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A must for women in business… keeping track of your clients.

August 16, 2011

 

Toolkit Tuesday rolls around again!

Last edition we invited you to check out  Survey Monkey a great online tool you can use to develop your products and services to better meet the needs of your clients!

This time its all about Aweber - an email management system that makes it easy to keep track of and keep in touch with your clients.

One of the first things we did when we got 'serious' about starting our business and launching our website was to ensure we could keep in touch with all our clients and have a system for building our list.

We knew this would form a crucial part of our online marketing strategy, and we needed to be able to build and maintain great relationships with those we came into contact with.

We wanted to find a system that would allow us to:

  • send emails, newsletters and updates to our clients,

  • create sign-up forms for people who wanted to find out more, and

  • keep track of who was who

  • In addition, we wanted a certain level of automation, so that much of our work could happen without us being on hand 24/7.

Finally, and surely this wasn't demanding too much, we wanted this system to be really user-friendly (read: able to be used by technophobes!).

We quickly realised the name for the kind of system we were after was an Autoresponder, and discovered that there are several email autoresponders out there who offer the services we needed. After more indepth research and investigation, we chose Aweber.

A system to keep track of, and keep in touch with our clients!

Aweber offers a whole host of functions, the key ones from our perspective are that:

  • it is easy to create forms for interested folk to fill in, meaning they sign up to our 'list'

  • we can easily keep in touch via email and newsletters with those who are interested in what we do.

  • We can automate emails to send at certain time periods with special offers

  • we can send emails to clients based on what they have expressed an interest in, where they are from, and what they are reading about

  • We have created e-courses that deliver one email per day for 5 days into the inbox of subscribers

 

We specifically chose Aweber as it is integrated with a number of other online systems we use, and has a great deliverability rate (the % of emails that actually make it into the inbox they are intended for.

 

Another key aspect for us is the “double opt-in” function, which ensures that anyone who signs up for our mailing list has intentionally chosen to subscribe and that therefore we will not be accused of sending the dreaded SPAM.

 

So – our experience with Aweber has been a good one and we recommend Aweber if you are looking for a system to manage your list of clients – both past, current, and potential.


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  • Artoutloudnz

    Hi Jo and Janine, went to the Aweber site and it looks very interesting and may be what I am looking for. Just a few questions… can I put a feature box (in which people can enter their emails) on my free weebly website to add new interested people to my list? I do have the ability to insert html code. How much does Aweber actually charge – this was not clear to me on their website – is it $1 for the first month, then US$19.99 per month after that? Are there hidden charges or is there a tiered membership programme? Also not sure if this applie to me now, but may do in future – how do you go about becoming an affiliate for programmes? Such as Aweber/Hootsuite etc?

    • http://www.loveyoursmallbusiness.com Janine Ogg

      Hi Stacey,

      Great questions.

      If you can insert html easily you will have no trouble inserting an opt-in/feature box on your weebly site. Aweber generates the code for you, it’s very easy. When you login they guide you step-by-step through the creation of your first list and everything you need to do to create broadcasts (newsletters), follow-up messages and sign-up boxes. They have recently introduced a new template which makes good newsletter design very easy too.

      If you are not sure, there are loads of tutorials and help resources as well.

      Yes, it’s $1 for the first month then $19.95 a month. Once you get more than 500 subscribers, it goes up to another $10 (I think that’s how it works). We have not experienced any hidden charges.

      If you are interested in becoming affiliates, its usually fairly easy to find out how via the website (eg aweber affiliate info is under the partners tab at the top).

      Hope this helps!
      Janine

    • http://loveyoursmallbusiness.com/ Jo Foster

      Hi Stacey – good questions!
      Yes – as long as you can include html code then you can add the feature box to capture names and emails to add to your list. Once you are in Aweber, you create your list, create the opt in box and then paste the code onto your site
      Yes you are correct with the charges. The monthly fee increases as your number of subscribers grows, so it goes up I think once you are over 500 on your list.
      To become an affiliate for these programmes, you can simply search for “become a hootsuite affiliate” and you’ll see the links to join up and also see their T’s and C’s. Great way to promote great services and earn a little extra. (and I do believe it’s always much more effective to promote products and services that you’ve tried yourself… as you are seeing with our AAA course.. you’re sending loads of interested women our way which is fabulous!) Jo