Email marketing has been around for a long time and it is still a very effective marketing strategy for any business looking to expand its customer base. Fortunately, there are many email marketing tools available for all levels of experience, from beginners to experts.
These tools aim to automate, simplify, and optimize multiple email campaigns to achieve the best marketing results. If you are considering using Aweber for your email marketing efforts,
this article will provide a detailed review of its features, user interface, templates, and pricing. Keep reading to find out if Aweber is the right tool to enhance your email marketing campaigns.
What is AWeber?
Founded in 1998 by Tom Kulzer, AWeber is a web-based internet market tool that enables email marketers to easily create mailing lists, capture data onto the list, design, build, and send newsletters to subscribers, and automate and monitor the progress of effective email marketing campaigns.
AWeber Cost and Pricing
You must wonder how much you must spend trying out or using AWeber. Fortunately, AWeber offers two distinct versions- ‘Free’ and ‘Pro’ (premium).
Free AWeber Version
One of the most beautiful things about AWeber is that they allow you to test all the tool’s features and functionality within one month. Unlike most email marketing tools, the free AWeber version will enable you to test out even the elements in all the pro (premium) versions without spending a penny.
Nevertheless, the free AWeber version excludes the autoresponder, which automates email marketing campaigns. On top of that, the free version only supports up to 500 email list subscribers for the first month. If you want to scale your subscribers’ list or continue using AWeber, subscribe to one of their pro packages.
Pro (Premium) AWeber Versions
Here’s something special you don’t want to miss out on- All AWeber’s pro versions present you with all of the tool’s features and functionality regardless of the package you subscribe to the list. Moreover, the only factor that influences the premium packages’ price point is the size of your mailing list or subscribers.
Nevertheless, one of the tool’s most obvious flaws is that it still bills you for unsubscribed contacts as long as their details are in the AWeber database. You can manually delete unsubscribed contacts from your Aweber account to prevent these unnecessary charges.
If you opt for the AWeber Pro version, you can choose from any of their five premium packages that include:
- Hosting and email list with a 500-subscriber cap at $19.99 per month
- 501 to 2,500 email list subscribers at $29.99 each month
- 2,501 to 5,000 subscribers at $49.99 every month
- 5,001 to 10,000 email list subscribers at $69.99 every month
- 10,001 to 25,000 subscribers at $149.99 per month
Besides these subscription choices, you can contact the AWeber team for a custom quote if your mailing list subscribers exceed the 25,000 caps.
AWeber Key Features
For over two decades, AWeber has stayed relevant in close-necked market competition. What’s their secret? For one, AWeber is ever-evolving in line with current market dynamics.
But that’s only part of it. AWeber offers a massive selection of effective email marketing tools and features, but the most important ones include:
- Mailing list importation and hosting capabilities
- Rich choice of Email Templates
- Autoresponder functionality for email marketing automation
- Split (A/B) Testing
- Landing page Builder
- Responsive Email Designs
- Mail list segmentation
- Performance monitoring and Reporting
- Basic eCommerce features
- Email, Phone, and Live Chat integration
- Third-party App Integration Support
- RSS / blog to-email functionality
Let’s take a closer look at these features:
· Mailing List Importation and Hosting Capabilities
Overall, importing an existing mailing list to AWeber is a straightforward affair. Add the individual contacts manually or upload the details in various supported formats, including TXT, CSV, XLS, TSV, and XLSX.
While importing your contacts, AWeber allows you to add them to an autoresponder set and tag them.
As you import your list, you can tag your subscribers to a set of autoresponders. However, you must still verify and clean your list by answering a few questions. This process can take a few hours or days, depending on the size of your list.
To clean and verify your list, you must answer some questions on how you collected the emails you are importing. It may take a few hours, especially if your list is enormous.
But overall, importing data to Aweber is a straightforward affair.
· Email and E-Templates Collection
AWeber is the leader in providing users with a gigantic collection of email and e-newsletter creation templates. You have a whopping pool of over 700 templates for your email marketing campaigns.
Although some templates are bland, you’ll still find a decent selection of excellent choices. Besides, you can always design your template right there.
· Autoresponders for email marketing automation
Autoresponders are a series of predefined follow-up emails sent in intervals after being triggered by time or pre-established subscriber actions. Typically, the autoresponder functionality aims to save you plenty of time and effort, thus generating and nudging leads toward customer conversion.
Nonetheless, AWeber’s autoresponder triggers are limited compared to competing email marketing tools, thus unsuitable for advanced email marketing campaigns.
· Split (A/B) Testing
By providing a free tool for Split Testing, AWeber enables email marketers to test out sets of subscriber forms and email marketing campaigns against each other before executing them. However, there’s room for improvement as the tool tends to result in both tests, so you have to conclude yourself.
· Forms and Landing Pages Builder
Aweber Landing Page Builder allows users to easily design or customize landing pages and opt-in (subscriber) forms to their preferred style.
Probably the best thing about this feature is its exceptional ease of use. You must choose your preferred landing page and subscriber form template and then tweak its design. You can split-test your pages and forms freely with AWeber, something you won’t find in most other email marketing platforms.
· Responsive Email Designs
One of the winning points of AWeber is its incredible and responsive email designs. It means you can quickly adapt all their email and e-newsletter templates to your device of choice. Fortunately, this is a handy tool in this age of mobility. Most email list subscribers might view your email marketing campaigns via portable devices such as laptops, iPods, smartphones, or tablets.
On top of that, AWeber, you quickly preview your email campaigns on portable devices before sending them.
· Email List Segmentation
Unlike other email marketing automation tools, where you must use predefined and pre-designed mail list segments, AWeber allows you to define, create, and apply tags. After that, you can segment your mailing list according to those tags.
· Intuitive User Interface
AWeber makes email marketing easier by providing an intuitive and easy-to-use interface. This platform is relatively straightforward, so you don’t need a tutorial. Still, there’s a host of educative material in the AWeber online library, such as a Blog, Email Marketing Guides, Live Webinars, Knowledgebase, and Video Tutorials to guide you every step of the way.
· Drag-n-Drop Functionality
With Aweber, creating e-newsletters and building email marketing campaigns is a walk in the park, thanks to their drag-and-drop tool. This functionality allows you to design, develop, and edit sequences by dragging and dropping the messages you make using templates.
· Performance Monitoring (Analytics) and Tracking
Through this feature, Aweber enables email marketers to track and monitor essential variables and progressions such as open rate, click-through rates, and deliverability rate to gauge the performance of your marketing campaigns.
· Web Fonts
Unlike many email marketing solutions that restrict users to common font types, AWeber allows you to use web fonts. Naturally, web fonts are more appealing than typical fonts, thus designing more alluring e-newsletters and email campaigns with higher open rates. Currently, AWeber presents these web fonts:
- Arvo
- Lato
- Roboto
- Merriweather
- Merriweather sans
- Noticia Text
- Open Sans
- Permanent Marker
- Playfair Display
- Source Sans Pro
· Third-Party Integrations
Thankfully, Aweber easily integrates with a lot of third-party platforms, including:
- Course and Membership websites
- Webinar services
- E-commerce tools
- Electronic payment tools such as mobile wallets
- Landing Page tools
- AWeber blog
Final Thoughts
On average, AWeber is a reliable, reasonably priced effective email marketing tool with an easy-to-use interface and all basic email marketing features and capabilities. Its winning points include a landing page builder, dedicated customer support, web fonts, and AMP for email functionality.
Nevertheless, the fact that the tool bills and charges a customer for hosted but unsubscribed contacts is a major red flag to many potential customers. On top of this, some of its features, such as email marketing automation, are pretty basic compared to most of AWeber’s competitors. Regardless, it’s a solid and effective email marketing tool to start acing your email marketing campaigns.