An effective headline is a key part of a good web form — it’s where you show would-be subscribers why they should sign up to your email list!

But what if you want to convey other information in your web form that you’d prefer not to mix in with the headline?

It can be useful to put that content beneath your web form, in the “footer” area.

New Web Form “Footer” Option Makes It Easy To Add Information Beneath Your Form

When you create a web form in your account, you can add a footer by clicking the area beneath your “submit” button.

If you prefer to have your footer just above the “submit” button, you can click and drag it there as well.

To see how this works, watch this short video.

What Information Can You Put In Your Web Form Footer?

Your footer complements your headline (but doesn’t replace it!).

You can use it to:

• Address concerns your potential subscribers have (about your privacy practices, for example)
• Point out extra bonuses for subscribing, like a free report/ebook/whitepaper
• Link to a past newsletter to give visitors a sample of the value they’ll get by subscribing
• Share a testimonial from a happy subscriber

What else might you put in your web form’s footer?

Share your ideas in the comments!

Just because someone else does something, doesn’t mean you should, does it?

Maybe not, but from infancy all the way through adulthood, we take cues from others on what is worth our attention.

Now with just a few clicks, you can add a subscriber count chicklet to your AWeber opt-in form that shows your website visitors how many others are benefiting from you email newsletter.

This social proof might not make everyone want to jump on the bandwagon, but when subscribers are considering why they would want to give up some more time and inbox space to get your email, things like links to a privacy policy and subscriber counts may prove to be the tipping point.

Showing your subscriber can help you to boost conversions on your sign up forms. Give it a shot!

  Learn How to Add a Subscriber Count Chicklet to Your Form

Many of our customers like to use HTML emails to send vibrant, branded communications to their subscribers. (So do we, for that matter.)

But creating a great-looking email can be challenging, especially if you’re not a designer and/or (like me) just aren’t an artist by nature.

That’s why we created our original HTML email templates — to help you spend less time on design, and more time on the content of your emails (not to mention the rest of your business).

Today, I’m excited to announce a new series of attention-grabbing HTML email templates, available for your use right now in your AWeber account.

Introducing Our Newest HTML Email Templates

Starting immediately, all AWeber users have access to 27 new templates created by our new designer Bob (you can meet him and the rest of our team at our about page).

These new template designs have been tested in a wide range of email clients to ensure consistent rendering.

Here are a couple of the new designs (click each design to see more of it):

Among these new templates you’ll find single-column as well as multiple-column designs and a range of colors.

Try The New Templates Today

To start using these templates, head over to the Follow Ups or Broadcasts page of your account.

Once you’ve loaded a template into your message, you can easily add your logo and other branded content using our HTML editor.

While you’re at it, let us know what you think — your feedback helps us decide what types of new templates we might provide down the road! (Plus if you like these ones you’ll make Bob’s day )

Like many business owners, you probably have your credit card information on file with a bunch of different service providers.

What happens when your card expires, or you lose/cancel it, or there’s another issue with it?

It’s helpful to have a backup plan.

How to Add a Backup Credit Card

Starting immediately, in your account you can now store a backup credit card.

So, if for some reason your primary card can’t be used to pay an invoice, the backup will be used automatically (instead of you having to login and enter it manually).

To see how to add a backup card, watch this short video:

If you’re anything like me (like just about all email marketers, really), you want to know how effective your emails are at getting subscribers to open and read, click through to your site, and make purchases.

On the other hand, you may be concerned that your tracking links are getting fewer clicks than a link straight to your own domain would, because:

• Links that go to a tracking domain, instead of to your own website directly, may cause some subscribers to not trust a link that doesn’t point straight your website, causing them to not click through.
• If your readers are aware of (and sensitive to) the fact that their response is being measured, they may be less likely to click through.

So how do you get the best of both worlds? How do you track response while maintaining trust?

In this short video, I’ll show you how you can do just that with one feature of our new Email Web Analytics tools.

The Trouble With Old-School Click Tracking

Traditionally, tracking clicks involved a trade-off: you gain insight into what your subscribers are most interested in, and what they respond to, but your links point to a tracking site, which after recording the click, redirects the subscriber to your site.

For email marketers who send plain text messages, this is particularly noticeable, since you can’t link up text or images in a plain text email — you have to put the URL out there for all your readers to see.

If you weren’t comfortable doing that, you either didn’t track clickthroughs, or you did it using your website tracking software (which, while useful for getting aggregate information, didn’t allow you to do much with the data to target groups of subscribers).

It’s time to leave old-school click tracking behind. There’s a better way.

Track Clickthroughs Using Your Own Domain

You don’t want to send subscribers to a third-party site.

But giving up the tracking and segmentation opportunities that click tracking offers isn’t an option — not if you’re serious about creating relevant, focused campaigns.

While we were developing the new Email Web Analytics tools to track sales, page views and other subscriber activity, it occurred to us:

By tracking subscriber activity using some JavaScript that you place directly on your website, you eliminate the need for a tracking domain in your emails!

So we built own-domain click tracking into the new tools.

RSS Subscribers: See how it works in the short video on our blog.

This is just one of the benefits of using the Email Web Analytics tools we recently released.

All new users (since May 20th) can get started at the Reports > Settings page of their accounts, and older users can get started when they upgrade to Email Web Analytics.

You Can Use This With Your Plain Text Emails (HTML Ones, Too!)

One of the more interesting pieces of feedback we got when we initially released the Email Web Analytics tools was that it wasn’t obvious to our users who send plain text emails, that these tools would be of any use to them.

Apparently we made it sound like the benefits of these advanced segmenting and targeting tools were reserved for those who send HTML messages.

I want to point out right now: that’s not at all accurate. (And sorry if I made it sound that way before!)

You can use own-domain click tracking, along with the rest of the Email Web Analytics tools, with plain text emails too! It’s not just for HTML emails.

Hope that clears things up a bit

How to Start Tracking Clicks on Your Own Domain

• Current AWeber users (signed up before May 20th):.

  Click Here to Upgrade to Email Web Analytics

  (If you don’t see the upgrade prompt, contact our Customer Solutions Team and they’ll be happy to help you upgrade.)

• New users (since May 20th):

  Go to the Reports > Settings page of your account to get the JavaScript and set up Analytics on your site.

Two of the biggest challenges you face when running an email marketing campaign are:

Understanding your subscribers’ needs and wants.

Tailoring your messaging to address those needs and wants

For years, you’ve used email stats as well as website analytics software to see what gets people to visit your site, go to different pages, and ultimately order your product or service.

Starting today, you can better understand your customers’ and prospects’ behavior.

Introducing Email Web Analytics Tools

Today, we’re rolling out a brand new tracking and targeting features that enable you to better understand and address your subscribers’ needs and wants. We’ve been teasing you for weeks about them, and today, they’re ready for you.

Here are just a few of the things you’ll be able to do:

See which subscribers are responding to your campaigns — which messages they’re opening, which links they’re visiting, and where on your website they’re going after clicking through.

Target subscribers who responded (or didn’t respond) to a certain campaign. For example, send a broadcast only to people who didn’t click on the call-to-action in your previous broadcast.

Track revenue generated by campaigns and subscribers to see which subscribers and campaigns are making you money

For more details on Email Web Analytics and how you can use it to increase sales and profits, read on.

New Reports: Track Campaign Activity Over Time

Unsure when to send your campaigns? Wonder not only if subscribers are opening and clicking on your emails, but when they’re doing so?

With the Opens Over Time and Clicks Over Time reports, you’ll be able to drill down into your subscriber activity and see when they’re responding to your email campaigns.

This data is helpful in many ways. Not only can you use it to decide when to send your email newsletters, but if you’re planning website maintenance, or are launching a new product, you can schedule those events and any announcements about them accordingly.

These reports are available not only at a list-specific level, but at an account-wide level that lets you see aggregate data for all of your email campaigns.

Plus, as you can see in the image at right (click to enlarge it), you can not only see total opens and clicks, but also unique opens and clicks. Which brings us to the next set of relevancy and revenue-boosting tools…

Track and Target Subscribers Based On Activity

Knowing that 25% of your subscribers clicked through to your order page may be helpful…

…but wouldn’t it be a lot better if you could see who did and didn’t click, and talk to each group directly?

With the new analytics features, you can:

See which subscribers are making those opens and clicks

Segment and broadcast to them!

There are really too many possible uses for this to list here, but you can see one example in yesterday’s teaser post.

Start to build a profile of your best subscribers by looking at:

Which messages they’re opening

Which links they’re clicking

Which pages of your site they’re visiting

How much money they’re spending

and much more. With the data you’ll collect, you’ll be able to segment and target your subscribers in a multitude of ways — and we’ll be adding even more segmentation and targeting as we go!

Find Out Just How Much Money Your Campaigns Are Making You

Ever wondered just how much of your business’ sales and growth you can attribute to your email campaigns?

Or maybe how much tests and changes in your campaigns can raise your sales?

One of the most powerful features of the Email Web Analytics tools is the ability to track your revenue — not only from direct product sales, but also from other revenue-generating activities.

For example, click the screenshot at right to see just a few of the sales we’ve tracked back to subscribers to our Test Drive.

Email Tracking + Website Analytics = Better Insight Into Your Subscribers

Here’s the best part.

Most email tracking stops at the click.

However, with AWeber, you’ll be able to gain more insight into the your subscribers’ behavior by relating what they do with your emails to what they do on your website.

With the addition of the analytics JavaScript to your website, you’ll be able to:

See where subscribers are going after the click

See where on your site they’re going later — even if they’re not using a link in your emails to get there!

Track when they make a purchase, what they purchase, and how much revenue that purchase is worth

It’s not just about what they do with your email, it’s about how they interact with your business afterwards.

Track Activity Through Your Own Domain, Not Through a Tracking Domain

Hate having to use a tracking domain to measure clickthroughs?

With these new tools, you can track subscriber activity without passing them through a third-party site.

Instead of tracking links going through http://clicks.aweber.com they’ll go through your own domain!

All you’ll have to do is add a line of JavaScript to your website, enter your website on the Settings page, and the new Email Web Analytics tools will do the rest.

But What About My Website Analytics Software?

If you’re using software like Google Analytics, don’t worry… it’s 100% compatible with our Email Web Analytics (as you can see from the last screenshot, we’ve been using Google Analytics and Email Web Analytics simultaneously for months).

What’s great about doing this is, you can still benefit from the insight your website analytics software gives you anonymously into new visitors to your site, then, once they become subscribers, you can use the Email Web Analytics tools to create laser-focused email marketing campaigns based on their email and website behavior.

Market Your Business Like a Fortune 500 Firm

Here at AWeber, we strongly believe that email marketing isn’t just for the “big boys.”

If anything, we feel that small and medium-sized businesses are much better at building and nurturing relationships that are the core of successful permission-based email marketing campaigns.

That said, the type of analytics tools that you can now use to build your business at AWeber were previously only available to those “big boys.”

Until now, you simply couldn’t get your hands on tools like these for less than thousands of dollars per month (plus setup fees and all the other rigmarole that goes with enterprise software).

So while you’ll see that our pricing has changed with these analytics tools, we feel (and think you’ll agree) that the value of increased understanding and focus on your subscribers’ activity far exceeds these small changes.

(Oh, one other thing — for a lot of people, the cost of AWeber with these new email analytics tools actually goes down!)

“How Do I Start Using The New Email Web Analytics Tools?”

All new AWeber accounts will automatically have access to the new features.

Existing AWeber users: you’ll have the option to upgrade starting later this week by accepting the new pricing plans. If you don’t want to upgrade at this time, your current pricing will stay the same.

Thanks, and we hope you’re as excited about better understanding and targeting your subscribers as we are!

Oh, By The Way… We Redesigned The Website

Just in case you didn’t notice

Current AWeber users: you’ll also see that when you visit the homepage, instead of seeing a sales page, you’ll get a much more relevant customer portal, with a login form and easy access to all of our educational materials and Customer Solutions Team.

Take a look around the new site, and let us know what you think!

RSS subscribers: share your thoughts on the new Email Web Analytics package!

After months of hard work by our Development Team, and plenty of suggestions by our beta testers, we’re happy to announce major updates to AWeber that should make it easier for email marketers everywhere to run the most effective, profitable campaigns possible.

Plus, with our site redesign you’ll find the answers to your questions faster and easier than ever!

Take a last-second sneak peek before we throw back the curtain this week…

See What Subscribers Are Doing With Your Emails…

As we pointed out in a previous sneak peek into these new analytics features, you’ll soon be able to see unique open and clickthrough stats for your campaigns.

Some of you started interpreting and extrapolating from that, and said things like, “this means I’m going to be able to see who did and didn’t open and click in my emails!”

If you did that, give yourself a pat on the back, because you were right. You are going to be able to see who recorded an open for your HTML emails, who clicked on links in your emails, and which links they clicked on.

But that data is only useful if you can do something with it, right?

With that in mind, we took this new reporting a step further.

…And Use That Information To Better Target Them!

With our new email web analytics package, you’ll not only be able to see which of your subscribers responded to each of your email campaigns, but you’ll be able to segment and target them based on what they did (and did not) respond to!

For example, let’s say you sent out a broadcast promoting a product, and included 2 links: one to learn more about the product, and one to buy the product directly from the email.

After the broadcast is sent, you’ll be able to segment and target the subscribers:

People who clicked the “learn more” link

People who clicked the order link

People who recorded an open for the HTML email but didn’t click either link

People who did not record an open or click either link

With the ability to see who your most responsive subscribers are, and what they’re responding to, you can better tailor future messaging to them, raising future opens, clicks and of course, sales!

Plus, See What Subscribers Are Doing On Your Website!

There’s been a lot of talk in the online marketing community about using web analytics packages like Google Analytics to see where people are going on your site, what pages they’re visiting and where they’re abandoning your sales process.

We’re big fans of using website analytics software.

But here’s where those services fall short (and where we see an opportunity for online marketers to go even further):

With web analytics packages, you can see how many people are going to your various website pages, where they’re abandoning your sales process, what pages are performing well (and not so well), what percentage of people are ordering your products…

…but you can’t see who is going to those pages, leaving your site and making those purchases (well, you can see who’s making a purchase, but not within that analytics program, so you can’t see what pages they visited before doing so)!

With our new analytics package — let’s call it Email Web Analytics — you’ll see not only what links Sam Subscriber clicks on, but where else on your site he goes after that initial click.

Plus, if he orders a product, visits a particular page or ad, or takes some other action that you can assign a value to, you can track that revenue and see how profitable each of your subscribers and campaigns are!

See the New AWeber.com Before It’s Released

Also going live at the same time as the new email analytics features is a full redesign of the main site and AWeber logo.

On the new site, you’ll have an even easier time finding answers to any questions you may have, either by visiting the blog or knowledge base, attending a webinar or watching a video tutorial.

AWeber Users: you’ll have your own customer portal when you come to the AWeber homepage (after all, why do you need to see a sales page again?) with easy access to your account and help materials.

Potential AWeber users: you’ll also be able to explore features in more detail (affiliates, you’ll no doubt find this helpful as you show business owners how they can manage their email campaigns).

For a sneak peek at the new site design, click the image at right.

Thanks for reading, and we hope you like the new releases!

As attendees to our web form webinar know, getting website visitors to notice your form is a critical part of building your list.

Many people supplement their inline web forms with various types of popup and hover-style forms.

Today, we’re happy to announce a new type of popup form that AWeber users can use to grab visitors’ attention and present them with an opportunity to subscribe.

Read on for more details and a short video.

Lightbox Forms: Focus The Reader’s Attention on Your Signup Offer

You may already be creating unblockable hover-style popups in AWeber that slide or fade into your web page. They’re a great alternative to traditional popups for getting people to consider signing up to your email newsletter.

The new lightbox forms further focus your visitors’ attention on your form by “greying out” the remainder of your page until the visitor either subscribes or closes the form (which is easy for them to do – they just click “close” or hit the ESC key on their keyboard).

RSS Subscribers: to see how these forms work and how to create one, click through to the 1:53 video on our blog.

Pretty cool, right?

Not Using Popups Now? Give Them a Shot!

If you aren’t at least testing popup forms with your site now, I strongly recommend you do so. While they don’t work for everyone, they have the potential to raise your opt-in rate significantly, meaning you get more subscribers from your existing website traffic.

Do you use popups now to build your list? Try the lightbox forms out against your current popups and see if they raise your opt-in rate!

With the overwhelming response to our initial analytics sneak peek it’s hard to imagine that we might actually have more up our sleeve for you.

Most small businesses using email marketing call their campaigns a success or failure based strictly on the raw number of opens or clicks they get.

Unfortunately, up until now there hasn’t been an affordable solution for small businesses to truly get inside their campaigns.

That’s about to change…

Beyond Landing Pages

Most email campaign reports can show you how many clicks you received on a link.

What happens when the user clicks thru to your site and continues to click around on other pages? Would it be helpful to know the total traffic impact your campaign has on your website, not just the landing pages?

Now you can, with the addition of one line of JavaScript on the pages of your site you can track clicks in your emails using your own domain name and track clicks that go beyond your landing pages.

Track Email Sales Revenue

For most small businesses the goal of having an email newsletter or other mail follow up campaign is to drive sales or a specific action on your website.

How many sales did your last campaign generate? How many dollars did that campaign bring in?

Tracking sales and the revenue from those sales will now be integrated directly with your campaign reports.

You can track any type of goal you may have on your website, whether it’s logging into an account, posting a comment on your blog, or filling out a form to request a quote.

Report Dashboard

With the multitude of new reports available, loading a page to view each one separately can be time waster.

Reports that you access frequently from different lists can all be placed in one central dashboard page.

Flexible Reporting Date Ranges

Rather than being stuck with a specific date range such as the last 30 days, flexible reporting allows you to drill into your data over any period of time.

Look at results for last week or the last 6 months — slicing and dicing your data in any way you desire.

Get Early Access To These New Features

We’ve opened a few more slots for beta testers.

Participants should have at least 100 subscribers and be communicating with their subscribers once per week or more.

Interested? Please post in the comments on this post. Be sure to include your website URL and email address in the proper boxes so we can contact you.

Fresh on the heels of the advanced rss to email scheduling options released last week come two new enhancements to help bloggers send email newsletters.

With these features, you’ll be able to take greater advantage of the social proof that Feedburner’s subscriber counts provide, and more easily track what actions your email subscribers take when they get your newsletter.

AWeber Now Reports Email Subscriber Counts to Feedburner

We now report how many email subscribers your blog has to FeedBurner.

So if you have a little chicklet on your blog like this:

showing how many people subscribe to your blog, and you collect email subscribers via AWeber, you’ll see that subscriber count jump as Feedburner counts your email subscribers along with your RSS ones — just use your FeedBurner URL when setting up your Blog Broadcast!

I recently mentioned in passing to a blogger that we would be rolling this out soon, and like the blogosphere got excited even before this went live…

Some of you have noticed the jump in your subscriber counts already and wondered when we were going to say something about this integration.

Well, the cat’s officially out of the bag now — we’ve even put out a press release announcing the integration.

If you’re not already using your Feedburner URL to create your Blog Broadcasts, you may want to switch to take advantage of this reporting!

If you do this, keep in mind that Blog Broadcaster may think it’s a whole new feed (since you’re putting in a new feed URL). So if you’re currently sending your emails automatically, switch over to manually reviewing them for a bit. See our Knowledge Base for details.

Enable Click Tracking for All Blog Broadcasts

Many users — bloggers or not — take advantage of our click tracking tool to track subscriber activity and gauge the effectiveness of their messages.

Up until now, bloggers wanting to do this for their Blog Broadcasts had to turn click tracking on for individual issues of their email newsletters. This is totally doable, of course, but it’s not ideal.

So we made it better yesterday. Now, it’s easy to turn on Click Tracking automatically for all messages created by your Blog Broadcast!

You can either turn on Click Tracking while editing your Blog Broadcast settings:

Or you can turn it on from the main Blog Broadcast page of your account:

Bloggers: Grow Your Readership by Offering an Email Newsletter

Offering readers of your blog the ability to subscribe via email, rather than limiting your subscribe options to RSS only, is a great way…

Convert RSS to Email Newsletters: Helpful Resources

To learn more about how you can use AWeber to engage more blog readers, check out our Knowledge Base: