While jumping out to AWeber to check my stats, I happen to stumble across their pricing page and about freaked when I noticed that their pricing structure has totally changed!
I originally signed up with AWeber for 19 bucks a month which gives you unlimited autoresponders and 10,000 subscribers before having to increase to the next tier.
Their new pricing structure shows that $19 per month only gets you up to 500 subscribers. That’s a huge drop! Here’s how their new pricing structure works:
Naturally, the first thing that went through my mind was WHAT THE HEY! Is this their way of stuffing me because they know how painful it would be to migrate out my subscribers and probably lose half of them in the process? The alarm bells were a ringin’!
Fortunately, being a current member, I am still able to keep the same package. I do find it strange that there was nothing in my user area telling me about the change. I never received any email notifications either. Maybe I’ve just been so caught up in my recent projects that I’m just out of touch… hmmpf.
So what do you get in return for all this extra bank?
AWeber has added a powerful email analytics package that allows you to do things such as track sales generated from your list and then to be able to seperate the profitable list members so that you could, for example, target them for special rewards or offers in appreciation for their business.
You can also send broadcasts to the unresponsive members with special incentives as well, or just remove them from your list in order to have a smaller, but much more valuable list.
You can send out broadcasts specifically to people who didn’t click through on your previous one as well, to help crank those response rates up.
You can also track your responders after they click through to your site and see where they went and what they clicked on. This can be very useful to get more in touch with what your leads really want and what interests them. Personally, I always thought that simply asking them wasn’t such a bad idea either, but understanding why the majority seem to click on your leaky text link to an unrelated site as opposed to your payment button could be quite valuable too I suppose.
You can see the full details of the AWeber E-Mail Analytics package here.
My 2½ Cents…
Overall, I think this looks like a great addition to the AWeber service. The problem that I have is that this seemed to have been slid in through the back door. Why wasn’t AWeber more forthcoming with this new package? Why did I have to trip into their pricing page to find all this out? An email announcement would have been nice. A note inside my members home area doesn’t seem like too much to ask either. I’ve looked everywhere inside my AWeber account and there is no upgrade option, nor any mention of the new deal… so what’s the deal? It appears that this started around the last week in May.
The price increase is pretty steep. When you average out the cost per lead verses the benefits that you get with the analytics package, is it justifiable? These factors may depend on the size & quality of your list, plus the range of products that you have to offer. I haven’t upgraded my account yet, so I can’t comment first hand on whether the switch is worth it or not.
I doubt that you can go back to your previous plan once you make the switch, so I’m not in a hurry just yet to find out whether this system can really justify dumping my current tracking methods for it. Given the circumstances in which I received the news, at this juncture, I’m underwhelmed.
How about you? Have you taken advantage of their new plan? Know somebody that has? I’d like to hear from you and get your take on this. Leave a comment. 🙂
