AWeber vs. eTrigue DemandCenter

AWeber is an excellent email marketing solution for small to mid-sized businesses, especially those that are just starting with email marketing campaigns. AWeber is also good for bloggers. But it's not perfect for an affiliate marketer who wants to make a landing page on AWeber. Businesses that require advanced segmentation options may need to consider other email marketing platforms.

I would not recommend DemandCenter for anyone who doesn't know what they're doing or what they want. That sounds like a no-brainer, but it seems like a huge number of organizations want something to fill that "Marketing Automation" gap, not having the marketing infrastructure in place to support it. That is, a technically savvy person to design complex campaign logic and manage data, good web people for designing landing pages and emails, and content writers & managers & marketing specialists for everything else. Investing in a marketing automation tool does not mean you can exclude these resources - it simply means you can DO MORE with those resources. If you don't know what you want, and want to be babysat through the whole process but don't mind the limitations, you can always go with the MA tool that rhymes with "BubSpot".

• Aweber's email deliverability is among the best in the industry. I have used other email services and Aweber is superior in deliverability.
• It is easy to setup an autoresponder sequence, a series of time delayed emails delivered over a period of time. This makes it super easy to follow up with leads and customers.
• Aweber's blog broadcast features makes it easy to notify subscribers of new content on your blog. It can be setup to broadcast when ever you make a new post or summarize posts on a periodic basis.

Incentivized

• Putting prospects in the system from spreadsheets is easy. Contacts can also be automatically brought into eTrigue from your CRM. (If you have Salesforce.)
• Campaign reports show the actual numbers of prospects at each step of the campaign. The detail behind the number is available just by clicking on it.

• Double opt-in requirements. While I understand the rationale for double opt-in, I wish Aweber did not require double opt-in when importing email addresses from the client's existing client database as I feel we end up losing a good number of people who are existing customers and have given the business permission to email them but who either don't notice or don't take the extra step to confirm their subscription to the Aweber list.
• The user interface when designing and setting up html newsletters is not as clearcut and obvious as Constant Contact; it takes more time to get the newsletters to "look right" using Aweber's existing templates.
• I wish Aweber made it easier to embed a video message simply by inserting the video link or embed code into the email body. The process it seems to require (the last time I tried) was to create a screenshot of the video or insert the video thumbnail image and then link to the video in the right column link section .. it's a 2 step process and would be nice if it were a one click process. Not a deal breaker but I just feel like it could be faster and more efficient to embed video messages in an email.

Incentivized

• I wish they could be able to customize URLs for landing pages for better SEO and branding.
• Better SEO functionality and ability to customize those options on landing pages would be nice.
• More useful and better detailed analytics would be nice.

Incentivized

AWeber is easy and intuitive for me use. I really like the simplicity and the structure of the work flow as it saves me time. AWeber also integrates with all the other programs, systems and gateways that I use on a daily basis (WordPress, Paypal, LeadPages, Facebook and more) and if I have any questions or have trouble the AWeber customer service technicians are very helpful.

We rely on this tool. Going forward as we implement new back end architecture we may be forced to change to an integrated platform with our master data management infrastructure, but we will do so kicking and screaming. While marketing gets to make the choice, we will choose eTrigue.

See previous answers ... the design / customization interface could be more intuitive and elegant .. for example, for me it has been difficult to easily figure out how to place pictures / images to the right, left or center of text.

Incentivized

Having used Marketo, Act-On, and Pardot, eTrigue is MUCH easier to use and easier to train new team members to use.

I have always received prompt phone or live chat support that has resolved my issues on the first call in a competent, knowledgeable and friendly manner. By contrast MailChimp offers no live chat or phone support; they only offer email support and the response time for MailChimp is slow by comparison to AWeber.

Incentivized

Been very happy with their responsiveness and ability to resolve issues

You will need to think about which users you want to have each role, and the features allowed in each role. You should watch the training videos before you get live training. It saved us several hours as they had already answered 90% of our questions.

MailChimp is a great "starter" email service, especially for consumer businesses. AWeber offers a bit more power and sophistication, especially for B2B companies, while still being easy to use and price competitive. Constant Contact had seemed to lag in features for a while though it has now largely caught up. However, it's got a more complex pricing model and is less attractive for users who send multiple messages per month to a smaller list.

Incentivized

As an agency we have experience with several other marketing automation platforms. We support clients that are not using eTrigue DemandCenter-- we'll work with them to create various campaign assets. This said, if our clients want us to also run their marketing automation campaigns-- implement the campaigns after the assets are created, we only work in eTrigue as this our platform of choice. Our ability to support the robust and fast-paced needs of our clients requires us to use a platform that they can easily implement and that we can easily work in, make ongoing changes in. eTrigue DemandCenter is the platform that delivers.

Incentivized

• Aweber has been a great way to introduce clients to the process of online marketing and publishing. Many of them have never used the web or email to truly nurture their customer relationships. The combination of dependable features and low price make Aweber a good "toe in the water" of internet marketing.
• Aweber has helped my clients raise awareness of their products and services through targeted email campaigns and regular publishing. It's a great way to deliver coupons and special offers directly to a customer's inbox.
• Awber has helped me teach my clients that a collection of names and email addresses is only worthwhile if you use it to communicate what matters to your customers. Many businesses collect contact information at live events or through other means, but rarely do they actually do anything with it. By using Aweber to reach out to their customer base, they are able to see through the analytics how valuable that conversation can be.

Incentivized

• We get the upper hand on follow-up with return visitors... not by reverse DNS lookup or pattern match but by direct cookie validation. Inside sales productivity is boosted by 33% easy with eTrigue.
• The alerts and data are lightning fast, giving marketing immediate feedback on campaign data and prospects.