Does Email Marketing Success Depend on Technical Know-How?

During yesterday’s Workshop/Q&A Webinar, Karen asked a great question:

“How important is knowing HTML to really take advantage of my AWeber account with a blog and a capture page?”

We commonly get this question from people who are concerned that putting a signup form on their site will be difficult, or feel that in order to maximize response to their email marketing campaigns, they need to make significant changes to the appearance of the form.

Listen to Marc’s and my take on this, and then let us know what you think.

Do You Need To Know HTML? If So, How Much?

Click the play button below to listen:

We suggested to Karen that HTML knowledge isn’t necessary to get started, but may be useful later on. We also pointed her to w3schools.com which is one of many sites where you can learn how to create/edit HTML through a series of tutorials.

What Has Your Experience Been?

Do you feel that being an HTML/CSS expert is necessary to successfully grow a subscriber list and send out effective email campaigns? What about a “working knowledge” of HTML? Or do you feel that you can do just fine without having to learn it?

Got a topic or question you’d like us to address on the blog?

Email us your suggestions!

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By: Justin Premick
Director of Education Marketing

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7 Comments

  1. Lori Titus

    HTML has been an easy "language" to pick up. I took a 3-day class at a local community college ten years ago. As HTML has evolved, I have always been able to find updates online, retraining myself as I go along. I might not be an "expert", but I consider myself as well above a working knowledge.

    I don’t think being an HTML "expert" is necessary for use with aWeber, although a working knowledge is useful. The form itself is generated by aWeber, and you just need to have enough knowledge of HTML to know how to insert it into your own website. aWeber offers plenty of pre-formatted newsletter styles, and although you may need to be skilled in HTML to understand the underlying code in some of them, there are still plenty of simpler newsletter styles to choose from. Plus, once you have one form set up correctly, you can simply duplicate it for the others.

    For anyone running a website for the first time, I would recommend taking an HTML class, regardless if you are using a program such as Dreamweaver or straight programming. After a basic class, use of aWeber is a relative cinch.

    10/11/2007 10:01 pm
  2. Betty Byrnes

    You can probably get by with little knowledge of HTML; but as Lori said, it is helpful to have a basic understanding of it so you can insert your forms properly.

    Knowing some HTML also helps when the WYSIWYG editor has a mind of its own! I find this particularly helpful when there are formatting problems – font size, line breaks, etc. If you have some HTML knowledge, you can go in, play around with the code and try to correct the problem.

    I have a very basic knowledge of HTML and most of what I learned was from w3schools.com. They have a great set of tutorials and a Tryit Editor. If I run into a problem with the WYSIWYG editor, I copy the code to the Tryit Editor and play around with it there. I can usually get the problem fixed. If not, I haven’t messed up my work in AWeber.

    I know some of the problems I have with WYSIWYG editors is probably "operator error" but with some knowledge of HTML, I can work around the problems.

    10/15/2007 8:06 am
  3. kenneth young

    This was an interesting and I would like to know more on squeeze page( how they made).

    Also I would appreciate information on making URL clickable.

    10/15/2007 9:29 am
  4. valerie

    I would like to be notified when these seminars are on

    10/15/2007 11:55 am
  5. Marc Kline

    Valerie,

    This recording came from a short conversation Justin and I had and wanted to share via this post.

    We do, however, offer a few webinars per week, where we present live video and audio on email marketing topics and answer questions from the audience.

    You’ll find them via our Live Webinars schedule page:

    http://www.aweber.com/webinars

    10/15/2007 2:37 pm
  6. david todd

    this is very helpful for newcomers like me

    10/16/2007 7:58 am
  7. Rob Harry

    With all the information on the www, it is easy to find just enough infomation to get what you need, and not get bowled over with TMI.

    10/16/2007 12:46 pm

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