I’ve used Aweber for 6 years now and last month I also got the message informing me that they got “too many” spam complaints and were forcing my account into double opt-in starting next day.

I agree with the “philosophy” of double opt-in so I decided to give it a try… Well, in a perfect world double opt-in would be the right way to build a list, but unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect world! I tried double opt-in for the last 15 days and what I saw was a drop in 70% of my subscriber rate. Well, I need to run a business and a 70% loss is not acceptable.

Of course, people that defend double opt-in would argue that the subscribers that didn’t confirm weren’t interested in my site anyway or were wrongly subscribed, but that is not the case.

I’ve getting replies to the confirmation email and what people are saying is that:

- they don’t understand what they are supposed to do;

- they don’t want to click the confirmation link because it looks “suspicious”;

- they don’t understand that the “click on the link” is necessary and just reply saying “yes, I confirm”.

But these are the people that take the time to reply, most don’t! Some people don’t understand that confirming is necessary, others think it’s a waste of their time, others think they’ll get to it later and so on.

Now to the spam complaints: When I first opened my account with Aweber I didn’t know single opt-in was an option, I used to think that all accounts were forced double opt-in, so for a long time in the beginning all my lists were double opt-in.

I get very often complaints from people that have doubled opt-in and it doesn’t matter what I send. Most of my emails are not “spammy” by any means, most are just plain articles, with no links, no offer, nothing that could be seen as spam. Still, when people lose interest or just don’t want your emails anymore, you automatically become a spammer to them.

The other day I got a complaint sent to the holding company that manages the website that used to email this subscriber. The person thought the company was managed by “other” people and so she was trying to report the website for sending her spam. She stated that she had never subscribed to that website. Oh well, guess what? She was one of the first subscribers and doubled opt-in. When I answered her email saying that she indeed subscribed I got an enraged response from her, saying that “I was lying”.

The biggest argument to defend double opt-in is that you can prove that the person indeed subscribed to the list, but what are you supposed to do with this confirmation? People are not going to sue you for spam (unless you’re really doing something shaddy), so what’s this proof good for? Just so you can say “yes, you did subscribe, stupid!”?

If people want to unsubscribe from your list and they don’t know how to (even though you might state clearly in your message) and they think the right thing to do is to click the spam button, they will do it anyway, even if they doubled or tripled opt-in.

What I think happened to you and me that Tom says “someone contacted Aweber accusing you of spamming” probably was the same thing that happened when the double opt-in girl emailed my holding company acusing one of my websites of spamming her.

It is unfortunate that Aweber will take actions like this based on “gossip”. Think about it, a competitor could easily spot which websites in his niche are not using double opt-in and contact their list management services “reporting” them for spamming them. That’s a sure way of steal some subscribers/clients since this competitor will get all the subscribers that won’t double opt-in for the other guys lists.

After all that, I tried GetResponse and hated it. I decided to go solo and be the master of my own domain! I purchased AutoResponsePlus and now I’m waiting for the installation to go thought so I can transfer my lists from Aweber and kiss their a** goodbye. I think this is not an option for newbies, since it requires some technical knowledge and time to go thought the learning curve and manage the system, but in the end I believe it will be worth it.

Carol

For instance, they’ve been in business forever but still don’t allow the client to customize the notification email that AWeber sends to them when someone fills in their form. The default email they do send is filled with crap and junk information that makes it almost unreadable and useless for lead follow up – which is the point of lead gen forms in the first place. Isn’t it?

AWeber sucks!

though this stopped a while ago it is interesting to read.

Why? I had a website until recently using AWstats, but about time this above issue arose I started getting calls from mates to say my e-mail address was blocked. then I started getting calls from government departments & those offering services to confirm e-mail address.

finally I was told by a mate a few months ago about a pop up that came up when he tried to e-mail me. wording was strange about my email address my being not allowed.

since I was getting no joy from my website I decided to contact someone I saw on ‘linked in’ to help with what I was doing wrong. get a pop up from Aweber saying I cannot use my email address. read through & it was what my mate had said he got few months ago.

did two things. first hit the connection to Aweber to find out what was up. reply was that I can not use the word security in an e-mail address end of story. they were told that they could not dictate to me what address I used.

second was tried again & was able to contact the business. they said they were signed to Aweber as an email marketing but they were not aware that business e-mails to them were being blocked.

I then contacted our (NZ) department for commercial issues. their response was they could do nothing, but if Aweber were based here, not overseas, they would then look into it with view to prosecution. Only option is taking local web service provider to disputes tribunal & why I have come across this.

I have never being signed up to Aweber but there seems to be a connection to Awstats as complaint I found on net with associated issues are same as those two combined.

seems they both are not what they are cracked up to be.

Customer service is definitely not of the required standard.

Ken

I congratulate Tom for spending the time to post on this blog not many CEO’s would do that.

I would of thought in this day and age that you would WANT a double optin?

Why? to confirm that the subscriber address is real and it’s a valid address.

Sure it’s an extra few seconds for the subscriber but why would you want to waste time with someone who’s not interested in what you’ve got to email?

Did someone spell their name wrong by accident? That could certainly happen once every 20,000 signups or so. Did they try to opt-out but the page failed to load? That could certainly happen once every 1,000 attempts.

Using a single person’s experience, good or bad, as the basis for a decision that would harm a company when the technology involved isn’t foolproof seems like overkill.

If they were selling penis enlargement pills, I’d be less tempted to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this sounds like a real company with a solid track record of doing the right thing.

50 kids die a year because their parents forget they left them in the car seat. Is it really that difficult to believe that one person could forget they signed up for an email list?

My understanding of the sequence of event is:
1. CEO received a spam complaint from one list
2. CEO ordered to switch ALL lists to double opt in
3. CEO asked a staff to notify Ian’s client

To me, this is not proactively solving an issue. That is, “hey dude, i dont’care what’s your story but this is my decision as per our TOS”.

If Aweber has attempted to solve an issue, before ordering a switch on all lists….
a. someone could have call Ian’s client to find out more
b. email Ian’s client to find out more
c. fax to Ian’s client to find out more
e. send a snail mail to Ian’s client find out more

The problem is anyone who has had experience with net companies who have a TOS agreement, have also had the experience of having it waived in their faces as a discussion ender when problems arise with no room for taking the customer’s particular needs into account.

The reflexive action when the customer has concerns about something like this often is to go on the defensive and whip out the TOS.

I can’t help but think that if the approach is more along the lines of “You know what, you have a valid concern and at my company we take such concerns very seriously. Let’s work together on finding a solution we all can live with.”, you can transform a concerned, often agitated customer into one of your greatest advocates who sings your praises every chance they get.

Don’t we all need as many such individuals as we can get?

Ken

Also, I’m a bit surprised that the CEO of AWeber has the time to be personally responding to issues like this… especially when his comments don’t seem terribly professional or helpful. If th CEO’s going to get involved in a thread like this, you’d expect the reponse to be a clear resolution offered in one post — probably in 20 words or less! Crazy!

The second opportunity would have been to find possible solutions that would prevent the escalation with other customers for the same or similar reasons and to demonstrate them in public for everybody to see.

All that would have been resulted into just another opportunity from a PR perspective to show if and how problems are being handled by the company and how a negative incident can be turned into a case study with positive outcome that could be used as reference for other companies.

Web 2.0 is not only good to raise public awareness of problems, but also to resolve them and learn something from it.