Why I switched to AWeber with Jena Bagley

Why I switched to AWeber with Jena Bagley

Welcome to episode number 88 of The Determined Mom Show. Today we have our first repeat guest, Jena Bagley from Aweber. I wanted to have you back because, in our first conversation on the podcast, you can go back and listen to this; it’s episode 66, how to launch a Strategy and Follow Best Email or Email Best practice.

When we were talking, I was a mailer light user, and shortly after, it might even be the same day; shortly after our conversation, I switched to AWeber. And I’ve had an amazing experience, and I just wanted to let everyone else know why I switched, what those reasons are, and exactly what happens when you choose to switch.

And that’s our goal definitely to take the complication out of sending emails to your audience. And we’re here to make the process a lot easier and to do 90% of the work for you, which we stand by. So we can get into how we do that and everything. But I’d love to hear about your experience switching over.

I just went and signed up, and they said, okay, give us access to your other account, and we’ll do everything for you. You give them access, and they copy all your contacts. They copy all your lists and sequences and upload them to your AWeber, and when it’s done, they send you an email.

Our migration services are one of my favorite things, our product offering. And something that’s really core to our DNA is our customer support and the best customer solutions team. And not only are they available 24 7, which is awesome, but we need to work more than nine to five for business owners. 

We’re working all hours of the day, night, and weekends. So not only do we have an amazing team, but they’ll also do all the work for you in terms of, like, if you’re already on another platform, you have an existing list.

You don’t even have to skip a beat. We will do all the heavy lifting for you. Well, as you said like, we’ll import all your subscribers. We’ll rebuild like your signup forms, landing pages, campaigns, or sequences. So it’s an amazing offering because we’re saving you so much time and like the hassle.

Many people stay with a product that they’re unhappy with because they don’t want to take the time out of it. Their day right to A, find a new platform, B, move everything, and migrate it over. So that’s why I’m so excited that we offer this, which is free. You mentioned it’s free; there are no strings attached.

We want to help you be as successful as possible as quickly as possible. So that’s really why that’s part of something we do for every customer who wants to take advantage of it. The free plan includes the migration and customer solution, so you can always reach out to someone live.

We have US-based customer solutions; you can reach them by phone, email, or chat. And that’s all included in the free plan, which is unheard of. In our industry, we definitely rise above the competition regarding our support.

Merits like calling out because you said you talked to one of our engineers the other day. What other companies do you know where the developers, product owners, and managers proactively call their customers and ask for feedback?

And that’s important to us and that we do all the time. When we have a new product or feature coming out, we don’t just release it. It’s usually a product of feedback from our customers who say like, oh, I wish you could do this, or, oh, like, it would be better if you could do it this way, or it would make my day more accessible if you could do X, Y, Z.

And we really take that feedback to heart, and it’s one of our core values where we invite feedback, and not only do we, you know, reactively welcome feedback, but we’re proactively searching for feedback. We’ll reach out to our customers as we did with you and say, Hey, we’re thinking about launching this feature or this tool.

So you were talking about how the migration is free with the free account. However, the difference, is that I talked to another podcast guest the other day about this. We were talking about this because Leah had, like, we were talking about email systems and all that good stuff, but we were talking about it.

Aweber, when you get the free plan, you get the same features on any other method. The features themselves are similar. It’s. The size of your list that’s different. Some advanced functionality needs to be included in the free plan. And before we talk about the differences, I want just, take a step back for a minute and the free plan. We launched something over the summer of 2020, which was really in response to a few things. We used to have a 30-day free trial, which was great; at the end of the 30 days, you either continued with the service or didn’t.

Those were your choices. But many people prefer to avoid being overwhelmed or intimidated by email marketing. I think it’s a mindset thing. It’s a new skill, a new strategy. Still, it’s relatively simple, it’s just communicating with your audience outside of social media and your website, and it helps continue the relationship.

You’re taking them on a journey with your prospects and your audience. And so when it’s ready for them to take action or make a purchase, they will do it with you, right? Because you, you, you’re in their inbox and creating a conversation. But what we saw with people starting out with email marketing was that 30 days wasn’t enough time for them.

See the value of email marketing, and you know, email is a, it’s excellent short-term, but it’s also a long-term thing where, you know, relationships can’t be built overnight. And so we saw people not even log into their account and then cancel after 30 days because they didn’t know what to do.

So if you have an existing list or need more advanced functionality, whoever is free is not the best choice. But if you are new, it’s an excellent choice for you. And it’s free for up to 500 subscribers. And for someone brand new, 500 subscribers can seem daunting and it could take a while to get to 500, depending on how you’re marketing and all these other variables.

So it’s an excellent plan for newbies or someone launching a new passion project. When we put out AWeber free, we didn’t want just like, oh, let’s add another free plan out in the world. We wanted to make sure we had the best free plan. And so you’re right. We’ve included all the tools and features you need to launch an email strategy.

There are unlimited campaigns that you can set up. We’ve also included complete landing pages. We talked about migration and customer solutions, and you can send up to 3000 emails a month, and that’s all included in our free plan. And as I said, for someone just starting out, that’s everything you need.

And so we’re huge on education and have a robust knowledge base. So if you’re like a self-learner, you have that resource at your discretion. We also have our customer solutions, which. I would say good things about it. We also have our, we have a community of certified experts, and Amanda, you are one of our AWeber certified experts.

So not only do we have a directory of people who are super savvy in AWeber and email marketing, but they also bring another expertise to the table. To help give a more holistic approach to your business. And that’s something we’ve had for about a year, and we’ve seen much success.

And you know, we’re excited. And what’s great about our directory is that we’ve already vetted all these people. They’ve been trained in awe. And if you need help with your emails and something else, you can check out our directory, and Amanda’s on there, which we’re super excited about.

Business owners, creators, coaches, and whoever gets that message into the world. And we’ve just launched a product that gets your message out to your audience instantly, which is excellent. And it’s another way to connect with your audience outside of social media, outside of your website, and even outside of the inbox.

For someone big on social, you may be an influencer. Podcaster or a blogger, you have a partial website. You could have a standalone landing page, and we introduced that in the spring. And since we’ve launched it, I think biweekly, probably weekly or biweekly, released new features and tools to the landing page builder, which is also free.

The possibilities are endless; there’s just so much you could do. On the landing page with that smart content element and embedding links from other things, that’s awesome. If you still need to check that out, I recommend it because it takes your landing page to the next level.

Those things come to mind: custom domains and our innovative element templates. We have more design tools on the landing page. We have horizontal signup forms, which I know are, and we’ve been getting a lot of requests for that. We have that, and as you alluded to earlier, we have something else coming very shortly that’s super exciting.

And this year, we’re surveying business owners, creators, and coaches’ digital marketing habits and experiences. And we will release that report, and it will help other small businesses build their businesses through digital marketing strategies. That’s something we’re currently working on right now, so that will be helpful.