There was a time when I was shopping for a good autoresponder service, and I was stuck between Aweber and GetResponse. At that time, both services were quite similar in terms of features and pricing. Boy how that has changed!
Over the past year, after speaking to god, Aweber’s tops minds have maneuvered the biggest u-turn among all their competitors, and have made Aweber not only relevant in the new Web 2.0 world, but an essential and integral part of it!
I was (probably) one of the first bloggers to start using the Aweber broadcast feature to integrate my RSS and email subscriptions, merge it and manage everything via an “ezine” format. This helped avoid choosing between building an email list or RSS list, since I could do both!
Since then a lot of bloggers have done the same, and in time Aweber was the top choice used by almost all bloggers in the “make money” niche including John Chow, Yaro Starak and Darren Rowse.
Then Aweber went a little further and introduced even more exciting features like the Feedburner integration, Twitter integration, email segmentation, and even their own “social proof” mechanism. Although other service like GetResponse followed suite with their own blog to email syndication service, it was perhaps a case of “too little too late”.
In fact, most bloggers who didn’t quite start out with direct marketing (like I did) have only ever used Aweber, due to strong recommendation from other bloggers. Besides, Justin Premrick does a excellent job at updating the Aweber blog with the best email marketing advice, tips, and tactics. His title of “education manager” further reveals Aweber’s strategy of perfecting the art of social marketing.
Aweber has also produced a lot of great online training and webinars. In short, they are no longer just an autoresponder service. They are also the experts, the market movers, and the source of great marketing knowledge. With their massive effort to reinvent themselves (after 9 years), I truly feel they have come to be synonymous with the term “email marketing” itself.
If you haven’t signed up with Aweber yet, I strongly recommend that you get yourself an account here: http://getstarted.aweber.com
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Great information there Gobala. Now I know how lucky I am.. that I chose Aweber at the start of my online business! Anyway great post!
Hi Nicholas,
Definitely, Aweber is great. How did you get recommended to use it?
Very interesting Gobala – the way you put the main problem most bloggers have – should they build an email list or an RSS list.
I chose GetResponse years ago when there was little to distinguish Aweber and Getresponse. And when Aweber put their prices up a while ago I felt rather happy with my choice.
Right now aweber seems to be working hard to lead the way with the extra features you’ve discussed.
I hope GetResponse catches up fast!
All The Best
Alex
I agree its a great service. It was recommended by so many that I had to use myself
Hi Gobala,
Thanks so much for your kind comments about us!
I like to think your analysis is spot-on (particularly about us providing email marketing software, rather than solely an autoresponder service).
We definitely place a high value on education as a marketing tool, and on social marketing as well. (Example: for those of you on Twitter, you can click my name above to see and follow AWeber on Twitter – stop by and say hi!)
Thanks again for a thoughtful take on where we’re headed, and please let me know if you ever have any suggestions for us!
Hi Justin,
It’s my pleasure, and I’m sure there are more surprises in 2009?
The new Aweber pricing doesn’t effect existing customers, I think. You’ll be paying the same as before.
We’ve got a lot of enhancements in store for 2009. Hopefully at least a few of them will be surprises
I’ve been thinking of Aweber, however at $19/month is really out of reach if I am not able to bring in that much revenue from the site.
I’ve signed up for the test drive. Will take a decision soon.
Thanks for the tip.
Hi Ajay,
If you can plug-in just one good information product, the list you build will easily pay for the Aweber fees.
I’ve been on the fence recently. Don’t know which one is better.
Now I have decided.
Thanks Gobala, you are the best!
Hi Gobala
I still prefer GetResponse though.. although I have to say I am not really a hardcore blogger.
To Ajay, you must get an autoresponder service! Don’t worry about the cost, if you are thinking that $19 a month is too much, you are somehow telling yourself that you are not even confident that you can make $19 a month for your online business. If so, then I sincerely suggest that you do not do online marketing because you will just be wasting your time and earning less than $20 a month after spending so much time on it.
In my humble opinion, autoresponder is the most critical component in your online business, even if you do not want to spend on a domain name or web hosting. Why do I say this? Because after I got myself an autoresponder, my online profits increased at least by 10 times!I had to beat myself up for not making this decision so much earlier!