You’ve decided to join the 1.7 million marketers who use AWeber to send mass emails. It’s a good choice—you can try a lot of the popular email marketing tools and end up with something that’s almost exactly like AWeber. But maybe not quite. You want to make sure you’re using AWeber correctly and that you’re getting the maximum value out of this tool. So keep reading. This article will tell you how.
Pick The Right Email Marketing Platform
When you first sign up for AWeber you’ll be presented with a bunch of different platforms. You can use these platforms to create different email campaigns—one for each product you sell. But let’s be real—you’re not a marketer who needs a dozen different email campaigns. What you want is one simple, effective email marketing platform that you can use to build out your program.
So what is the perfect email marketing platform for you? According to our research, this is how people decide:
- The platform’s pricing structure
- The presence of advanced features
- The level of personalization offered
- The level of integrations offered
- The performance of the service
- Support
- The design of the platform
- The general feel of the site
- The level of security provided
- The level of engagement offered by the platform
- Additional benefits
- The reviews provided by the platform
Once you’ve picked out the perfect email marketing platform for you, it’s time to move on to the next step.
Set Up AWeber Account
In order to send emails through AWeber you need to have an account set up. But if you already have an account with another email marketing tool you can use, you can skip this step. Just go to settings (upper right corner) and log in.
The next step is to verify your email address. AWeber will then send you an email that contains a verification code you need to enter in order to complete the set up process. Once you verify your email address, you’ll be all set to start building out your marketing program.
Configure Email Marketing Platform
Now that you have a platform picked out and verified, it’s time to configure it. Navigating the dashboard of your email marketing platform will be pretty easy for you now—all you have to do is enter your email address and select the topics you want to focus on (e.g. Product Launches, Sales, etc).
There are a number of different things you can do to configure this platform. For example, you can pick the template you want to use for your campaigns. You can also choose whether you want to use a simple newsletter sign up form or a more advanced one that includes extra fields (e.g. video, mobile banners, etc.).
Another thing you can do is pick a design for the signup form. The email marketing platform you picked out has a variety of signup forms available to choose from. So you can get a sense of what your users will experience when they subscribe to your program.
When you’re done configuring your email marketing platform, it’s time to test it out. Go to Settings and click Send Test Email. You’ll then see a message from AWeber with a special code you need to enter in order to activate the platform. When you enter the code, you’ll be able to start sending out emails to your target audience.
Set Up Email Campaigns In Advance
Depending on how you plan on using AWeber, you might want to set up some email campaigns in advance. For example, let’s say you’re launching a new product and you want to send out a series of emails to your customers a few days before the official launch. You can create an email campaign in advance and schedule it to go out a few days before the product launch. Then, when the time comes, you can simply activate the campaign and start sending out emails to your audience.
The beauty of this approach is that you have complete control over when the emails are sent. You can set them to go out at a specific time or date, or you can make them go out at regular intervals throughout the year. Whatever you want. The choice is yours.
Monitor And Review Email Campaigns
Once you have a few email campaigns set up and functioning, it’s time to start monitoring and reviewing them. This is very important—you don’t want to send out a bunch of emails and then not know what happened because you didn’t monitor them closely enough. So set up a task (i.e. a weekly task) to check up on your email campaigns and make sure they’re going out at the right times.
Look for open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates. These are important because they measure the effectiveness of your campaigns. Open rates are the percentage of people who opened your email. A high open rate is a good sign that your audience is receptive to your messages. Click-through rates are the percentage of people who clicked on a link in your email (this percentage should be around 2-10%). The higher the better, as this is an indication that people are acting on your communications.
Conversion rates are the percentage of people who performed a specific action after they clicked a link or entered a form in your email. This action can be converting them into a lead, a sale, a retweet, a review or a newsletter signup. The higher the better as this is an indication of the effectiveness of your efforts.
Use Advanced Features To Perfect Your Efforts
Depending on your workflow, you might want to use some of the advanced features in your email marketing platform. For example, if you’re a marketer who wants to quickly create different email campaigns for different products, you can use the advanced feature to achieve this goal. This feature helps you accomplish several things at once:
- Create as many different email templates as you want, using a wizard-like interface
- Add fields such as a discount code, images, etc to the signup form
- Monitor the performance of each email template you created in real-time
- Automatically send out an email every week
- The list of subscribers you have
- And much more
These are all things you can do with the advanced features in your email marketing platform. So, if you have a specific task or goal in mind and you’re looking for a way to easily accomplish this, consider using these advanced features.
At this point, you should have a good idea of how to make sure you’re using AWeber correctly. Setting up the email marketing tool and designing your emails is only half the battle. You also need to make sure you’re getting the most out of this platform by monitoring and reviewing your results often. This way, you’ll always be able to hone your efforts and improve your performance.