So what do you really want from an auto-responder?
Wiki Definition:
An auto-responder is a computer program that automatically answers e-mail sent to it. They can be very simple or quite complex.The main purpose of using an auto-responder is to keep in contact with your List. Your list consists of people who trust and follow you and respect you as a leader.
As they say "The money is in the List".
So it is vital that your auto-responder can do a couple of things very well.
1. Gets the e-mails to your List (spam filters are an issue and might prevent some messages to getting to their destination)
2. Manage the List (being able to filter who is on your list and the health of the List)
3. Easy of Use
4. Cost as List grows
5. Tracking
6. Affiliate program
The foundation to any successful network marketing business is always linked to a properly working auto-responder.
Comparison between
Aweber vs iContact
1. Cost - $20/month (0-500 subscribers) vs $10/month (0-250 subscribers), $14 (500 subscribers)
2. Popularity Alexa - 256 vs 3,197
3. Ease of Use - Both are similar as both allow both HTML and TXT messages but converting a HTML to a TXT in iContact sometimes requires additional editing as words get merged. Very annoying. Also Aweber shows you the standard width so you can sentence wrap lines for smaller screens which most people have.
4. Tracking - iContacts method of tracking breaks it down per message sent and you can see the sent, opens, bounces, spams. Aweber also does that but take a bit longer to adjust to. Aweber seems to have more information and seems to focus more on a larger audience as each subscriber has more unique information tied to them. In iContact, you specify how many days after a subscriber joins to send the message. Aweber has how many days AFTER the message before. This makes total sense. If you have 100 auto-responder emails then you don't want to have to edit each iContact email and have to adjust how many dates from entry to send the email. The drag and drop order and how many days the next email should be released after the previous one is Aweber is much easier to handle.
5. Affiliate - 20% personal and 10% from 2nd level vs 25% on all sales. Aweber raising commissions from 20% to 30%, take effect today, April 8th, 2009.
6. Spam - Aweber. Their system seems much easier to pin point what is making your message a "spammy" message. iContact also has this feature but doesn't seem as integrated into the who editing process of a message. I find I can take a look and see which of my e-mails is more "spammy". This is important and Aweber stresses that by making sure we understand if one of my messages is on the border of being marked.
7. Global Fields - Very similar in function but Aweber makes it a bit easier to actually use the fields.
8. Signature -YOU MUST KNOW THIS FOR AWEBER. The Text e-mail will automatically attach your signature data you specify in your list options. The HTML WILL NOT. You must manually put "{!signature} " after your message. I thought that was odd that it wasn't automatically placed like in the Text version.
Sending a TXT and HTML message will help reduce your Spam score so make use of it when you can.
Use an auto-responder like iContact or Aweber that sends from YOUR e-mail and not not generated e-mail. Isoresponder sends out e-mail that is from a generated e-mail which makes it harder for users to lock in the senders single e-mail.
Pricing
iContact has a $1 trial. Aweber basically gives you a month to try the system out and if you don't like it they refund your money.
Aweber states: "If you are not satisfied with the results you see, contact us for a full, hassle-free refund."
Aweber policy on subscriber count.
"There are two types of leads (subscribers) that counts towards your pricing. 1. Active Leads which are leads subscribed to your list receiving messages. 2. Inactive leads which are leads that are unsubscribed. Although they are not receiving messages from you, their records still remain on your account but you can delete them whenever you want. Unconfirmed leads do not count towards pricing. These are subscribers that were sent the confirmation message but never clicked the link. They are automatically deleted from the system after 30 days since the confirmation link has an active period of 30 days you would not be charged for them."
So which one? In terms of which to chose, it really depends on your personal needs.
Both are great programs and if your list is small the only difference would be price until you go over 250 subscribers. If your goal is 250 subscribers then your thinking too small. Personally, I was fed up with iContacts HTML email copy to TEXT and having to correct the mistakes of that conversion.
My customizable marketing system that generates Leads even on auto pilot uses Aweber and that is more than enough reason for me to use it too.
Learn to grow your network marketing business using internet tools like Autoresponders. I personally use an
Aweber Autoresponder to grow my network marketing business.
