Internet Business Guide

For First-Class Progress

Tag: aweber

  • Autoresponder Open Rates, So What?

    If you’re using an autoresponder — and since you’re reading my blog you certainly are — you’re eventually concerned about the Open Rate of your list. If not, or if you’re still sending your newsletters in plain text format only (which I used to do until just recently), then you can dismiss this post for the time being. Bookmark and come back to it once you do.

    The other day I received a “last newsletter issue” from a spiritual business person in which he expressed the concern of apparently low open rates. He grieved that only 25% would actually open the issues questioning why he should continue sending the advice if 75% would not even bother reading it (my own MyGermanCity.com’s stats exemplify the opposite, BTW).

    This made me realize that even high profile Internet business people are still concerned about open rates? I was under the impression that dignitaries would be aware of the idiosyncrasies of open rates and that we have to take them with a grain of salt — especially those who use AWeber‘s main package (like I do).

    Are you aware that a portion of your audience has set their e-mail client to block the display of images in e-mails received? And are you aware that AWeber tracks the open rates by slyly including a reference to a tiny image from within e-mail campaigns? So those who block the display of images in e-mails would read your message but the autoresponder stats would imply that they have not opened it.

    On the other hand, and this is another oddity, if your subscribers open an individual message more than once, they’re being counted as often as they accept the display of images each time they open that issue. In other words, let’s say Joe opens the message today and then next week again, it will be counted as if two subscribers opened your newsletter. Yup.

    This may count especially heavily for e-zines with a ton of high quality content where subscribers will likely read it again and again.

    Solution?

    Well, I welcome further elaboration on this matter. Besides, I’m aware of extended subscriptions in which one can activate tools which resolve this issue.

    Still, what about those who are not willing to pay double price and still, to some extend, trust the current stats? How can you improve its accuracy?

    Let me list a couple of solutions on how to get more valid open rates in your e-mail campaigns…

    • Include a distinctive header image without which the issue looks somewhat incomplete.
    • Include a unique image for each individual newsletter issue that will make your audience want to display pictures so they can see what interesting graphic or pic you show them this time.
    • Have your newsletter inundated with images so that it can’t be read without accepting the whole enchilada. This is a personal choice, and it’s not my favorite, but it may be highly effective for select audiences. The downside is that the open rate could ridiculously shoot to the roof since folks will likely open individual issues more than once and thus need to unblock images each and every time or else they cannot read a single word of it.

    What do you do or use to refine the accuracy of your open rates? Or do you still send your issues in plain text and thus don’t really care about them?

    —Marcus Hochstadt

  • Is It For Real?

    When my wife and yours truly got to know each other on the Internet in 2006, I spontaneously invited her to come to Germany. (I paid the flight and all, of course.) It was her first time ever traveling by airplane and to another country.

    Until the very last minute before the flight, her entire family tried to convince her she would be stupid traveling to me. They tried everything to hold her back from her plans, confidently screaming at her she would end up in prostitution if she would go to Germany.

    Instead of listening to others she listened to her own heart, traveled to Germany, and today we are happily married.

    When I saw James’ offer of $3,000 three months ago for spending an entire day with him in Costa Rica, I could have asked other people what I should do about it… They could have told me how stupid I would be paying $3,000 to a stranger I never had personal contact with. If I would be that kind of a person who let other people take lead of my own life, I probably would not sit in Costa Rica right now and would not have had lunch with James Brausch today once again, letting me in on a lot more Internet business secrets.

    Though, because I principally listen to my own heart (instead of that of others,) the decision to pay the $3,000 (plus another $3,000 for tickets & hotel, plus another $2,000 for camcorder, mic, meal, tours, etc etc.), this decision took me five seconds max.

    Oh boy, am I glad I did! Furthermore, from this visit, I already received a lot more than expected. We even extended out trip to stay one more week!

    Now, take a look at a couple recent comments here on my blog. Most are positive and exciting, a couple of the more recent ones are skeptic, even childish.

    I don’t care about the latter.

    Sure, there exist folks that think it would be a smart idea to ask AWeber whether it would be possible importing a list without re-verification. Sure enough, they are going to tell you that it is NOT possible no matter what. They have good reasons for behaving this way in an official environment.

    Strangely though, I did it myself twice already, and once together with Tom Schreiter (ask him if you dare,) although AWeber officially claims it would not work whatsoever. Funny, isn’t it? :-)

    If you think you are better off asking for an official statement rather than following my proven step-by-step plan, well, your choice not mine.

    Perhaps you even think it would be a good idea to give them the URL of my blog, stating Marcus Hochstadt said it would work so why the heck do they say it doesn’t. (Is there such a statement in my step-by-step plan? Not that I know of…)

    Geez… some folks just crack me up! Some think they would be smarter than those showing you how something works.

    Again, either you want to fail in life or you want to succeed.

    Your choice.

    Wanna know how to fail? Listen to those people who tell you that something would not work. It’s a great way of forming a clique full of guess work and failures.

    Wanna succeed? Follow a proven plan, step-by-step, of those that walk the talk and show you how something works.

    It’s up to you. :-)

    —Marcus Hochstadt

  • AWeber Secret

    Do you have an AWeber list? Or are you about to transfer a verified list from “XYZ” to AWeber? If so, then you’ve probably been told by AWeber that you cannot simply transfer your double opt-in list to AWeber without asking them to re-subscribe (i.e., re-confirm their subscription.)

    This is kind of strange considering they already subscribed per double opt-in long time ago. Not until now, because I know The Secret…

    Note: I’m not talking about a list of leads you bought from somewhere, nor about those co-registration services nor anything like that. What I mean is a list of subscribers who previously confirmed their subscription per double opt-in, hence the terms RE-confirmation or RE-verification.

    Do you want to know how to transfer your list into AWeber without losing a single subscriber? Do you know what it means losing half (or more!) of your entire list, which will happen when you don’t know the secret technique?

    I know the secret step-by-step plan.

    If you don’t know what AWeber and “the power is in the list” means, then this offer is not for you. If you do know what it means and are about to transfer a list to AWeber, then order the Secret for $100 here…

    http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00Z2JYCP

    You’ll get the exact step-by-step plan on how to transfer your list of subscribers (no matter whether you have a couple hundreds or tens of thousands) from wherever they are to the highly reliable service called AWeber.

    Also, in case you think to know the secret, just one tiny step done wrong and the entire plan is worthless. In other words, follow each and every step of my plan and you will succeed. :-)

    I’ll have to go now to get my Costa Rican driver license. (That’s another secret!) Once we are back I or my assistant will send you my step-by-step plan to your PayPal e-mail address.

    By the way, just recently I gave this secret plan to Tom “Big Al” Schreiter. Yes, that Tom of fortunenow.com fame. He confirmed the successful transfer. Don’t know how many subscribers he has, though he told me that once he followed my plan, AWeber finally allowed him to transfer 2,000 addresses per day. So I assume his list has a size of tens of thousands.

    Talk to you soon!

    —Marcus Hochstadt

    P.S. Just in case you don’t know what AWeber or how powerful it is, visit http://quicktour.aweber.com for a quick test drive.