Tag: aweber

0

Posted on

MailChimp Blocks Affiliates

In late “breaking” news on this Friday night, it seems that MailChimp, a email service provider for newsletters has made changes that includes banning a great deal of marketers from using their service. According to insiders, this was done because MailChimp was facing significant problems with their deliverability caused by a few less-than-ethical marketers. Since it was late evening, no one picked up their phones to address our questions, but their website made it clear that they were banning a whole host of marketing programs, including all “Affiliate Marketers.”

I’m not sure exactly what they think “Affiliate Marketers” are specifically, because most of the email marketing industry is a type of “Affiliate” or “Performance Marketing” of sorts, where people are paid some type of bounty from an “Affiliate” relationship with an advertiser. Well, either way, even if you aren’t an affiliate marketer, pretty much every other type of product is now banned from MailChimp.

Here is their own new terms:

Also, there are some industries that send certain types of content that result in higher than normal bounce rates and abuse complaints, which in turn jeopardize the deliverability of our entire system. No offense intended, but because we must ensure the highest delivery rates possible for all our customers, we do not allow businesses that offer these types of services, products, or content:

  • Illegal goods or services
  • Escort and dating services
  • Pharmaceutical products
  • Work from home, Internet Lead-gen, Make money on online opportunities, etc.
  • Online trading, day trading tips, or stock market related content
  • Gambling services, products or gambling education
  • Multi-level marketing
  • Affiliate marketers
  • Credit repair, get-out-of-debt content
  • Mortgages and/or Loans
  • Nutritional Supplements, Herbal Supplements or Vitamin Supplements
  • Pornography or nudity in content
  • Adult novelty items or references in content
  • List brokers or List rental services
  • Marketing or sending commercial email without proper permission

If you are using MailChimp, I would recommend anyway either iContact or aWeber. They both have excellent rates and little deliverability problems.

Posted on

Three Effective List Building Methods

List Building continues to be one of the most effective methods of keeping visitors and bringing them back again and again. If you are doing a great job on PPC, CPV or any type of media buying, driving to someone else’s offer, you need to consider doing list building first. The benefits of capturing users first, and then sending them the original offer and then other offers can significantly grow your revenue. Here are a few methods of list building that can be highly effective.

1)      Use AWeber with a Facebook Fan page. Simple technique that actually has been done a lot. The theory behind this is that Facebook will approve fan pages and the ads that direct, than ads with similar text that promote outside of Facebook. For example, if you are promoting MLM or Work From Home products, you can make a page called “Make $500 a day From Home” and promote the fan page, and the AWeber form.  This is a highly effective method of getting consumers who are interested in a specific topic, for example, dog training, or weight loss — it gets them involved, gets them on a list and then you can target more than one specific offer to them, plus then target them again on the Facebook Fan Page. (Free test-drive of Aweber here)

2)      Audio and Video. According to Vernessa Taylor this is a great method. Obviously has been done, but a lot of affiliates aren’t trying this in capturing their own emails and creating lists. Audio and video will often not only increase subscription rates, but allow you to convey information to potential subscribers, and create a connection.  Highly recommended that you start as soon as someone enters the page and get them to subscribe asap. There are many great FLV Players, but here’s a simple one that has a free version that looks good.

3)      Use a Viral Rewards Program. Yes, you’ve probably read about this before, but its not used that often in building offer list. This method could be highly effective, especially if you can reward possible consumers with a reason to promote to their friends.  Remember, people are interested in not only learning more about a product, but would love to get that product for free. If you offer that they can get that product for free if there refer # number of friends, or perhaps a contest to get a similar product or something else, the opportunities are endless.   I see this working really well for subscriber based models (similar to Netflix) where yuo can get people to first subscribe to learn about Netflix and other offers, and offer a discount, or giftcard for signing up their friends.

Here’s a great viral program that is highly recommended.

With all these techniques, I am trying to push the idea that sending JUST to a CPA advertisement, just to the affiliate advertisement is not always the best idea. You’ll make short term money, but sometimes those users are more valuable to be on a list. They will convert off the email list also – especially if you promise them more information about the product, a discount, or a special offer.  Once you have them on the list, you can track them, find who converts, remarket to them and do much more. They are much more valuable then, and can continue to make you great income.

(Do a free test of Aweber here)

Posted on

iContact Vs. AWeber

I have been asked over and over again by those in the industry for almost a decade what the best email & newsletter programs are. I have used a few since 2000, but since 2005, I have been exclusively with iContact. Originally this was because for quite a while they provided the service for free for my publication ADOTAS.com, but currently stay and pay for the service. That being said, I have looked on occasion to move to AWeber, because it is highly recommended by many in the performance marketing industry.  I thought it might be time to take a real look at the features, pricing and functions of these two companies. Read my indepth analysis!

In comparing the two companies, it is important to look at what they traditionally have marketed themselves as.  iContact has marketed itself as a brand-centric company where brands and major websites can send out newsletter to their followers. On the other hand, AWeberhas become the favorite amongst “marketers” specifically because of its auto-responder function, which many marketers believe to be top notch. In truth, iContact does have a large amount of brand companies that use its services and about 8 times as many customers as AWeber. However, that doesn’t mean its better.

PRICING:
Aweber is $19 a month for up to 500 subscribers and $29 a month for a more realistic size of 501-2,500 subscribers.
iContact is  $14.00 a month for up to $500 subscribers, but has a cheaper $9.95 plan of $9.95 a month. Up to 2,500 subscribers is identical pricing of $29 a amonth.
The pricing for all their programs actually stays somewhat the same, plus or minus 5% between the two up to the highest levels.

CUSTOMER SERVICE
As mentioned, I have used iContact for years, but have had accounts with both companies. iContact customer service is seriously the best in the industry – from the sales team to the technical support team, they are great at what they do. One thing that I personally find important is that with all the projects that I have, I sometimes need a little “guidance” about things that are out of the box. iContact has always answered my questions on the phone and email. On the other hand, to be perfectly honest, aWeber tends to use canned, copy and paste response or send you to a webpage to “learn” the information. Even trying to get a PR and Marketing Contact over there as close to impossible, and in some cases their customer service person stopped responding to my requests for feature information. When I asked to speak to their PR & Marketing person about pricing discounts and importing, I got a form letter.

DELIVERABILITY
This is a very, very hard metric to talk about because there are no “proven” results out there. AWeber has a very strict double-optin system that they require all customers to use, and prevent almost anyone from importing emails from other lists, so that their system can “Stay clean.” However, with the huge amount of “get rich quick” and “MLM” offers that go through AWeber, there seems to be some issues. The built in Junk Mail Filter on Outlook, despite AWeber having SPAM Assassin integrated, seems to like catching AWeber emails more than iContact. iContact has a very similar system installed, but is not as easy to use. However, they review most emails themselves to “help”, just incase there is something they believe is spammy or will get you blocked, an added service I am not sure is in any other email service provider.

iContact is monitored by Pivotal Veracity which gives it a 99% deliverability rate, plus iContact has significant relations with the ISPs and knows exactly what is going on with any possible spammy emails. AWeber claims to have deliverability about the same, but at the same time, no third party verification nor do they have the same relationships from what I have been told with the ISPs because of the perception that they are used by many marketers. Still when I asked around, a lot of my friends said they had little issues with deliverabiltiy from AWeber.

FEATURES
When it comes to features, both of the companies are very similar. Both of them have a great deal of newsletter templates, great signup forms, unlimited email lists, open and click tracking, WYSIWYG editors and a great contact management system. That being said, there iContact’s tracking system is superior as it allows you to really “dig” into who is clicking on the newsletters and what they are specifically clicking on, plus examine it against other newsletters they have clicked on.  On top of that, iContact allows you to host images on its server, which for some people might be a must.  Additionally, iContact has a built in survey system, but aWeber recommends using Google Docs or SurveyMonkey for surveys.

Yet, AWeber has a built in optimization and tracking system, which allows you to track who is buying products from your newsletter. This is something that is essential for marketers, and I’m sincerely amazed that iContact has not added this into their system. I’m sincerely amazed that they haven’t since this is a blaring difference between the two that seems to be easily fixed.

On top of that, I’ll be honest – the add-ons and packages that have been built in the performance marketing industry for aWeber are significant. There are numerous great WordPress ad-ons that are attached mainly to aWeber and more than one affiliate expert has built specific  programs that work with aWeber. Still, aWeber does NOT have a developer API while iContact has a whole developer portal that should allow anyone to build those features and add-ons easily.  Some of the “outside” products that people have made for aWeber are actually built into iContact already, such as viral tell-a-friend and forwarding mechanisms.

CONCLUSION
Honestly, despite me promoting both the products, I know that the readers want me to look at one product and recommend it. Both products are on the top of their game. iContact has built a stellar reputation and has some serious clients behind it. AWeber has the hearts of the marketing community and has been able to grow significantly because of the (paid) promotions by several marketing experts.  I would easily come out with a very clear recommendation for iContact, except for the lack of a built in commerce optimization.  For many affiliates, this could be essential in knowing what list creations are doing the best and resulting in sales and purchases.

 

Something really bugs me about AWeber. One of the reasons is their requirement for all new subscribers to re-opt in their lists if they come from another provider.  This really bugs me because many, many stores and merchants have lists they have built from customers who have bought products and asking them to decrease their list by as much as 90% is ridiculous.  If you do import all your subscribers and they don’t confirm the first time, you can’t ever contact them again. Seriously guys?

The good news is that you can try both of them for close to free. Icontact has a free trial, and AWeber has a $1.00 trial. Note that, not unlike that subscription to MilfHunter, if you do not cancel AWeber they will charge your card (and in my case, even with the cancelation, they charged it, but eventually refunded the charge.).

Sign up for iContact for free

Sign up for AWeber for $1 for first month