With its ease of use, low learning curve and wealth of templates, many people wonder if the popular email marketing and autoresponder service AWeber is also a CRM – a Customer Relationship Management tool.
Using AWeber as a CRM
AWeber lets you manage your email marketing by allowing you to import email subscriber lists, or, if you’re starting from scratch, build a mailing list. With its collection of responsive HTML email newsletters, RSS/blog-to-email functionality and the simplicity of sending email campaigns, it’s easy to see how AWeber can double as a type of CRM.
But at its core, it’s meant to be used as an email marketing tool, not one that’s specific to customer relationship management.
AWeber CRM Features
AWeber does contain some marketing automation functionality, including the ability to segment your email lists according to certain subscriber actions. Segmenting your email list can be done quickly and easily, even if you’re new to email marketing. Through its AWeber campaigns feature, you can create user segments based on the specific things that an entire group of subscribers has in common, such as:
- Did they open the email?
- Did they click through on a link?
- Did they visit certain pages on your website?
- Did they place an order?
In this respect, AWeber is a bit behind the times, since other alternatives, like GetResponse, offer a more thorough type of segmentation and automation, along the “If this happens, then do that” customer journey: So if you’re looking for more detailed email segmentation and automation options based on specific triggers, it may be worth looking at GetResponse or another AWeber alternative.
AWeber and CRM Integrations
With that being said, AWeber does integrate with a number of well-known CRM tools, including:
- Salesforce
- Contactually
- Freshbooks
- Highrise
- Hubspot
- Intercom
- And more. See the full list of CRM integrations here.
Much of these integrations are made possible through a platform called Zapier, which helps connect various tools to each other and enable the sending and sharing of information between them. This way, if you want to go beyond the default capabilities of AWeber and:
- Add new AWeber subscribers as new (or potential) clients to your CRM
- Subscribe users of your CRM to an AWeber mailing list when they buy a product
- Update AWeber when a new contact is added to your CRM
You can likely do it through Zapier. Not all CRM integrations allow for this kind of flexibility, so you’ll need to check the integrations page for your CRM to see what’s possible.
Getting Started with Customer-Focused Email Marketing
Overall, although AWeber itself isn’t a CRM, it nevertheless can help add a layer of interactivity and responsiveness to your customer engagement strategies. You can get started with AWeber free for 30 days and see for yourself how it works with your preferred customer relationship management software.
[su_button url=”http://freeinfo.aweber.com” target=”blank” center=”yes” icon=”icon: check”]Click to Try AWeber FREE for 30 Days[/su_button]