This post continues the last few posts, telling you all about how to use aWeber to manage your mailing list. So if you haven’t yet signed up for aWeber, you should do that now.

So to continue this little series of free aWeber tutorials, let’s talk autoresponders.

And actually, you may be wondering just what the hell “autoresponders” are. So here’s what they are, and how to use them.

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Got it? Rock on.

Dig this? Remember, it’s just a small sample of what’s in Zero to Business, so be sure to check that out!

This post continues the last few posts, telling you all about how to use aWeber to manage your mailing list. So if you haven’t yet signed up for aWeber, you should do that now.

Now, the last few posts with videos have shown you how to set up and begin using aWeber… but your list is pretty damn useless if you don’t send something, now isn’t it?

So let’s send something already.

There are two basic kinds of things you’ll send:

1. e-zines of various kinds – basically, free zines of value in and of themselves, and
2. reminders about things – email versions of tapping them on the shoulder and saying, “Hey, check this out.”

And in each of the above, you can send plain text (#2 is usually just plain old text) or full HTML documents so that it looks almost like a website, with pictures and everything.

Here’s how to do it:

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The last bit to cover in this series is how to use autoresponders, so keep an eye out for that. (Of course, if you want to make sure you don’t miss it, you should sign up for the RSS feed for this blog.)

Dig this? Remember, it’s just a small sample of what’s in Zero to Business, so be sure to check that out!

This post continues the last few posts, telling you all about how to use aWeber to manage your mailing list. So if you haven’t yet signed up for aWeber, you should do that now.

Okay, so in the last post, I told you how to add subscribers manually in aWeber. But the way you REALLY want most people to join your list is by filling out forms on your website.

By the way, I could really go for some nachos right now.

(Oh, and if you got this post by email? There’s a video below that probably won’t show up. You really should click over to the blog if you want to actually watch it.)

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Next up, in a few days? I’ll tell you how to actually start sending things… both HTML and regular old text.

Dig this? Remember, it’s just a small sample of what’s in Zero to Business, so be sure to check that out!

This post continues the last one, telling you all about how to use aWeber to manage your mailing list. So if you haven’t yet signed up for aWeber, you should do that now.

Okay, to start: I don’t usually recommend adding people manually or importing lists, but there are certainly times you’d want to think about doing it.

You may want to read this to help you decide whether aWeber is even the right service for you — especially if you want to import a lot of people. There are plenty of cases (when you have a large existing list) that may make more sense with another service, and if you’re in that situation, this tutorial will help you out.

Still think aWeber is the way to go? Then watch the vid below and rock it.

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Next up, in a few days? I’ll tell you how to create and use forms so that you can do this the right way.

Dig this? Remember, it’s just a small sample of what’s in Zero to Business, so be sure to check that out!

A client of mine recently described her experience using a certain service’s tech support. She wanted to know how to do a certain thing, and the support rep responded with this high-level, techy answer. When she asked again, he gave her a slightly different techy answer. A third time. A fourth time. The support rep started getting annoyed. My client started getting angry, because the rep wasn’t helping. At all.

“Tell me EXACTLY WHAT TO DO!” she yelled at him. TELL ME ‘DO THIS. THEN DO THIS. THEN THIS.’”

The rep was doing what tech people often do — he was talking above her head because… well, because that’s what tech people do. They can’t dumb it down, because they have to impress you with how much they know.

And unfortunately, the end result is that nobody learns anything. Luckily, the support rep’s ego remains intact, because as we all know, that’s the whole point of their jobs. To maintain their own egos.

I don’t do that. Remember? I make technology simple.

So you want to know how to get started with email marketing? You want to start a mailing list and just do the damn thing already? You want someone to finally tell you EXACTLY WHAT TO DO?

Well, here we go. I’m going to give you some material out of my Zero to Business course TOTALLY FOR FREE because I’m awesome and because I know that once you see how easy I’ve made email marketing, you’re going to want to see how easy I’ve made the rest of the cornerstone components of an online business. And you’re going to want to join the many cool people who are already playing around with Zero to Business, and are already making the internet cry with their newfound ninja mastery.

So here we go.

How to get started in email marketing and totally pwn it like a super zombie slayer and then feel really cool because you pwned it and it’s not actually a zombie and hey, where’s my hat?

Having a blog or website is like posting a sign somewhere. It’s passive. People may stop and read it, but many will walk right on by or forget it’s there at all. But email is like tapping people on the shoulder and saying, “Ahem… check this out” and handing them a flier. Sure, they may never look at the flier, and sure, they may throw it away in disgust. But plenty of people will be like, “Oh yeah, I do like that, and I totally forgot about it or wouldn’t have thought of it.”

So you should use email as part of your online business. Don’t even think of just sending email from your email program, though. Follow this process to do it right.

So let’s get you rolling. Ready? Here’s where you start.

1. Go here.

2. Fill in your information

3. Congratufuckinglations, you’re in.

(Sigh. Not very satisfying as a tutorial.)

So, ready to rock it with a step-by-step video? So let’s rock it already with today’s lesson:

Making a list

(By the way, you’ll probably want to view this video at full-screen by clicking the little icon in the lower right corner of the player.)

(Also by the way, there’s a video below. If you’re reading this in an RSS reader or by email and don’t see it, you really should click through to the post to see the video, since the video is kind of the whole point of this post.)

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Remember, you can make as many lists as you want, and have totally different settings, “From” addresses, confirm and follow-up messages, etc. for each. And every time you make a new list, you’ll want to do the following as described in the video:

1. Name the list and configure its general settings,

2. Customize the confirmed opt-in message, and

3. Create a follow-up message to go out to people once they confirm that they want to be on your list.

Now that you have a list or two, you’ll need to add some people to it. In a few days, I’ll show you how to add people to those lists manually, create and use forms to add people “the right way,” send HTML and text messages, and set up and use autoresponders.

Dig this? Remember, it’s just a small sample of what’s in Zero to Business, so be sure to check that out!

I need to add this more formally to the site, but I have indeed completed my first step-by-step tutorial. This one will tell you exactly how to:

• Sign up for a list service
• Add contacts manually or via import
• Create a form
• Put a form on your blog or website
• Send a message

In short, all of the basics. Check it out, and pass it along if you know anyone who would find it useful!

Check it out here!

I’ve decided that the first action I’m going to take toward addressing the findings of my survey is going to be to create some step-by-step tutorials.

To get an idea what I’m talking about, just look at how I laid things out in my free e-book. I want these to be stupidly easy. Not because I think you’re stupid (though that’s possible — have you ever walked into a closed screen door?), but because I like to make things crystal clear. I also know there are a lot (LOT!) of people out there who get overwhelmed by the plethora of choices out here in Internet land. You start to worry about clicking the wrong thing because there is too much going on, and it keeps you from doing anything.

So I’m going to start work on one of those hopefully today. The first one will be for iContact, because a whole lot of you said you wanted to know more about email marketing. I know I said I’m switching from iContact to aWeber, so you may think endorsing iContact is a strange choice. But I have my reasons, and here they are:

1. Most non-pros would be perfectly satisfied with iContact‘s services and options.
i.e., it’s “enough” for most people’s needs. Most people who aren’t internet pros have ONE list, and they send ONE newsletter. They may need to segment that list some, but they need nothing fancy, nothing too highly customized.

2. It’s simple.
See above re: my thoughts on simplicity. aWeber is fantastic; don’t get me wrong. I will sing its praises from the roof soon, and will make tutorials upon tutorials about it. But aWeber is more complicated. If one of iContact or aWeber is going to confuse you, it’s going to be aWeber.

3. It will work with a “dirty” list.
Like “milk, cheese, condoms, lube, octopus porn.” Or like a list that isn’t “clean” by aWeber’s standards. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: aWeber are list Nazis. I’ve tried numerous times to import lists into aWeber and had them rejected because the lists are “stale” or “dirty.” Basically, if you haven’t been meticulous about managing your email list (if you have one), your list will register as stale or dirty. A “clean” list is ideally double opt-in (someone signs up, then has to click a link in their email before being added to the list), does not have addresses on it that have bounced more than once, handles unsubscribes immediately and unceremoniously, has a zero-tolerance spam policy, etc.

iContact, on the other hand, doesn’t appear to give a shit. You take a list, you import it, it’s there, you send stuff to it. End of story.

I’ll give you two examples of cases where I’d unreservedly recommend iContact over aWeber:

ICONTACT CANDIDATE #1: My wife’s boss
My wife works part time for a company that sells manufacturing equipment. The owner has a list of clients’ email addresses and wants to be able to send them email, and to sort it by company, city, etc. If he imported this list into aWeber, it would be rejected because a handful of email addresses on this large list are likely to be old and stale. But on the off chance that it wasn’t rejected, the system would send an email to everyone on his list asking them to opt-in. Because he collected these addresses casually, his clients would be annoyed that he seemed to be asking them to join a list, and none of them would opt in. He’d lose 90% of his list.

But by using iContact, he could just import the list and be done with it.

ICONTACT CANDIDATE #2: My client on a legacy email system
A while back, a company I work for built a proprietary email system. It’s like a shitty iContact. It sends email in the same way, but offers no reporting, doesn’t manage bounced emails, etc. As a result, this list SUCKS. I’ve recommended moving the list to a real email management system, but I’m recommending iContact. aWeber would laugh at this shitty, non-opt-in, stale-as-fuck list. With iContact, we’ll import it and use it. Done.

So if any of this sounds like you, you might want to head over to iContact and sign up for their 15-day free trial now, in advance of my tutorials, so that you can poke around. You don’t have to enter credit card info, so you won’t have to remember to cancel if you don’t like it.

GET THIS: I recorded my webinar from Monday, and I have the video ready, but I CANNOT GET FUCKING VIDDLER TO ACCEPT IT. Keeps crapping out partway through. So I can’t post it. It’s too big for YouTube. Any suggestions?

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But while we’re thinking about mailing lists (we weren’t, but I’m hoping you won’t notice), Wendy from YourWebCoaches.com left a fantastic tip about aWeber and, specifically, moving to it from iContact or another service. I’ll just paste her tip here:

AWeber will let you import your list WITHOUT making your people re-opt-in. They don’t advertise this (I guess they would get inundated if they did), and you have to pick up the phone and actually call them and explain the situation, and you have to PROVE that the people you’re importing have already double-opted-in on some other system (the way you do this is by actually giving the AWeber rep your iContact password so they can see with real human eyes that you’re telling the truth). But if you do all this, you can get your entire list imported with no re-opting-in. Technically they temporarily turn off the forced double-opt-in for a limited number of subscribers.

I’ve done this before, for myself and for clients. AWeber’s customer service generally rocks, so I’m sure they can walk you through it. Provided that you were making people double opt-in in iContact, that is.

So let’s be clear that I’m not saying that aWeber is better than iContact, since I do recommend both. I just seem to have crossed that line that divides an ideal iContact user from an ideal aWeber user.

This means I will have to migrate my list from iContact over to aWeber. When I move the lists, aWeber will send an email to all of my subscribers asking if they still want to be on the list. If they do, they will have to re-opt in. You typically lose half of your list this way. And it’s a kick in the gut, because you got all comfortable thinking about how many people liked you, and then only half of those people come back and you’re like, “Oh. Shit. I guess only half of those people liked me.”

So let’s also be clear that if you think you will EVER require aWeber, just start with it now to avoid all of this.

Anyway, I’m making the switch because I’m getting too many lists, requiring too much customization, and quickly running out of room on my plan. Because:

- iContact calls one person on one list a “subscriber.” So if johnny@theeconomyisnthappening.com is on three of my lists, he counts as three subscribers.

- aWeber calls one email address a subscriber, regardless of how many lists that address is on. So in the above example, that is only ONE aWeber subscriber.

Each of my webinars requires a different mailing list. Plus, I have my main mailing list (you join this when you download my e-book) and, of course, my The Economy Isn’t Happening email list. Which is the coolest among them.

So I’m switching.

I still think iContact is the best choice for people who have ONE main list, especially if they don’t have that list in any sort of automated mailing service now and just want to USE IT without requiring everyone to re-opt in, as aWeber would make you do.

But for me, looks like I graduated to aWeber. Hooray me.

On Monday, my webinar service cut out and I wasn’t able to show people how to set up their mailing lists using iContact and aWeber. But I struck back. Oh yes.

I didn’t want to wait three weeks and schedule a new webinar, so I recorded this video. Here’s what it covers:

• How to create a new list in both iContact and aWeber
• How to manually add subscribers
• How to add a form in both, and add it to your blog even if you’re not too tech savvy

Enjoy!