Steve Ramos
What is Aweber?
Aweber is a Pennsylvania-based company founded by Tom Kulzer in 1998. The company has been in the business for over 20 years, and one of their proudest claims is that they invented the autoresponder.
Aweber is an email autoresponder known for its superior autoresponders, solid performance, and multiple marketing automation features. They are a well-established company with a solid user base.
Over 120,000 businesses and bloggers use this software to help them connecting with their audiences faster. Aweber is also one of the tools recommended by ClickBank’s (biggest affiliate marketing marketplace) official course to their students.
What is Aweber used for?
Some of the most popular features include:
- Robust email autoresponders
- Easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor
- +100 customizable templates
- Dozens of integrations and API for third-party apps
- Email automation
- A/B Split testing
- Landing Page Builder
- Analytics
- Import and host a mailing list
- RSS functionality
Aweber delivers the ability to create landing pages quickly, manage contacts, sending and automating amazing emails and analyze the results without being a tech wizard.
The software provides an easy-to-use platform with no hidden surprises. Their templates allow you to create visually attractive email marketing campaigns, and the reporting dashboard tracks most of the vital statistics.
If you are looking for advanced tracking solutions, take a look at our selection of the best tracking software.
Aweber does email, first and foremost. Most platforms out there may offer loads of other things, but they do email, also landing pages, but mostly email. They are true to their central purpose, and that is what you can expect from the platform.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Unlimited emails
- Excellent Customer Support and learning materials
- List management tools
- Automation Builder
- Spam protection
- Advanced analytics
- Free Trial
Cons:
- Templates and designs are not the most exciting
- Could have more integrations
Key Features
Aweber is an email marketing solution that provides everything you need to stay current in the online marketing game. The platform is easy to navigate, and in a matter of minutes, you can create an email marketing campaign. Aweber is a marketing software suitable for all that provides more than enough features for beginners and many advanced features for experienced marketers.
Main Features summary:
Email Marketing Automation
- Autoresponder
- Email drag-and-drop editor
- Manage lists
- Manage deliverability
- Email and mobile preview
- Surveys
- Multi-user account
Landing Pages
- Landing page A/B testing
- Form Builder
- Responsive landing page design
If you would like to create entire sales funnels and marketing automation processes, check out our list of the best sales funnel software and take a look at our top choices.
Analytics/Reporting
- Real-time reports
- Web analytics
Dashboard
If you do not enjoy messing with complicated interfaces, this software is pretty intuitive, and you will not need a tutorial to hammer out basic tasks. Even if you are a newbie, you do not get stuck on anything as there is a library of online resources you can use as your guide.
Once you are inside the dashboard, it is pretty easy to reach all the areas and most make sense. It is essential to mention that in the messages section, the newsletters are labeled “broadcasts” and the marketing automation is labeled “campaigns”.
The dashboard also provides some basic stats in regards to your most recent newsletters.
Data Importing
The platform allows you to manually add your contacts if you already have an email list of contacts. You can also upload file types such as TXT, XLS, CSV, XLSX, and TSV to import your data.
After importing the contacts, you can also add them to a set of autoresponders and tag these subscribers or add them to autoresponders cycles. This is a pretty cool feature that not all automation tools offer.
You can customize the subscriber information you collect with tags (first purchase, male/female, location, etc.). Aweber saves you time by auto-suggesting possible tags based on past entries. With this, you can tailor your campaigns so that you send content as relevant as possible.
The tool allows you effortlessly manage your contacts so you can create the best campaigns and the right segments.
Aweber Templates
Most reviews out there claim that Aweber templates are outdated. Even though their template designs are not as good as GetResponse or ConvertKit, I see something different. Most of the old templates are for desktop, but you can customize them according to a modern design. Today, more than 70% of emails are opened on mobile devices. They are one of the very few providing AMP (a technology that allows you to embed interactive elements like carousels, accordions, confirmation, purchase buttons, etc.). This will increase the open rate of emails because users can interact with your questions, forms, or pools without leaving the inbox. The features will help to increase the engagement of users with emails.
They also provide a tool called “smart designer” that will design email templates for you based on the design of your website. They are not all fancy but are a good starting point if you want to match your templates with your brand.
You can also import blog posts and send them out as newsletters.
Drag-and-Drop Editor
In the editor, you can access the templates from the right-hand column. You will find quite a good range, but there is not an option to preview beforehand. But you can easily cancel your decision if you are not happy with the template.
The editor can be a little fiddly, but if you persist, most things are achievable. It is just a steep learning curve, to begin with, just like any other piece of software of the same kind.
You can also build your own email templates using the Email Template Manager, where you can customize existing templates or write your own using the AWeber API. The API allows developers to construct their own applications for displaying and managing AWeber customer accounts.
Autoresponders
Autoresponders allow you to send a series of follow-up emails automatically triggered by user actions or time. When you first create the autoresponder, you can configure it by when the email will be sent to your list. For example, you can use the automation to greet new subscribers by sending them a welcome email and additional information they need when they opt-in.
You can also prepare multiple emails that you want to send out throughout a particular number of days. For example, seven emails for one week, one for each day. All you have to is create a new autoresponder for a specific list and add the seven emails. Then whenever somebody is added to your email list, those seven emails will be sent out in the order and time you have set up.
Aweber claims to have invented the autoresponder back in the 90s, so you would probably expect this functionality to be mind-blowing, but it is just ok.
Aweber Marketing Automation
Email marketing automation is the art of setting up an email campaign so you barely have to touch them in the future.
Aweber recently introduced many new features to its automation process. It is surprisingly easy to create an automation process with Aweber. Their drag-and-drop interface helps you save a lot of time. Anyone can create a complete automation framework within minutes. Their automation process is as good as GetResponse’s.
With marketing automation, you can design a flowchart where emails are sent supported by user actions. Those actions can be opening an email, clicking a link, a website visit, or a purchase.
You can easily trigger an email campaign when people signup for a newsletter or when a tag gets added to their contact information.
A/B split testing
In the split testing, we want to test everything: headlines, images, subject lines, etc.
And we want to test all of these variables collectively. With Aweber, we can test variables but use only up to three variables at a time. In most cases, this is enough, but not you want to test everything. With GetResponse, for example, you can experiment 5 or more variables at a time.
Reporting and Analytics
Aweber’s analytics are good and allow you to monitor some key stats of your email marketing campaigns, such as open rate and clickthrough rates. You can also check other essential things, such as the growth of lists over time.
The platform also allows you to have an overview of the signup methods, which is very helpful to optimize your campaigns.
You can also check where people open your emails (their geographical location) and have the history of an individual’s activity.
Overall, you get a good overview of the performance of your campaigns. They provide you enough data to make sound decisions on how to tweak your campaigns.
Landing Page Creator
If you do not have a website and only need a quick and simple way to announce a new event, deal, or sell a specific product, you can merely use Aweber Landing Page Builder. Even if you only do not want to put a particular campaign on your website and only collect emails, this is the perfect tool.
Aweber provides over 40 landing page templates, all mobile-friendly, that allow you to build a page quickly and easily.
Recently, they introduced their new landing page builder. It is easy to use, and you can also implement Facebook pixels or google analytics tracking codes if you want. They will help you retarget the customer.
Their designs are simply straightforward, mainly designed to capture more leads.
The only downside is that they lack some basic A/B testing on their landing pages.
Regarding page builders, there are options out there way more efficient, just like Kartra, for example. If you’d like to try it for a whole month, get a Kartra 30 day trial to have access to one of the best page builders.
You can also check out our Kartra vs Squarespace review to compare it to another popular website builder.
Integrations
Aweber provides plenty of integrations and third-party add-ons. You can make your Aweber account work with +1000 integrations. Some of the notable ones are:
- Aweber WordPress
- Shopify
- PayPal
- Zapier
- Etsy
Deliverability
Deliverability is the term used to describe how likely your emails will land in your contact’s inboxes. This is undoubtedly one of the most important things to look at when choosing marketing software. All the features can be great, but there is no point if the emails end up in the spam folder. It is a waste of time if that happens, even if you have written exceptional emails.
Even though it is not easy to know precisely the deliverability rate (there are many factors involved), Aweber is very reliable in this regard.
Aweber has DKIM authentication, which tells the servers that receive the emails, where it comes from and that are likely to be harmful or end up in the spam folder.
Aweber, just like most email marketing software, does not like spam. If you send out unsolicited spam, your Aweber account gets terminated. They are very harsh with spammers.
Aweber Customer Service
Aweber’s Customer Support is friendly, helpful, and generally works fast. You can contact them through phone, email, and live chat 24/7.
They provide a substantial knowledge base with guides, tutorials, and general information for almost every feature.
They also provide the Aweber Academy, a short video course designed to help you set up your account and send out your first emails.
Some platforms will not let you use their platform for email affiliate marketing, but Aweber does. They allow affiliate links on their emails if the affiliate programs conform to their guidelines. If you do affiliate marketing, Aweber is an option to consider because of its friendly approach to affiliate marketing.
Aweber Pricing
Aweber free plan works for up to 500 subscribers, so if you are only starting or do not have an email list yet, this is probably a good starting point.
Aweber pricing plans do not break the bank, which is excellent if you are working on a strict budget. They designed their prices so that you can start your email campaign for free.
The Pro version of Aweber, the paid one, starts at $19,99/mo or $16.15 if you choose to pay annually.
One aspect of the Aweber pricing structure that might be interesting for users is that all features are available for all paid plans. Unlike other options, you do not have to pay more to unlock more advanced features. The differences in pricing are to do with the size of your mailing list only.
Conclusion
Do we recommend Aweber? Yes, we do!
Aweber has decades of experience translated into a tight, efficient, and valuable email marketing experience with few flaws. They offer traditional email marketing with additional features like landing pages, which are everything you could want from an email marketing platform. Also, it is nice that they have a free autoresponder to get started.
