Following on from yesterday’s post about following up with potential customers, I wanted to give a full review of the Autoresponder I have been using on all my sites for some time - AWeber. I have tried others, and I found GetResponse to be the next best, but AWeber for me comes up trumps.

An autoresponder is, essentially, a program which automatically sends an email when some action is taken. That action could be when someone sends an email, or fills out a web form. This most basic model of an autoresponder works just like a fax-on-demand service, but a service like AWeber goes way beyond this and would be better called an online marketing response system.

With a powerful autoresponder like AWeber, you can build and manage multiple email lists. Those lists can be set up with sequences where set emails are sent to people on the list at set intervals. For example, after joining your list a new contact might receive a welcome email immediately, followed by a follow up email the next day, then a third email after 2 days etc. As well as automated sequences, you are able to send single emails to your list whenever you want. These are known as broadcasts and can be sent immediately, or scheduled for sending at a set time in the future.

So, now you know roughly what an autoresponder is, why would you want one and what would you use it for? Well first off, if you read my post yesterday you’ll know that most people need multiple exposures of a product or service before they buy. Well, an autoresponder makes that very easy to do. Simply add an opt-in form to a webpage so your visitors can request information (could be direct info about the product, or a ‘bribe’ where you offer some valuable incentive like an ebook or a video in a related subject). If you have your autoresponder sequenced well, that visitor now becomes a prospect and starts receiving multiple emails promoting your product (or an affiliate product) without any further input from yourself - your marketing system takes over and earns you money while you sleep!

The next use is to create and deliver content itself. Have you ever seen a ‘7 day crash course’ or ‘28 email lessons’ on a subject offered? Well that type of content would normally be delivered by an autoresponder. Simply write your multi-part course as a series of sequenced emails, and offer it for free - all your visitors have to do in order to receive them is opt-in to your autoresponder! See how powerful that is? You can actually get people to opt-in to your list by offering your autoresponder sequence, and of course after they receive their ‘7 part crash course’ you still have them in your marketing system ready to receive further emails and promotions.

AWeber - The Autoresponder of choice

OK, you’re convinced, you need an autoresponder service, but why choose AWeber? Well, that’s a good question so let’s look at AWeber’s major features one at a time:

Email deliverability. Put simply, deliverability is how many of your emails will actually get through and be read. In these days of spam and users receiving many, many emails every day there are strong blocks and filters placed on mail servers to try and stop non-legitimate email getting through. Since AWeber is so well known and respected in the industry, they manage to get an incredible percentage of their emails through the blocks. They manage this by being very strict about their spam policies and ensuring that only geniune opt-in subscribers are ever sent emails through their system. AWeber was designed and built with Internet Marketers in mind so it is ideally suited to our needs. AWeber really do have an awesome reputation with the ISPs and as such get more emails through than just about anyone else.

Unlimited Autoresponders. That’s right, from your one AWeber account you can create as many lists and sublists as you like. Build up relationships with your subscribers, keep them informed, educate them and more without having to manually resend the emails to each list.

Great customer support. I’ve only had to contact customer support twice and both times I’ve had timely and accurate responses.

Built in analytics. You can test your entire marketing funnel from within the AWeber control panel. Find out which opt-in form works the best, which headlines are working and the best time of day to send your newsletter. All these questions and more can be answered using the built in tools.

Send blog newsletters. You can set your blog RSS feed to send an automated email to your subscribers at set time intervals or whenever you post new content.

Backup. A very simple ‘one click’ backup function is available which means you can rest assured your list will be safe no matter what.

1 month’s free trial. Still not convinced? Well, not to worry. You can try AWeber for a month and if you’re not satisfied you can ask for a full refund. All I can say to that is that I’ve yet to meet a marketer who has tried AWeber and not found it massively useful for their business.

Is AWeber Hard To Use?

I won’t lie to you, there will be a learning curve when you start using AWeber just like there is with any powerful software. At first glance the user interface is not as pretty as GetResponse, but you’ll very quickly get past that and once you’ve learned the basics you’ll find it very intuitive and powerful. It will probably take you a couple of hours to find your way around, go through the basic tutorials and set up your first list and opt-in form. Once you have done that however, you’ll be able to login and perform a task like send a broadcast or create a new form in just a few minutes. You don’t even need to know HTML as you simply fill out the forms and ‘cut and paste’ the code into your pages.

Price

The basic package is $19 per month. As your list grows you’ll have to increase your licence to allow more subscribers, but by then it will be more than paying for itself. The price fairs up very well against the competition and shouldn’t break the bank.

Conclusion

As previously stated, I have tried a number of autoresponders over the past 18 months and for me AWeber is the pick of the bunch. In terms of email deliverability, industry reputation and functionality I really don’t feel there is any competition at this price point. Check out the AWeber site, do some searches on Google and the forums and see what else is out there, but whatever you do get yourself an auto responder and start building your list!