In this section I’m going to go over how to set up an email campaign and opt in form and I’ll be doing it in Aweber. However, you can apply what will be covered here to almost all autoresponder services.
After you log in to your Aweber account, click on ‘Create and Manage Lists’ then select ‘Create A List’.
Note: Your Aweber account may look a different from the screenshots below. This is normal as Aweber regularly changes the layout of their site.
For your campaign settings, you’ll be asked what name you would like to call your list (the ‘List Name‘ field). Keep it descriptive of your niche so you can recognize it easily (see image below).
The ‘List Description‘ field is not seen by your list, except for when they decide they want to unsubscribe from your list. For this reason, I like to put this as my List Description:
“You are a valued subscriber of John Lagoudakis. Please do not unsubscribe.”
In the ‘“From” Name‘ field I like to enter my display name as * John Lagoudakis * so it stands out in my subscriber’s inbox. This is really important. The little things you do to make yourself stand out will make a big difference to your email marketing business.
How successful you are in getting your subscribers to open your emails will determine how successful you will become as an email marketer… especially when there are so many emails that clutter our inboxes every day.
There were many times when I purchased something online because I opened up an email message… and some of those messages almost got deleted but there was just something about them that made me want to open up and take a look.
It can be a VERY fine line sometimes. Okay, let’s go back to the Aweber campaign setup…
For the ‘Address‘ field, it’s best to use one on your own domain (and not a free Gmail or Yahoo email address) so it looks more professional and trustworthy to your email subscribers.
Important Tip: Whatever you’re doing in your email marketing campaign, make sure it helps to build a relationship of trust.
It’s also good to enter an email address in the ‘Notifications’ area (see below). By doing so Aweber will send you an email notification whenever anyone opts in to your squeeze page!
After you’ve saved your settings, you’ll be taken to a new page (see below). The Company Branding section is not compulsory and will have little impact your email marketing campaigns.
There is also two other sections on this page; ‘Social Media‘ and ‘Global Text Snippets‘. These don’t need to be configured and I tend not to use them.
Confirmed Opt In or Not?
Aweber (and some other autoresponder services) give you option to select whether you want to have new subscribes confirm their opt in. If you turn this option on, it will mean that every new subscriber will only become active on your email list after they have opened the confirmation email and clicked on the confirmation link.
I prefer to have this option turned off. This way you will have more active subscribers.
Even though you might turn off the Confirmed Opt-In setting, it is still a good idea to set up your Confirmation Message (see below). The reason for this is that sometimes Aweber will require certain email addresses to confirm their opt in anyway.
The screenshot below shows the three different fields that need to be configured for your Confirmation Message.
To turn off the Confirmed Optin feature, click on the Off button (see below).
You can leave the ‘Confirmation Success Page‘ field blank.
After the list settings have been configured, the next step is to set up the sign up form which we will go over in our next article.
Found this article helpful? Leave a comment below!
Nice tutorial John 🙂
Just wanted to comment, after you choose between double opt-in or single with Aweber, you can’t go back. If you choose double opt-in, all future lists can only be double opt-in. People might be a little surprised later if they want to try single opt-in.
Also, I was just reading about the Global Snippets, I never really knew what they did until today. I learned they can be used as a placeholders in messages, which you can use to change the text to what every you want, from your account. So you place a snippet in all your messages and you can change that snippet without needing to edit any messages, when ever you want. I thought it was a great feature. Course you probably already know this.
Thanks Ron!
Are you sure about not being able to switch between double and single opt in? Not that I have done this but I don’t remember seeing this anywhere.
As for the Global Snippets, yes, that’s an excellent feature, especially if you have a ‘footer’ section of an email sequence. You can easily change any part of your email sequence for all emails by just doing it in the one place.