How Does an Email Marketing Company Market Itself?

Tom Kulzer is CEO of AWeber Communications and he recently took a few minutes to chat with Bryan Haines.

Bryan: How does AWeber market itself?

Tom: AWeber uses a variety of methods like pay-per-click search engine marketing, display ads, affiliate marketing, email marketing, sponsorships, and others.

Our biggest driver of new business is word of mouth marketing predominantly attributed to over delivering on the expectations of all of our customers making the more likely to tell other business owners about AWeber.

Bryan: How significant of a role does email marketing play in your marketing strategy?

Tom: Email marketing is definitely a driving force in our marketing strategy but it's more on the education and conversion side of the fence. You can see on our homepage and blog that our email opt-ins are prominently positioned for optimal exposure.

Bryan: What role does your affiliate program play in your marketing plan? How much of your new business comes via this channel? Please explain how the program works.

Tom: Affiliate marketing helps build new lead sources which we are able to track and then pay based on those customer referrals. When an affiliate registers on our website they are given a special link they can use to refer prospects to AWeber. When someone purchases the affiliate is rewarded with a 30% commission for the life of that customer account.

The percentage of our new business that comes from affiliate marketing is not a public number.

Bryan: How has the email marketing industry changed since founding AWeber?

Tom: Email marketing has changed in many ways over the years. In my opinion the largest being what defines the word spam for both recipients and ISPs that accept that email. Years ago spam would be defined as email that was not requested. In 2011, that definition has broadened to include not only email that was never requested, but also email that was requested at one point but no longer desired. This has introduced the concept of a reputation around the senders of email utilizing the measurement of engagement with subscribers.

Bryan: What social media networks and communities do you use to communicate with clients and prospects?

Tom: Facebook and Twitter are two of the more obvious social media networks that everyone talks about where AWeber is active, but we also try to be active anywhere people are talking about AWeber. Tools like Google Alert make it possible to monitor the web and every discussion forum out there for keywords relevant to your business and jump into the conversation where appropriate.

Tom Kulzer is CEO of AWeber Communications and he recently took a few minutes to chat with Bryan Haines.