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. 🙂
Hello again Jack.
I didn’t know AWeber had made any changes.
Pretty sneaky.
Are you sure eBay hasn’t bought AWeber?????
I won’t be upgrading as my list haven’t spent a dime in nine months, and are not likely ever to buy anything. LOL
They also never click through to anything I send them.
They are all graduates of The Ebenezer Scrooge School of Philanthropy.
I also didn’t know I had an account home page or could get any sort of stats.
I’ve only had it for 18 months. I always wondered if you were allowed to see your lists.
You know me, Jack, dumb as dogs***.
What the….
They don’t contribute to the coffers so why bother.
Hello to TingTing and Little Kevin.
All the best,
Grumpy.
Hey Grumpy,
Thanks for the comment. 🙂
Good one about eBay, LOL…
Sounds like you have a tough list!
BTW, you certainly can view your lists, lol. Just click on your reports, reports menu and then select “verified leads” in the left column. You can then click on “subscribed” under the pie chart to see the actual leads for the selected list.
-Jack
Hi Jack,
If you don’t mind, I’d like to address this in a comment here. Also, please don’t hesitate to email me any questions you have at the address I submitted with my comment.
I’d like to state here that we’re not trying to “stuff” you or sneak anything “in through the back door.” AWeber users who joined before May 20th will not be upgraded to the new features and pricing unless they ask us to do so.
That’s the reason there was no email about a price increase… because for existing customers, there isn’t an increase. You don’t have to pay any more today for the same AWeber service and features than you did last month.
We saw this as a non-issue, and felt that sending an email out about pricing “changes,” when in fact no customer’s pricing has changed, would just serve to confuse and cause undue panic.
What we’ve done is, released some optional new features designed to help you improve your communications with subscribers, and that’s what we tried to focus on in the blog posts and email we put out.
You wrote:
“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.”
We did send an email to customers on 6/10 with details on these new features, and we have blogged about them a few times, including the post you link to above.
Also, you should have recently seen this page upon logging in:
https://www.aweber.com/users/billing/analytics_upgrade/1
(you can go there now w/your AWeber login/pw to see it)
This page details the new features and gives you an opportunity to upgrade if you’d like to do so. We don’t show it every time you login (that would be annoying, no?) but we have shown it at least once to every customer who has logged in recently.
You wrote:
“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.”
Well said, though I think it has more to do with quality than size, and with how you use the tools available to you – in other words, how much more effective and profitable can you make your email marketing using these tools?
We feel the answer to that is “a lot” (which is why we developed these tools). One example: you’ll know who did and did not respond which emails, and you can segment and deliver appropriate emails to subscribers based on that knowledge. This alone has great potential to increase your sales and profits far beyond the additional cost for these tools.
(Also, if you look at our pricing, it’s now $19/month to start, rather than $19.95. For the tens of thousands of small business owners who communicate with less than 500 subscribers, this is actually even cheaper than before, and comes with more powerful tracking and segmentation than we’ve ever offered.)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the release and our communication about it, Jack. I’ll be happy to field any questions you or your readers have!
(Incidentally, is there a way to subscribe to the comments on this post? I’m not seeing it.)
Justin Premicks last blog post..7 Split Tests You Can Implement Today
Hi Justin,
Thanks for the insight. Your points are well taken. Perhaps, I just didn’t hit the “analytics_upgrade” cycle during my logins. 😛
The link you provided is very good and pointed out some great aspects of the new features.
I think that if the upgrade option was added somewhere such as the account billing area, it would be helpful to convert current subscribers. Other than the link you provided in your comment, I don’t really have a way to upgrade until it randomly displays during one of my logins.
Of course, now that I know about it, I could simply chat with support. AWeber has always had excellent support in my opinion. 😛
I’ll add more in my next post.
BTW – thanks for the heads up on the “subscribe to comments” not being there. I re-activated the plugin and its now working.
-Jack
Good point – it would be helpful to have it linked up from within your account. We’re working on getting it into a few places there.
I look forward to seeing your next post!
Justin Premicks last blog post..7 Split Tests You Can Implement Today
Hi Jack,
I too wasn’t aware of these changes. I guess my list isn’t big enough to worry at this stage. However, I do feel it is a bit steep to increase the pricing structure like they did. I suppose with the big marketers though they make enough money to pay for these monthly fees.
BTW, I’m new here but love your clean design. It took me ages to find the comment button though. LOL.
Walter
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