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Aweber Promotion and Cool Email Trick

March 17, 2010 By

(Reading time: 4 – 7 minutes)

Ok, this is a pure-dee sales letter promoting AWeber, but you’ll learn something and I have an ulterior motive which benefits us both.

Here’s a quick summary:

  • First, I’m going to show you a really cool email trick.
  • Then I’m putting out my offer.
  • Finally, I’ll explain a bit about my ulterior motive, and how that benefits the first three people jumping on my offer before Midnight Pacific Daylight time Thursday March 18, 2010.

Let’s get going!

Very cool email trick

This little trick has saved me loads of time in the past, and it’s so cool I send it out on my Insider newsletter. Since it’s now making the rounds in Blogistan, you might as well see it here.

It turns out that when you put a plus (“+”) sign at the end of your name in your email address, it will get delivered just the same. For example: yourname+wiaw@example.com gets delivered to yourname@example.com.

Yeah, big deal, right?

The trick comes when you’re testing your own autoresponders, because AWeber indexes both yourname+wiaw@example.com and yourname@example.com as different email addresses.

This will save you great gobs of time compared to coordinating emails forwarded from different domains, or handling multiple accounts in an email client such as Thunderbird. I know, I’ve done it both ways in the past.

Now, I just use this trick and route everything into my Gmail account.

Easy peasy.

You should try this out for yourself with your own email account. Or send me an email (put “Email trick” in the subject), and I’ll reply with yourname+wiaw@youremailaddress.com. Seriously, go test it out. You can read the rest of this sales letter afterwards. Taking action now is a hallmark of success.

Now the offer…

You have already decided on AWeber

I’m looking for exactly 3 people who already know they are going with AWeber, but haven’t yet pulled the trigger.

You know who you are.

You’ve read about AWeber on John Chow, on Shoemoney, on a bazillion other blogs, but you haven’t committed.

You are NOT worried about spending a few dollars to make even more dollars, cost is a non-issue.

But…

You aren’t familiar with the technology, and you are (rightly) concerned about your time.

Excellent! You are exactly who I am looking for.

Here’s my offer.

I will help the first three (3!) people using my AWeber affiliate link to purchase autoresponder services before Midnight Pacific Daylight time Thursday March 18, 2010 to:

  1. Set up two required pages on your blog for directing AWeber subscription traffic. (I’ll be rewriting mine at the same time, you’ll get a peek into my thought process.)
  2. Create a 3 email autoresponder series. (I need to redo mine for Website In A Weekend too.)
  3. Set up email test accounts, necessary for rapid testing. (Per cool email trick.)
  4. Create a list just for testing, which I will subscribe to… and help you test.
  5. Record a screencast or two if necessary. (You’ll get a link and a shoutout on Youtube.)
  6. You’ll get a copy of the Whitepaper when it’s done (my ulterior motive).

However, I do need a commitment from you: you have to be willing to put in the necessary time to get this handled. It’s going to be at least 2, maybe 3 hours, and you need to have that as one unbroken chunk of time.

Spreading it out over several days won’t lock in the knowledge you need. It will waste my time and yours. I’m looking for just three (3) people who want to get this AWeber business handled right now.

If you want to sign up anyway and not worry about getting some starter help, that’s cool too. But helping you succeed helps me succeed, so I’m game if you’re game.

Wait wait… here’s an update… I’m just went through my task list: I need to run 2 new campaigns very soon, and give the Weekenders a gentle prod (translation: give away stuff). Heather is already in (see comment #13), she’ll be watching over my shoulder. She will see what works, what doesn’t work, as it’s happening. Specifically, I’ll be adding her to my collaborative spreadsheet, where I’ll help her plan her first set of emails. I’ll add you too.

Did I mention an ulterior motive?

Ulterior motive

I have at least a Whitepaper worth of AWeber material that I have never seen collected in one place. I’d like to get this into your hands.

But these Whitepapers are nitpicky and tedious for me to write. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing them. But it does take some time to ensure it’s both accurate and precise. That is, useful for you.

The first three people signing on get to leverage my drive for accuracy. I can set up an AWeber autoresponder in minutes, a result of practice spread over years. My next goal is distilling what I know into something you can use to set up an autoresponder in minutes. As I help you, I’ll be distilling my knowledge into useful notes for you to use later.

Let’s recap: We’re going to 1. set up required pages on your blog, 2. start your first autoresponder sequence, 3. create email accounts just for testing, 4. create a test list, 5. write up a Whitepaper, and probably 6. a screencast or two. What a deal!

Who’s in?

Filed Under: Building Traffic Tagged With: , ,

Why You Need An Autoresponder

May 23, 2009 By

(Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes)

It’s Saturday on Memorial Day weekend 2009! May Gray is giving way to June Gloom, in other words, Summer Has Arrived in the San Francisco Bay area. I’m slaving away this holiday weekend so you don’t have to.

AWeber - Email Marketing Made Easy

Let’s talk about sales. Specifically, communicating with prospects.

There’s lots of ways to do this, including blog posts, forums, and emails. All are important, email is critical.

Easier said than done… managing a huge list of prospects is daunting. Which is why you need an automated email handling service such as AWeber.

Here’s how it works: Your prospects sign up for your email list, and their subscription information is handled by AWeber, automatically. AWeber provides a convenient interface for you to compose emails and develop marketing campaigns, and provides a huge array of handy reports so you can ensure your time is being spent productively.

Double Optin: AWeber’s Key and Critical benefit

The key, and in my opinion most critical benefit of AWeber’s service is double optin.

Double optin, also called “confirmed optin,” means that everyone signing up for your newsletter or email list must confirm their interest independently.

Is this a hassle for your prospect?

Absolutely.

Double optin is enough of a hassle that the direct marketing industry fought the whole notion. But AWeber embraces it!

But here’s the secret: if you provide something of value that people really want, they will move Heaven and Earth to get it. Everyone opting in to your email list is expressing interest in your products and services.

Double optin protects you as well. Because your prospect has to do a little bit of extra and conscious effort to receive your email, they have much less legal basis for lawsuit under the CAN-SPAM act which regulates marketing on the internet.

Many, many other benefits

There’s almost too many benefits to list, but here’s a few more that I find really helpful:

  • Save time: “Followup” emails can be scheduled for sending far into the future. You can write a whole set of emails now, and have them sent at weekly intervals, automatically.
  • Emails can be personalized to the recipient’s name, which has been proven over and over to lead to better results.
  • Customer support is top notch. AWeber answers their phone, and they answer their emails. They are responsive on the their company blog, and interact with customers there regularly.
  • AWeber is deadly serious about deliverability, to the point where they have lost business from customers engaging marketing practices they do not agree with. For example, please read this blog post and comments on why AWeber bans “noreply” addresses.
  • You can hook your AWeber account directly into your RSS Feedburner statistics, and have each post to your blog automatically sent as an email to your list.

Get started today!

You will reap immediate benefits using AWeber to handle your email lists. If you know you’re going to need a list in the future, you need to start now… it’s easy to start simple… but learning to exploit the true power of the AWeber will take some time. Get a head start by getting started!

Filed Under: Making Money Tagged With: ,