Now that you’ve been diving into the affiliate marketing world, you might have heard that the best way to promote your products is through email marketing.
And AWeber is one of THE most popular email autoresponder services available out there. But now you might be wondering, “how do I set up my email autoresponder in a way that will help me with affiliate marketing?”
Great question. That is exactly the reason why I am writing this article.
The best part about AWeber is that you do not need to have a ton of technical knowledge to set yourself up for success. Heck, most of their settings are based on a drag-and-drop method. And not only that, the whole thing words very efficiently behind the scenes without you having to even lift a finger.
So in this article, I will be going into great detail about how you should set up your AWeber autoresponder.
What the Heck Is an Autoresponder And Why Do You Need It?
An autoresponder is basically an email follow-up series that keeps running without you having to do anything.
This follow-up series is triggered when a new person subscribes to your email list.
If you have subscribed to an email list recently, you might remember that they send you emails on a regular basis. In 99% of the cases, this is done through an autoresponder.
They give you an impression that a real person is writing that email and sending you the email in real-time. And while that is 100% true, those emails are written ahead of time and scheduled to be sent at a particular time.
What happens is that once someone is done writing an email sequence (also known as the follow-up series), they then schedule the time when each of those emails should be sent to the subscribers.
Once that is done, the subscribers will keep receiving the email until the email sequence is over, or the subscriber unsubscribes from the list.
By now you might have already realized that having an email autoresponder is pretty important because it can save you a ton of time. Not only that, it can also ensure you that your emails are being sent at the appropriate times.
You do not want to send an email when your subscriber is sleeping. You want to send them at a time when they will be able to read your email before any other email. An autoresponder can do that for (although you might have to do some research and set the timings according to that).
In other words, an autoresponder can help engage your audience without you having to be present at every moment. And it can also keep them interested for a long time. And that is exactly what we are looking for.
So, without any further ado, let’s jump right into it.
Everything That You Can Do With AWeber
You can say that almost every other email marketer now uses AWeber as their autoresponder. You can do everything with it.
You can design and launch different campaigns for your email list. You can manipulate every aspect of email marketing there is. Everything from the signup forms where people enter their emails, to managing your subscribers and segmenting them into different groups.
You name it, they have and you can do it with ease.
But the biggest reason why the majority of the people love AWeber is because of its integrations. You can integrate this amazing autoresponder with almost every major Content Management System (CMS) out there, including WordPress.
Setting Up Your AWeber Autoresponder
You will obviously need to sign up to one of their current subscription plans. They do not offer a free membership. But they do let you take it for a spin for 7 days before you start paying for it.
I would highly recommend trying it out for a week and getting familiar with it.
Assuming that you already have signed for an account, let’s keep going.
Step 1: Creating An Email List And a Signup Form For It
For every email list that you create, you will need to create a unique sign up form for it. This will let the autoresponder know which email subscriber to put in which email list.
Creating an email list is pretty straightforward. It will ask you some basic details like the sender’s name and email for the list.
Once you do that and click Next, you will then be asked to name your email list. This is the name that will help you identify the list in the future. So make sure that you name it something very close to the project that you are running it for.
For instance, if you are creating this email list for an audience interested in losing weight, you can name it as “Weight Loss List.”
After that, you will also need to write a brief description about your mailing list. Here you can write about the topics that you will be covering in your email sequence, etc. This description is useful to jog the memory of someone who is trying to unsubscribe from your list.
So when they do that, they will see this description and then have the option to either unsubscribe to stay subscribed. Basically showing them the reason why they subscribed to your list in the first place.
Once you click Next Step, you will almost be done creating this list. Here you will need to configure/write what you want to send to the subscriber for verification. This is a confirmation email where the subscriber will need to click on the link to confirm their subscription.
AWeber already has a couple of pre-approved lines that you can use. But my recommendation would be to use the subscriber’s first name in that email. It will personalize it enough to keep your confirmation rates high.
Once you are done with creating the confirmation email, you will have to click on Approve Message & Create List. Once you do that, you will be prompted to create a signup form for your brand new mailing list.
This is where you can customize the signup form to your liking. It all depends on the style of your website and how you want the form to look like. AWeber does have plenty of templates that you can choose from. So this should be a walk in the park for you.
If you feel confused, do not worry. They even have an in-depth guide on how you can integrate the signup form on your website.
Step 2: Customizing the Welcome Email of Your Follow Up Series/Email Sequence
Once you have created the mailing list and your signup form, you are all set to start receiving your first subscribers.
And once they confirm their subscription, this will be the very first “official” email from the follow-up series.
By this point, the subscriber is already interested in what you have to say. But you want to be extra sure about that and seal the deal. And a great welcome email goes a long way in doing that.
That will ensure that your subscriber eagerly awaits your next email because that’s how interested they will be if you can get this right.
So to craft your welcome email, you will need to go to your AWeber dashboard and then navigate to Messages > Legacy Follow Up Series. This is the section where you can create an entire series of autoresponders for your subscribers to receive.
The very first email of that sequence will obviously be your welcome email.
While creating a new email, you will have 3 options:
- Use AWeber’s drag-and-drop builder
- Use the simple text option, or
- Use the HTML option
Personally, I would recommend the drag-and-drop builder because it is very easy to use.
Remember, at this point, you want to only focus on writing amazing emails. So the less you deal with other problems, the better.
Once you are done writing the email, you can save it by clicking on Save & Exit. Now you will be able to see your new email in a list of drafts.
Next, to it there will be a button that says Send Options. You want to click that button and then select Add to Follow Up Series.
Assuming that this is the very first email of the sequence, AWeber will send this email to every new subscriber as soon as they confirm their subscription. Simple!
Step 3: Adding More Emails to Your Follow Up Sequence
Congratulations! You have done it! You have created the first mailing list and have also sent them your very first welcome email.
Now, this is where the magic happens.
This is the point where you add more emails to your follow up sequence.
To do that, you will again have to navigate to Messages > Legacy Follow Up Series from your dashboard.
After that, click on Create a Message button. And now the same process will repeat again. You will basically be repeating Step 2 a lot of times until you are satisfied with your follow up sequence.
Once your next email is added to the existing follow-up sequence, you will be asked to define a schedule of when they should be delivered to your subscribers.
If you do not choose anything, the default setting is to send the emails one day after the previous one. Basically a new email every 24 hours. But you want to set this to something more reasonable. Something that wouldn’t annoy your subscribers.
I have found that a weekly email or even 2 emails per week are more than enough to keep them interested in your content.
You can also change this schedule for every email in the follow-up sequence by clicking the Edit button.
Another great thing about this is that you can select specific days from the week so that they are not counted in your schedule. Days such as Sundays.
We will be writing an in-depth article about what timings are the best to maximize your email open rates and engagement. So watch out for that. But as of now, you will have to do a little bit of research yourself and set that timing accordingly.
Once you save the changes for your new email, it will appear below the welcome email that you created.
And at this point, you can create as many emails in your follow-up sequence as you want. But not only that, you can also change the order of the emails as well by just dragging and dropping them. For me, that is the best part. It just makes the whole thing super easy for me.
Conclusion
By this point, you might already know how easy it is to use AWeber. And why it is easily one of the most robust and efficient email autoresponder services out there.
At the end of the day, it is all about staying on top of everything related to your email list. Because that is where you will be making most of your money from. And instead of spending an ungodly amount of hours manually doing everything yourself, you can just automate everything.
