I hope each of you had a blessed and wonderful Christmas and New Year! 2018 was an amazing year for ecommerce – as always, Christmas and New Year were very good to us, as we grew our store by over 25% last year, and launched our new store, Beachbody UK, just in time for Christmas. But beyond the metrics, we also had some amazing adventures and made some amazing memories. Thanks to everyone who took the time to read my blog posts and follow my social media accounts – particularly in the last quarter of the year, when a lot of my content centred around my travels with Pete and the kids.
And because I couldn’t write about these amazing experiences without mentioning my email marketing platform of choice, I am going to tell you, dear reader, about my humble opinion of AWeber. If you’re looking for an easy way to get up and running in email marketing, AWeber is the perfect solution.
The Basics
One of the first things you’ll want to do when setting up a new account with AWeber is to choose a free email template. Don’t worry – you don’t need to have a website to use AWeber, and you sure as hell don’t need to have a big budget. When you get started, you’ll simply need a valid email address and a password.
Once you’ve registered, you’ll see your dashboard – a place where you can review your email marketing performance, plan future campaigns, and dive into the features.
Here’s a quick tutorial to get you started: When you login to your AWeber account, you’ll see a section at the top called ‘Quick Start’. It will guide you through the process of setting up your first email campaign – and in just a few simple steps, you’ll be able to send out your first email to potential customers.
Features
Now, before I dive into the nitty-gritty of how to use AWeber for email marketing, I’d like to cover a few features that I think are amazing.
First off, you can use AWeber for tracking email opens and clicks. For example, if you set up a campaign to promote a new perfume and you want to see how many people have actually read the email, you can login to your campaign and click on ‘View Activity’. This will then show you the emails that have been opened and which links have been clicked on.
AWeber also tracks the delivery of your messages –including bounces and complaints– so you can get a full view of how many emails were undeliverable and which links were most clicked on. This is particularly useful if you’re running a paid campaign, as you can identify the types of content that your customers find most useful and then tailor your next campaign to hit on the same themes.
Additionally, you can use AWeber’s segmentation features to target specific groups of people based on interests, behaviors, and demographics. So, if you’re trying to grow your email list, you can use AWeber to segment your potential customers into relevant groups, and then send them targeted messages based on their interests. For example, you can use the platform to send women in your area of expertise, personalised birthday wishes, or exciting news about new products or sales.
Usability
AWeber’s strength is in its ease of use. Once you’ve registered, logged into your dashboard, and started creating emails, you’ll find that the platform is highly intuitive and user-friendly. When you click on a link or an image in an email, your browser will open up in a new tab, just as if you had clicked on a link in a blog post or a tweet.
But perhaps my favourite part of AWeber is how you can import contacts easily. If you’ve got an existing email list, you can use a tool like ImportExport to bulk import them directly into AWeber. This makes it very easy to get started with email marketing because you don’t need to have individual email addresses for each member of your list. You can simply use the email addresses that you’ve been provided with and start sending out emails.
Costs
If you’re looking for an affordable email marketing service, look no further. While there are a number of free email platforms out there, AWeber is the clear winner when it comes to value for money. If you compare it to similar services, you’ll be amazed by just how affordable it is. For example, the free MailChimp service limits you to 2000 subscribers and 15MB of storage. Plus, they charge you for every email that you send out.
In comparison, AWeber offers all the benefits of a robust email marketing platform for free, and you can go as big or as small as you like. You can even purchase a Plus plan, which gives you access to all the features of the platform, including the ability to send bulk emails and track email performance.
So, as you can see, AWeber really is the perfect marriage of value and functionality. On top of that, the customer support is also fantastic, with fast and friendly responses from real people. If you ever need help with anything, all you need to do is login to your AWeber dashboard and click on ‘Support’ in the top right-hand corner.
Final Takeaway
In case you’re wondering, no, I haven’t been paid to write this article. However, Beachbody UK has benefited greatly from the content that I’ve created over the past year, and I wanted to share my experience with AWeber, as it’s been a really useful tool for us.
And now that you know more about how to use AWeber for email marketing, I hope that this will be the first of many detailed articles that you come back to time and time again to learn more about the platform.