Web forms are a crucial part of any email marketing campaign. Without a form, you couldn’t build your mailing list in the first place. In most cases, creating and installing a web form is simplicity itself. However, when using a Content Management System (CMS), you may want to work with plugins or modules specifically designed [...]

If you follow the AWeber blog, or use our service, you may already know some of the ways you can sync your email marketingto your Facebook page.

But until now, to get an web form on Facebook, you’ve had to work with HTML. It was doable, but building your email list on Facebook should be easier.

So we built you an AWeber Facebook app.

It puts your AWeber form on your Facebook page in just a few clicks – take a look.

What Makes This App Different

Just like installing an AWeber web form on a Wordpress blog was possible before we announced our Web Form Widget for Wordpress, it’s possible to install a web form on a Facebook page without our app. However, the app makes the process a lot smoother.

Rather than copying and pasting HTML or Javascript, setting up the AWeber account just involves choosing the form you want to install from a dropdown menu. You can swap forms just as easily if you want to make a change later.

Get Started

If you want to jump in with both feet, you can start by adding the AWeber Email Marketing app to your Facebook page.

On the other hand, if you want to take things one step at a time, check out our knowledge base article, or just watch the video below:

Coming Soon…

What will the next AWeber app be? You tell us! Leave a comment or suggestion below, or, if you are a developer yourself (or just happen to know someone who is), take a look at AWeber Labs for information on creating new apps and integrations.

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As you’re probably aware, we announced the release of our API several months ago, allowing developers to start creating AWeber applications via AWeber Labs.

We also released one of the first apps for our own API, a WordPress plugin which allowed you to easily add AWeber forms to your blog.

Today, we wanted to tip our hats to the folks at Unbounce, a landing page service, who have created yet another avenue for AWeber integration.

What’s Unbounce?

In case you aren’t familiar with them, Unbounce is a service which allows you to easily create landing pages for your website. You would typically use these for your promotion specific campaigns – whether it’s gathering new leads with their lead generation landing pages or sending your subscriber lists to a targeted landing page designed for conversion.

You can A/B split test different versions of the pages to find out which works best, leading to an optimized landing page and increased conversions.

You can learn more about their service on their website.

AWeber and Unbounce are a natural pairing for integration, since the core purpose of most landing pages is of course, a web form, with the goal of converting visitors into subscribers.

How Does The Integration Work?

The purpose of this integration is, of course, to have all the subscribers who sign up on your Unbounce page automatically added to your AWeber list.

Unbouce has kept things simple, so there are just a few steps that you need to do in order to sync up our two services.

First off, here’s the video walkthrough that Unbounce put together:

Just to briefly go over setting up the integration, you can look at the steps below or take a look at either the instructions on Unbounce’s website or our own knowledge base article.

1. In your Unbounce account, you can visit the page overview screen for any landing page you’re working on, and click “Send leads to AWeber” under the Leads & Form Integrations section.

   

2. At this point, we will prompt you to enter your AWeber account login and password in order to authorize the integration. This information is not given to Unbounce at any time.

   Note: If you have followed this setup process before, the “application is trying to connect” prompt may not appear.

   

3. 3. After authorizing the integration, you can choose which AWeber list you’d like the subscribers from this Unbounce page added to. Then hit the Complete button.

   

4. Next, you’ll need to log into your AWeber account. Once you’re logged in, make sure that you’re working in the list you chose to integrate with, and select Email Parser from the My Lists dropdown.

   

5. On this page, scroll down and check the box labeled “Unbounce Form Submission” in order to complete the integration.

   

Who’s Next?

Do you have a favorite service or app that you’d like to see integrated with AWeber? Leave a comment, or better yet, tell them about AWeber’s API!

If you’re a developer yourself, you can start creating your own apps and integrations today at AWeber Labs.

Brand awareness is a hugely important part of email marketing. Give subscribers a from name, a design, a signature they can recognize, and you’ll build their trust.

That’s why AWeber lets people customize settings for each of their subscriber lists. One of those settings is the company logo they want displayed in their campaign.

In the past, they’ve had to upload their logo elsewhere and provide the URL in their list settings for their logo to appear.

Well, we’ve got a little surprise for our customers. Things are about to get easier around here.

Now, We’ll Host Your Logo For You

No more hopping around to third-party hosting sites while you’re trying to get your list set up. Just upload your logo straight into your settings. Then it will appear on your AWeber thank-you page, your unsubscribe page and on all your archived broadcasts.

Here’s what the process looks like:

1. In your account, select the “My Lists” tab and choose the option to “Personalize Your List.”

2. After you add in your other company details, choose the option to upload your logo on the right.

3. Click “browse” and choose your logo file from wherever you have it saved in your computer.

And you’re done!

Supported Formats: JPEG, GIF, PNG

In order for your logo to upload correctly, you’ll want to make sure the file type is a jpg, gif or png. And keep the size around or under 80k to keep your logo looking as pretty as possible.

If you have any questions, let us know!

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Today, we’re proud to announce the release of AWeber’s API.

The API will allow you, as an AWeber user, to easily integrate other online products and services together to save time and create additional value for your business.

Read on for more information about the new API, what you should expect to see as an AWeber user, and an introduction to the first official app – a WordPress plugin!

What is an API?

While the term “API” is thrown around a lot in the online world, let’s take a moment to talk about what AWeber’s API is, and what it can do for you, the user.

API is short for “Application Programming Interface,” which may not sound terribly helpful, but describes the function of an API pretty well: it’s a tool for developers to use to make applications (apps) that work with AWeber. Many times, when you see something like an iPhone app that works with Facebook, you’re looking at something that a developer built using an API.

So how will most customers interact with the API? They won’t, at least not directly. What most customers will do is use apps that actual programmers create using the API, allowing users to access and use information from their AWeber accounts from almost anywhere online.

How will this affect my account?

The API will allow you to use apps to more easily integrate AWeber with other products and services online.

While we expect many applications to be produced by outside developers after the release of the API, we’ve prepared an initial offering, both to show off some of the things the API is capable of and also to provide a little boost to the level of integration we can provide to those customers that use the popular blogging software WordPress.

Introducing the AWeber Web Form Widget for WordPress

Without further ado, allow me to introduce you to the very first app: the AWeber Web Form Widget for WordPress.

In a nutshell, it allows you to connect your WordPress account with your AWeber account, letting you place AWeber forms on your WordPress.org site with just a few clicks, and without having to copy any code.

NOTE: To clear up any confusion, I’d like to clarify the above sentence. WordPress.org is the home of the actual WordPress software that you can install on your own website. The plugin will work fine with sites created using the WordPress.org software.

WordPress.com, on the other hand, offers free hosting for WordPress themed blogs, but is much more restrictive in what you can and cannot place on the page (for one, they don?t allow you to include HTML web forms).

If you have a blog or site powered by WordPress, learn how to easily install a web form on your site.

How do I use other apps?

The great thing about AWeber’s API (and APIs in general) is you don’t need to work directly with the API itself to take advantage of the applications that developers create for it. When a developer creates an application, you can simply install the app that they designed, then just authorize the app (Facebook and Twitter fans, you’ll find the process familiar).

As far as AWeber is concerned, that’s it! As with the WordPress app we created, after that authentication, apps will continue to work for you even when you aren’t logged into your AWeber account.

The App Showcase

One immediate change you will see in your AWeber account is the “My Apps” link in the upper right corner of your account.

Once you connect apps to your account, you can remove their connections here, but the main attraction on this page is the App Showcase. For now, we’ll be highlighting apps created by the developers here at AWeber, but as independent apps are created, you may see the most popular and useful of those apps appear here as well.

That’s a wrap – feel free to comment or ask any questions you have about the new API below, or simply check out the knowledge base for more information.

Before we sign off though:

This Is Version One

If there are features that are not included in this first version of the API, please let us know! There are plans in place for expanded versions of the API in the future, aimed at improving your ability to integrate your AWeber account with other sites and services even further.

A Note to Developers

If you or someone you know is a developer, interested in creating an application to work with AWeber’s API, just visit AWeber Labs, the official home of and hub for the AWeber API. There, you’ll find instructions on how to create and register applications to work with AWeber.

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Like many businesses, you may be exploring integrating social media with your email marketing campaigns. Doing so can expand the reach of your messages and grow both your fans/followers as well as your email list.

So at AWeber, we’ve made a point of helping you combine email and social media by helping you automatically share your email newsletters on Twitter and Facebook.

As some of you noted when we rolled out our integration with Facebook, it only worked with personal profiles (not fan pages) due to limitations with Facebook’s API. We knew you wanted to post to your fan pages, but it wasn’t technically feasible at the time.

Well, as the saying goes, the only constant is change. And this is a good one. Facebook has changed their API, we’ve changed our integration and you can now post your email newsletters to your fan pages.

How to Share Your Email Newsletters On Your Facebook Fan Page

Go to your List Settings page and click the “Connect To A New Facebook Account” button under the Social Media / Sharing header (this works the same way whether you have a Facebook account connected already or not).

When prompted, allow AWeber Email Marketing to manage your pages.

When you create your broadcast, go to the “Social Media/Sharing” section and choose to share the email on your fan page.

That’s all there is to it! Feel free to take a look at our Knowledge Base for more detailed information and instructions on integrating Facebook and AWeber.

Enjoy!

If you’re like most people reading this blog, you love data. Not this Data, but the kind that paints a picture of what is and isn’t working in your email marketing.

The trouble with data, of course, is that sometimes it’s hard to know which data is important and worth focusing on. Not to mention that for it to be valuable, the data has to be actionable, too.

Last week we leaked some information about a soon-to-be-released tool that not only helps you see how your email marketing campaigns perform, but also makes it easy to take action to increase your response rates and conversions.

And now, it’s here.

Announcing Broadcast QuickStats

QuickStats makes it easy to understand how your broadcasts performed by showing you:

• Opens
• Clicks
• Web Hits/Traffic
• Unsubscribes

Some screenshots of QuickStats (click to see full-size images):

Even better, you can use the data to identify responsive and non-responsive groups of subscribers – those people who:

• Opened the email
• Didn’t open it
• Clicked a given link
• Didn’t click that link
• Made a purchase (did you know that you can track email-driven sales in AWeber?)

Not Only Are QuickStats Useful and Easy-to-Read… They’re Actionable, Too!

This is by far my favorite part.

One of the most powerful things you can do when you know who clicked a link, or didn’t open an email, is segment out those subscribers and broadcast only to them:

Click to see full-size image

It’s an effective way to talk to people who are interested in a particular product, feature, part of your website or anything else you’re linking to.

Plus, when you’re able to identify who didn’t open or click, and then email only those people, you can:

• Make an alternate offer
• Find out what their objections are
• Send other targeted and relevant email campaigns to increase your conversions

Learn More About QuickStats in a Free, One-Hour Webinar

On Wednesday, August 4th, we’ll give you a tour of QuickStats, show you how it works and answer your questions about it, live!

Learn All About Broadcast QuickStats

In this free webinar, you’ll learn about QuickStats, our new tool that will make analyzing your email campaigns and segmenting your list easier than ever!

Sign up to discover:

• How QuickStats shows you how your emails performed
• How to easily segment your list in 1 click to create highly targeted, relevant campaigns to responsive and non-responsive subscribers

Plus, get your questions about QuickStats answered live!

Date: Wednesday, August 4th
3 – 4 PM ET (Convert Time)

Sign Up Now

What Do You Think?

How will being able to see at a glance how your broadcasts perform, identify potentially profitable subscriber segments, and quickly and easily create and deliver targeted campaigns to them affect your business?

We’d love to hear how you’ll use QuickStats to increase your response rates and conversions – tell us!

For the longest time in the history of forever, email analytics has been an all or nothing affair. You’re either tracking your email marketing campaigns or you’re not.

The problem: there is a ton of data that gets tracked and sifting through it all can be overwhelming. It’s like trying to find a back issue of Field & Stream in the Library of Congress. You’re better off going to your local library where they only carry the stuff that’s relevant to you.

We took that terrible analogy and applied it to AWeber’s Email Analytics. As a supplement to our full reports page, in the near future we’re rolling out Broadcast QuickStats. You’ll be able to view the most pertinent statistics for your messages grouped together on one super slick page.

Click that big grey play button in the video below to check out our design and development teams as they discuss both building QuickStats, and what it will do for you.

Broadcast QuickStats makes it easier than ever for you to not only see how your emails perform, but also identify responsive and non-responsive subscribers, and quickly segment those groups and deliver relevant, targeted email marketing campaigns to them.

Sneak Peek Screenshots

You saw a bit of Broadcast QuickStats in the video; here are some screenshots from it. Click to view the full-size images:

When’s It Coming Out?

Broadcast QuickStats will be launching in accounts with Email Analytics very soon.

In the meantime, let us know what you think!

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Have you ever wanted to show someone all the cool things you can do with AWeber before they purchase an account? Ever wanted to see your options for web form creation at a glance?

Now you can view all the possible templates and color schemes for web forms in one place with this snazzy, searchable web form template gallery.

Enjoy! And, if you have a moment, tell us what you think of the templates and the gallery!

Want to Learn More About Web Forms?

If you’re not familiar with our web form generator, our features page has a great overview of creating beautiful custom forms for your website.

Customizing your web form is easier than ever with our web form generator: take a look at our Knowledge Base or attend our free Better Web Forms webinar for more information!

Finally, skip right to the web form template gallery if you just want to check out the cool templates our design team has put together:

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Many businesses and bloggers use AWeber’s blog newsletter tool to convert RSS to email and tell readers about new posts on their blogs.

When we released this tool, our thinking was that it would be a way for you to get email subscribers back to your blog in order to read your post, comment on it and take any other actions you wanted after getting to your site. So we designed the broadcasts to include partial blog posts rather than full posts.

While this has worked beautifully for many of you, some of you have asked us to provide a way for you to include full posts directly in the emails.

Now, you can. Here’s how:

Use The {!rss_item_content} Tag

While editing your blog broadcast template, if you want to include full posts rather than partial posts, simply replace the {!rss_item_description} tag with {!rss_item_content}.

{!rss_item_content} will merge the full HTML and images from your posts into your blog newsletter.

Do You Prefer Full or Partial Posts In Your Blog Newsletter?

With this available, will you send full posts in your blog newsletters? Or will you send partial posts?

What about as a recipient? Are full or partial posts better for you?

We’ve put together a quick 2-question survey to find out what you and all of our readers think!

Once we have your answers, we’ll share the results via Twitter and Facebook, so be sure to follow or “Like” us!

Update 7/26/10: Results are now available here – thanks everyone who took the survey!

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