B2B email marketing software review

In part 1 of this series, we reviewed Savicom's email marketing software which we rated a 4 out of a possible 5 stars. We are now reviewing another software vendor, AWeber, who has been offerring email marketing software for 10 years now. They are very popular among professional bloggers (e.g. Darren Rowse from ProBlogger.com) and have many options for converting your blog posts automatically to emails via RSS feeds. They also allow you to convert your HTML email newsletters to RSS - all very Web 2.0 friendly. After signing up for a test drive account, here is my review below;

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AWeber is based out East in Huntington Valley Pennsylvania and was started in 1998. They pride themselves on having great relationships with ISPs to ensure high delivery rates through whitelisting where possible, and also appear to be on the leading edge of RSS to email and web 2.0 technologies. They are very blog friendly, and even have a WordPress optin email form plugin which allows you to sign up subscribers directly to your AWeber account. They also have an optin form coding setup for Facebook.

OK, let's start with the usability. AWeber has one of the most simple and straigthforward UIs I've ever seen for an email marketing campaign. It's very minimalist, and allows you to jump straight to customizing your list preferences, to editing a large selections of predefined HTML email templates. They also have an outstanding help wizard to guide you through the steps of setting up your opt-in confirmation email, your optin sign up and unsubscribe forms, list import and your actual HTML and text backup emails. There is a preview and test option for your email, and lots of handy help videos, PDFs and FAQs if you get stuck. Click the image to the right to view.

Privacy and US CAN SPAM Law compliance are strongly reinforced throughout their features. Mandatory double optin of all imported emails is a great feature to reduce SPAM complaints as well as increase deliverables. The plethora of HTML email templates allows you to hit the ground running with fancy graphic emails. They tell you simply where to insert text and your logo and allow you to preview and test your design easily. I love the Blog Broadcast option which allows you to simply paste in an RSS feed from your blog and set it to send out by email whenever X number of posts are new, or on a regular schedule. Setting up customized branded optin and unsubscribe forms is also streamlined very well.

These guys have been around 10 years, and it shows. They are white-listed with all the major ISPs, and their delivery rates are excellent. They maintain a restricted block list of spammers, and apply it to all campaigns and with their thorough double optin process for imported emails, pretty much guarantee that lists are kept clean, and relationships with ISPs are in good standing.

AWeber rivals Google Analytics with the depth and breadth of their reporting. Beautifully formatted maps showing visitor traffic allows you to quickly interpret data.

Top notch support is available in almost every online or offline method possible. My email request for support was answered within 1 hour, despite them promising a 24 hour turn around. They also offer live chat and phone support during long East to West coast business hours. Their help videos really set them apart, with detailed screencasts on importing emails, setting up an optin form customized to your brand and more. And I love their blog articles - highly timely and well written articles on anything from optimizing HTML emails with Gmail to adding an optin form to your Facebook fan page.

Starting at $1 for the 1st month, then $19 per month for up to 500 email subscribers this is a very good value. Although they have very competitive rates for low volume monthly sends, when you get up to 5,000 to 10,000 subscribers, then costs climb significantly to $69 per month. Savicom, by contrast, charges $39 per month for up to 10,000 recipients, which is significantly lower. What you are paying for with AWeber is higher overhead by means of more employees, and support staff, so if you are new to email marketing and need to be guided through the process, then it is well worth the spend. Also, their high delivery rates may more than pay for this slightly more expensive service. Take a test driver of AWeber's service below to see what you think.

Can You Have More Sales, Too?
Helping over 61,000 businesses like yours raise profits and build customer relationships using AWeber's opt-in email marketing software for over 10 years.

B2B Email Marketing Software Review - Part 2: AWeber

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