times. I still feel like I’m in treading water with it, but trust that as I do new things for the first time, that feeling will diminish.
Hi Charlene,
You know, as much as I dig Aweber, I have to admit, it’s not exactly the easiest platform for non-technical users. I consider myself fairly technical. I can learn and work my way around, but even I hit a few walls with Aweber at first and heck, I’m still figuring new things out.
I’ve never used Constant Contact, so I’m curious, aside from the Wishlist Member integration, which product would you use simply based on features, templates and over-all usability? Still Aweber? Or does Constant Contact do the trick? I only ask because folks ask me what I think about Constant Contact ALL the time and I don’t have an answer 😛
Constant Contact is great for people who are just wanting to send out an email newsletter. They have a wide range of templates. Their user interface is a bit cludgy, and I had to clean up the HTML frequently. So completely non-technical business people would do well to hire someone to input their newsletter articles into their template for them.
Now that I’ve seen what AWeber can do, I couldn’t go back. I mean, conversion rates for signup form! Simplified A/B testing! Autoresponders that couldn’t be easier to create and schedule.
AWeber doesn’t have an many templates as CC, and that is a limitation. They count color variations as separate templates which I think is cheating. CC doesn’t count color variations in the same theme as a new theme! But I can totally customize my website signup form, including background images and adding/removing form sections. AWeber’s user interface also messes up the HTML, so I’m also doing cleanup there.
Hope that detail helps.
Hey Charlene,
Thanks for the thorough response! Now, I do have to say though, it sounds like both interfaces are a bit “cludgy” for all users. It sounds like they each have their own learning curve for sure, but for those that need to get serious about their email marketing, I think it comes out to be a worthwhile investment.
What does surprise me is that Constant Contact doesn’t have simple things like analytics/conversion rates on web forms (which by the way is one of my favorite features). Things like that give me an indication of what’s working and what’s not so I can adjust accordingly. You know?
Anyway, thanks for the thorough feedback!
Hi there, read your post with interest since I want to make the jump from CC to AW. My concern is this: I have a static site built by someone else who I pay for every single change. While the site does have a not-used WordPress blog page, it is mostly a static site with all sorts of pages and archives of the first 18 months of my emailed newsletters that I sent out with CC.
I am building my own wordpress site now to have the control, and want to transfer everything over to the WordPress site. My problem is this: the last year’s worth of my newsletters that I’ve emailed my list via CC are housed on CC, and I don’t want to pay to have them transferred to the static site. Do you know how I might be able to get them off of CC and onto both the WordPress site, and also how my new site visitors will be able to see the older newsletter archives?
Thanks for any help you can give me! BTW, I did very much enjoy using CC, except for the shortcomings that Charlene mentioned. I’ve used them for 2.5 years now. I’m ready to begin an autoresponder campaign and know that CC doesn’t have that capability, hence the jump to AWeber.
Great stuff. I love blog posts like this, and as a feedburner user myself, I’m going to need to check out aweber for several blogs moving forward. Thanks for sharing.
Hey Will,
I’m very much a big fan of Feedburner and still use them by default on all my websites. But when you need a little bit more (like I felt I do here), I think Aweber delivers. Anyway, thanks for the comment!
Ricardo, quick question. I currently deliver my blog posts through Feedburner would you recommend switching to Aweber RSS-to-Email solution?
Ricardo, quick question. I currently deliver my blog posts through Feedburner would you recommend switching to Aweber RSS-to-Email solution?
Would love to see a screencast on this.
thanks for this nice post.
I have been searching for a RSS feed to email alternative to Feedburner and it was right in front of me all this time! I love aWeber. They have great video tutorials so I am sure this will be easy to get going.
I do love most of Googles tools but I have had some validation issues with FeedBurner and my WordPress guy has suggested not using Feedburner.