Wanting to include some info about the subscriber, like their name and email, on the page they see after they submit the sign up form

Integration with a database for other, non-email related use (e.g. follow up by phone, any other CRM related tasks)

Integration with third party services (e.g. shopping carts, membership sites); note that many times this can also, or instead, be done with email parsers

If these possibilities sound interesting...

Cool stuff, but what if you're using confirmed opt-in?

Form data can now be passed to the "Confirmation Success" page, too!

Bonus Points - How to put subscriber names, emails, and whatever else you want on your thank you pages:

Often, that valuable content is timeless, but only appears on the most-viewed part of your blog - the homepage - for a short time. Other posts push it off into your homepage and into oblivion.

This is frustrating - after all, other subscribers could benefit from this content, right? Even if they sign up days, weeks, months or years after you first published it?

Fortunately, with a simple email marketing tactic, you can resurrect your content from the depths of your blog and keep it in front of your ever-growing, ever-changing audience.

Turn Your Blog's Best Content Into an Automated Email Newsletter

There's no reason to put all that hard work into creating great content, then get just one round of clicks, comments and other actions from it. Why be satisfied with that?

Much of your blog's content isn't only relevant at one particular time. And to borrow from an old NBC slogan, if subscribers haven't seen an old post, it's new to them.

Get that old content out to them and make it fresh again!

Create an Autoresponder Campaign For Your Blog in 3 Easy Steps

1. Identify Your Best Content

Go through your old blog posts and figure out which ones are the truly high-quality ones that all subscribers need to see, even if they're years old.

2. Turn Each Post or Group of Posts Into an Email

There are a handful of ways to go about this:

• The fastest, simplest way is to just copy and paste your full post content into an email, style as you see fit (if necessary) and save. No introduction, no conclusion, just the post as a standalone.
  
  I don't necessarily think this is the best solution for everyone, but it's far better than doing nothing - and if you're really too pressed for time to do more than that, then at least do that.


• Copy and paste a compelling excerpt from your article, add a link to read the full post, and then add a brief introduction and conclusion to the email.
  
  I like this method because it encourages clickthroughs, but you may find that including the full post is better.
  
  Either way, including an intro and conclusion is a good idea because it gives you a chance to build context and continuity into the series of emails you're sending.


• If you have two or more good posts on a topic, write an email that combines the ideas in those posts and links to them in context (this is something you might be doing with blog posts already).
  
  The more posts you have on a topic, the less you need to write.
  
  In fact, if you have say, 10 posts on a topic, you could write a simple introduction ("a lot of our readers want to learn about ______ because ______, so here are our most useful resources about that") and then just provide a list of links to those posts.

3. Add Your Emails To Your Follow Up Series

Once you have your emails together, create them as follow up messages.

As you create each one, think about how much time you want to pass between those messages and schedule accordingly.

Remember, new subscribers will also be getting your new posts (right?), so spacing the emails too close together could be overkill, especially if a subscriber gets your new posts and your old posts on the same day.

• One way to get around this: deliver your follow up messages only on a certain day of the week - a day when you don't send your regular blog newsletter - using Autoresponder Send Windows.
  
  For example, if you normally email your latest post/s to subscribers on Tuesdays, you might tell us to only deliver your follow ups on Fridays.
  
  That way, you could deliver these emails as automated weekly tips without sending subscribers 2 emails on the same day.

As you create more quality posts, you can either continue adding emails to your follow up series or edit your existing ones to work those posts into the emails you've already created.

Examples of Email Campaigns That Do This

1. Darren Rowse shares how he did this for his site digital-photography-school.com.


2. In our recent video interview with Ramit Sethi, he talks about doing this for his site iwillteachyoutoberich.com
   
   


3. At AWeber, we do this in some of our own email campaigns.
   
   For example, if you join AWeber and subscribe to our customer training series/newsletter, you'll see some emails that take posts from this blog and rework them into email messages designed to expose you to educational content that you might not have ever seen otherwise.

Do You Revive Your Blog's "Oldies But Goodies?"

What results have you seen from doing this? Any tips on this for the rest of your fellow readers?

Share your thoughts on this post!

While that model might work for a few businesses, it's certainly not for everyone (nor is it in line with most of the email marketing tips you'll find on this and other blogs.

Of course, it's all well and good to talk about the theoretical value of building relationships via email... but is anyone doing it? And if so, how?

Recently, I talked with AWeber customer Chris Guillebeau, who uses email to connect with subscribers, build relationships - and, oh yeah, grow his business while traveling the world.

Watch These Videos From Our Interview

Chris and I talked for a while about:

• How he "does" email.
• What he's learned about email marketing.
• What mistakes he's made (and how he recovered from them).
• How much (if at all) other businesses "get" relationship building.
• How he sells products without making subscribers feel he's being "pushy."

... and a number of other topics.

We talked for about an hour, but that would be one loooong video... so we broke our discussion up into a handful of shorter videos. You can watch them here:

What About You?

How do you build relationships via email? What have you learned along the way?

Share your thoughts on the blog!

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Fresh on the heels of Yahoo's announcement that users can choose to view only emails from their contacts, Gmail is making a change of its own that makes email from contacts more usable and readable than email from non-contacts.

They're not making a separate inbox for contacts, but they are changing one important part about how they treat emails from certain contacts:

Images On By Default For (Some) Contacts

Gmail recently announced that they'll be enabling images for certain people in users' contact lists.

The details:

1. You must be in the Gmail user's contact list.
2. You must be authenticating your emails using SPF or DKIM (AWeber does).
3. The Gmail user must have sent you at least 2 emails. (They note that this is a starting-out threshold that may change.)

Read the announcement on the official Gmail blog.

"You Mean Subscribers Have to Email ME?"

Yep - getting them to list you in their address books is step #1, but they'll also have to email you a couple times before images will be on by default.

But that's OK. In fact, it's a great reason to do something you should already be doing anyway: ask your subscribers for feedback!

Have them email you their thoughts on your emails...

• What they like
• What they don't like
• What they want you to discuss in future emails

... and not only will you be on your way to meeting Gmail's requirements for having images on by default, you'll gain invaluable insight into how you can improve your emails.

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For example, here's the top portion of an email I received from Wells Fargo:

See the two lines above the logo? That's the preheader. It's called a "preheader" because the part just below it - the logo and navigation - are typically called the "header" of the email.

Many businesses use preheaders in their email marketing campaigns to get more subscribers to open and read their emails - and to ensure that their campaigns are as deliverable as possible.

How Can a Preheader Improve Response Rates and Deliverability?

In the uses I've seen, preheaders typically aim to do one or more of the following:

• Link to an online version of the email and/or remind subscribers to turn on images.
  
  Why: Many people view emails with images turned off. If your email relies on images to drive clicks or get a point across, you want those subscribers to be able to see them.
  
  Here's an example from MarketingProfs.com:
  
  
• Ask subscribers to add the sender's address to his/her address book.
  
  Why: As we've discussed before, getting in subscribers' address books increases the likelihood that your email will (a) end up in their inbox and (b) actually get opened/read/clicked.
  
  Here's an example from REI.com:
  
  
• Deliver a compelling one-line summary of the email to get subscribers to keep reading.
  
  Why: People are busy. Many of them scan emails rather than read them top-to-bottom, and many use Gmail-style text snippets or their email program's preview pane to determine which emails to bother reading.
  
  Giving people an overview of why they should read your email can increase the odds that they'll actually do so.
  
  Here's an example from Backcountry.com:
  
  
• Provide an unsubscribe link.
  
  Why: People who want off your list will get off your list one way or another. If you make it hard to unsubscribe, they'll click "Spam" - and they'll keep doing so until they stop seeing emails from you in their inbox.
  
  Here's an example from Viddler.com:
  
  
• Remind subscribers why they're getting the email.
  
  Why: Again, people are busy. They may forget that they ever signed up to your list. And if they forget they signed up, they're probably going to want off your list (see above).
  
  Reminding them why they're getting your emails can help you re-engage subscribers and minimize spam complaints.
  
  Here's an an example from LaQuinta.com:
  
  

How Do You Use Preheaders?

You'll notice that in the examples above, not everyone uses their preheader the same way.

Doing every one of the things that you could do in a preheader could make it unnecessarily long; you have to pick out what works best for your email marketing campaigns.

Do you use preheaders in your emails? If so, what do you put in them?

Share your ideas in the comments!

Obviously providing valuable content plays a big part here (as we've discussed on several occasions), but sometimes a little extra incentive can help, too.

Recently Tracey, our Director of Customer Solutions, passed me an email with a helpful example of how to provide an incentive for subscribers to keep reading and clicking on your emails.

How T-Shirt Vendor TeeFury Uses Open and Click Data to Reward Readers

Here's the body of the email from t-shirt site TeeFury (click image below to see full size):

Toward the end of the email, you'll see this banner:

As you can see, they're offering an incentive - a free T-shirt - to a somewhat randomly selected reader.

I say "somewhat randomly" because they're only opening the giveaway to the first handful of people who open their email.

You Can Do This, Too!

Among the many Email Analytics tools available in AWeber is the ability to search for and segment subscribers based on whether they opened a certain email or clicked a certain link.

You can find options to search your list based on whether subscribers opened a certain email or clicked a certain link on the "Subscribers" page of your account:

All you have to do is:

1. Decide what behavior you want to reward (reading a certain email? clicking a certain link?)
   
   Note: Personally I prefer having people click on a link rather than open an email. This is because tracking email opens relies on subscribers having images enabled, and some people might read your email but have images turned off - so even though they might read your email, you might not know it.
2. Come up with a bonus, gift or special offer specifically for those subscribers who take the desired action
3. Tell subscribers about the bonus/gift/offer/giveaway/etc.
4. Send the email you want them to act on
5. After a certain amount of time (whatever you decide), search your list and pick out your winner/s!

Your Ideas On Using This?

Can you see yourself using this tactic? What sort of incentives would you offer?

Share your thoughts on the blog!

So let's have a little fun in the spirit of the season.

I was thinking recently about what I was thankful for, and when my mind turned to work, a question occurred to me:

What Should Email Marketers Be Thankful For?

A few things I came up with:

Affordability

Not everyone has the cash to spend on radio, TV and print ads. (This is doubly true if you're just starting a business, or taking a struggling one and rebuilding it.)

Email gives us a powerful, yet relatively inexpensive, means of marketing our products and services.

Tracking

No other marketing channel lets us track our results as extensively and quickly as email does.

From open rates (which are still useful, even if they're not perfect), to clickthroughs, to conversions, we can use email statistics to see what works, what doesn't, and what we should do to increase the response to our campaigns.

Reputation and Relevancy Rule

Used to be, content filtering was a really big deal. And a lot of people were lured into the trap of obfuscating words like "F.R.EE" to try and get around those filters. (PS - if you're still doing this, stop. Please. Learn why here.)

Nowadays, effective email marketing involves building a reputation for sending timely, relevant, useful information to subscribers. (Permission still matters, too, but it won't save you if you're sending junk.)

The moral here? Send subscribers what they want, when they want, and you don't need to micro-manage your content to get your email delivered. That's a lot to be thankful for.

You Don't Have to Be an Artist to Create Good-Looking Campaigns

Still like hand-coding your messages? Go for it. I don't envy you.

For the less design-inclined, HTML email templates make it easy to spice up your newsletters with a splash of color and imagery, helping to build your brand as subscribers associate your emails with your website.

That's not to say hiring an email designer to create a custom design for you isn't ever a good idea; it absolutely can be. But it's not critical for every business, and it's not always in the budget.

There's No Shortage of Useful Advice

And not just on our site, either (though in our humble opinion you'll get a lot out of subscribing to this blog and sitting in on one of our webinars )

Organizations like MarketingSherpa and MEC Labs feed us a steady diet of case studies and benchmarks to show us what works and what doesn't.

And blogs like no man is an iland and BeRelevant give us plenty to think about as we evaluate our own email marketing campaigns.

Point is, if there's something you want to know about email marketing, you can rest assured that there are people out here willing and ready to help. All you have to do is ask.

So What Are You Thankful For?

How has email marketing helped you this year? Share your experiences on the blog!

We've been talking about it a lot on the blog lately, and you've been asking "Where is it? When's it coming out?" since the first post.

Starting today, the new Web Form Generator is rolling out to AWeber customers. Some of you will get it today, some will get it over the coming days/weeks.

Either way, you probably want to get a look at how it works...

Come Take a Look

I thought it would be nice to give a little tour and show you the Web Form Generator in action (think of it as an open house, only with less house and more web forms :) ).

Building web forms with the old generator got the job done, but now you can create great looking forms and do it in a way that is much more convenient (look Ma, no HTML editing!).

Enough beating around the bush... let's see the darn thing already!

Webinar: More On the New Web Form Generator

This free one-hour session will cover what's new and give you an opportunity to ask questions in a live Q & A session.

Register now (even if you can't make it that day, we'll send you a recording of it!).

Hope to see you on the webinar!

Have You Made a New Web Form Yet? Show it Off!

Are you one of the first to get the new Web Form Generator? Have you made a form with it yet?

If so, show it off - link it up below!

(If you don't have the new Web Form Generator yet, you will soon... be sure to stop back and share your form, too!)

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Makes sense to us. So the new Web Form Generator - coming out soon - aims to help you do exactly that.

Here are just a few ways you'll be able to customize the look of your forms to build your list faster and create a better new subscriber experience.

Put Your Form Labels Above, Beside or Inside Fields

Want to try putting the "Name" and "Email" labels above the boxes that subscribers fill out, instead of beside them?

Now you can choose how you want your labels aligned:

You can even put them inside the boxes if you want to - when subscribers click inside the field, we'll remove the label so they can type their name/email!

Add Color to Your Submit Buttons And Position Them Where You Want

Want your form's submit button to stand out and beg to be clicked? You got it.

Think that changing the colors and/or the location of it will help you get more conversions? Now you can find out.

Customize the look of your submit button - you can even add gradients to it to make it slicker:

and you can place it where you think it'll get clicked the most - left, center or right:

If you want to get scientific about it, split test the different colors or positions to see what gets you the most new subscribers!

Show Subscribers How to Confirm With Dynamic Thank You Pages

Want to use video on your thank you pages to increase confirmed opt-ins, but don't have the time or equipment to make it happen?

Use our video thank you pages to give each new subscriber precise instructions on how to confirm.

We'll even show them exactly what your confirm email looks like in their specific email program (Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook, Mac Mail, etc).

Collect Addresses With Smart Fields

Need to collect more than just name and email address? How about a postal address?

Now you can easily ask for an address in your forms:

You can then use that data to search and segment your list in AWeber (example: send an email to all of your subscribers in Pennsylvania), or export it so you can build relationships with your subscribers by postal mail.

Automatically Insert a Privacy Policy

We've talked before about the merits creating a privacy policy and linking it from your signup form to increase trust, but that's always been something you had to do on your own.

Now, just tell us to add a privacy policy to your form:

We'll add a link to a privacy policy we created for AWeber customers to use:

It reaffirms your commitment to delivering email to people who want to get it from you and shows people how easy it is to unsubscribe if they choose to do so.

See the privacy policy.

That's Not All

There are tons of ways to make your signup forms cooler and more appealing to subscribers (templates, anyone?). These are just a few examples.

What else can you do? You'll have to try the new Web Form Generator and find out for yourself...

You can also sign up for a webinar/demo of the new Web Form Generator scheduled for Tuesday, November 24th.

The big–daddy research resource on the web is Google. The first thing we recommend trying is typing in the person’s name plus “email” or their e-mail address into the Google search engine box and seeing what comes up. Often times a whole array of email specialty resources will come up.

It’s common to see people in Google show up in their personal websites, or on their company or school websites, often if you know where they work or where they went to school, you can trace them through

Continue reading Free email search resources

Lets be honest, most forms are well... boring.

And creating the HTML for a web form is about as interesting as watching paint dry.

But, believe it or not... it doesn't have to be that way.

Our new Web Form Generator: More Powerful Than Rocky?

OK, maybe it can't beat up Clubber Lang. But it definitely packs a punch.

In fact, dare I say - using our new editor you can build a beautiful looking form without knowing the first thing about HTML.

Not only that... its fun to use. Really.

So for those of you who used to hire a professional to make your forms look pretty - take that money and go have a beer on us. YOU'VE just been promoted to lead designer.

Show Us How You Want Your Form to Look - We'll Do the Heavy Lifting

The new Web Form Generator makes it way easier to create an elaborate form, which when done properly will help you better communicate with your subscribers.

I'll show you what I mean.

For this example, lets say I am the proud owner of a real estate company called "Honey & Vinegar Realty." We currently have a form on our website which collects subscribers' name and email. This is great, but we really feel like we could be getting more out of our list of subscribers.

So as always, I first click the "Web Forms" tab and then click the green "+ Create New Form" button, although this time I'm greeted by the new Web Form Generator (see screenshot below).

So, Let's Make a Real Estate Signup Form!

Looking through the different form templates I find that the first one is best suitable for my website.

So I click on it, which brings me to this black box that provides me with a variety of color schemes. (see below)

I like the "Trevose" color scheme... after all it is named after my home town. So I click the blue "Load Template" button.

Now my template is loaded and the template bar has been minimized.

OK, I've only clicked a couple of things and my form is already looking decent... now what?

Let's Think - What Information Do I Want to Collect From My Subscribers?

In real estate, location is key. So I think for my form it would be a great to have subscribers select areas they are interested in. This way I can segment my list and send each subscriber information that is more closely tailored to what they are looking for.

Working from top to bottom... Name and Email are already inserted into my form for me. So the next thing I'm going to want is a place for my users to pick locations.

I'll use a "Text Element" to add an instructions sentence. In this case I'll write - "Select the counties you are more interested in:".

Now, I'd like them to be able to select multiple areas. Using a checkbox might be my best bet.

So I'll create a new "Field" for each county and set the "Input Type" to be a checkbox.

I'm happy with my design but I feel like maybe I should have some sort of divider to separate the sections of the form a little bit.

So lets add one in:

And of course I can't forget to add some some writing in my header and footer:

There you have it! A nice, professional form... without touching any HTML.

At This Point I Know Everyone Is Probably Thinking "Yeah, Yeah... Get to the Templates!"

Eric and I are now in the phase of development where we are spending most of our time cranking out form templates. We want to provide some fresh designs and ideas to take your forms to the next level.

Click to view some of the ones we've made up to this current date.

Of Course, Your Input is The Most Important Thing of All.

If you have any ideas for form templates that you'd want made, please leave a comment.

Eric and I will be creating a lot of form templates in the up coming weeks so any inspiration and ideas you can send our way will go a long way!

As it turns out, that was about three and a half years ago now. And we've grown more, to the point that the office we moved into in 2006 just can't hold us.

So after over a year of planning and construction, we're moving into a new office.

Limited Support on Moving Day - Friday, June 26th

Tomorrow, AWeber's team is moving out of our 4000 square foot office into a much larger building (it's 24,000 square feet!).

(Click for a larger image of our Customer Solutions area.)

It's going to be a busy day for our Customer Solutions Team as we move computers, phones, chairs and other equipment to the new office and get it all hooked up there.

However, we still want to be able to provide support to the 60,000-plus customers who rely on us for their email marketing.

We're going to stagger the move throughout the day so that at least part of our team is answering your questions throughout our normal business hours (8:00am - 8:00pm).

Please Bear With Us As We Move

Since some people will be moving while others "hold down the fort" we may not be able to answer all of everyone's questions as quickly as normal on Friday.

So if you call and can't get us on the phone promptly, leave a message and we'll get in touch with you as soon as we can. As always, we'll work to answer your questions (by phone, email and live text chat) within one business day.

We're excited to get into a new facility that will help us provide email marketing services more effectively than ever.

Thanks for your patience as we move!

In the UK and much of Europe, the rate is 1 in 4 or worse. Australia or New Zealand? Nearly one out of every 3 people will be victimized within a year. These facts come from respected research

Continue reading Criminal Background Checks

Today, let's talk about email design. Specifically, plain text email design.

While creating plain text emails seems easy (and it is) there are things you can do to make your plain text emails more reader-friendly.

A recent email I received illustrates this well:

Evernote's Plain Text Update

Here's an email I received from the makers of software program Evernote:

(Click image to see full-size)

Now, we could take the easy way out and say that Evernote should be sending HTML emails instead of plain text - so they could more easily present this information in the excellent way they do on their website and blog.

Instead, let's focus instead on how Evernote could make it easier for subscribers to get the information they want out of this email.

For the record, I don't think this is a bad email overall. It has a great tone and a lot of good content in it. I just think that the format makes it hard for subscribers to use and appreciate that content.

Making This Plain Text Email Usable

While this email isn't just one big continuous block of text, it does leave a few things to be desired...

No Maximum Character Width

Notice how long the lines are in this email?

(Click to see full-size)

Those are being cut off by my Gmail account when it runs out of room at around 133 characters - about twice what we recommend as a maximum line length. And if Gmail had let the, the lines would have run even longer than that!

Keeping the lines shorter would mean subscribers don't have to move their eyes so far across the page and back to read the email, making scanning faster and easier.

Headers Aren't Easily Visible and Scannable

If you're going to have an email with separate topics/sections, it's best to use headers (just like you would on a web page) to make those sections easy to find as subscribers scan your email.

This email has headers, but fails to separate them from the corresponding paragraphs.

At the very least there should be another line break between the header and paragraph; I'd probably also try making the header stand out a little more with some hyphens or asterisks.

No Separation of Content Within Paragraphs

Each section of this email has a header and then a single large paragraph of text.

Even at the long line lengths shown here, each paragraph is several lines long. If you were to shorten the lines to 60-70 characters, these would be really long.

This email could be far more readable if you broke the paragraphs apart, maybe used some bulleted lists... you don't have to follow the old "5-sentence paragraph" structure when writing an email!

No Conclusion or Signoff

This email just abruptly ends after the last content section:

What's strange about this is that the rest of the email actually has a great friendly, personal tone to it... so a signature or conclusion of some sort seems like a no-brainer.

Leaving the signature off makes it feel less like an email you're receiving from an actual person at Evernote, and more like a machine-written news summary.

Your conclusion and/or signature need not be elaborate (for example, look at the one in Kayak's email newsletters) but it should be there to bring everything else in your emails back together.

Just For Fun: My Rewrite Of This Email

Here's that same email content, with ~3 minutes' work to format it differently:

(Click image for full-size)

It's longer since I shortened the lines and broke up the text a bit, but I think it reads a lot more smoothly than the previous version.

I'm of course biased since this rewrite is my creation, so I'll ask you:

Would you agree that the simple layout changes in this version make the email much easier to scan and read?

I hope so.

Plain Text Doesn't Have to Be Plain-Jane

It's perfectly fine to send plain text emails; they might work better for you than HTML.

But if you do go the plain text route, don't assume that means there's zero design involved!

How do YOU lay out your plain text emails to make them easy to read?

Share your ideas and thoughts in the comments!

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Ever wish your email template could match your blog?

At AWeber, you can use any of our 100+ HTML email templates to create great-looking emails in a variety of color schemes – but what if you could match the look of your email marketing campaigns perfectly to your website?

To help make this happen, and have some fun in the process, I’ve created a couple HTML email templates based on some free WordPress themes that you can download and use

Continue reading Freebie Email Templates

Ramit writes about personal finance at iwillteachyoutoberich.com and uses email to market that site, his book and other products.

We talked at length about topics that many of you may have questions about when creating, managing and optimizing an email campaign. Today, with a little help from our YouTube channel, we're going to share those with you.

Using Email Marketing to Grow a Community

In this video, Ramit shares how he:

• Uses email to grow/nurture his community
• Measures success
• Values feedback
• Handles the volume of incoming email and why he believes in being accessible (and doesn't use a do not reply address)

Starting an Email Marketing Campaign

In this video, Ramit shares:

• How he started email marketing
• How often he sent emails to subscribers
• What he put in his emails
• How many autoresponders he's sending

More Videos Now At Our YouTube Channel (And More Coming Soon!)

For a couple more clips from our interview with Ramit, head over to our YouTube channel.

There, you'll find videos on:

1. How he increased his open rate by 50% in 7 days
2. How he got traffic to his site before email (what he did to get people there in the first place so he could start building his list)

Go to AWeber's YouTube Channel

We'll be publishing more clips from this interview there soon, so be sure to subscribe to our channel to get notified about new videos!