For those of you who joined AWeber on or before February 03 2020, everything stays the same. You still have the choice between using the Follow Up Series or Campaigns for your email sequences. 
However, for new subscribers, like me, who joined after February 03, 2020, the Follow Up Series no longer exists for us as an AWeber autoresponder. Campaigns is now the only choice for new subscribers.
I will try to show the differences between the two Aweber autoresponder utilities.
What is the Aweber Follow Up Series?
A Follow Up Series is several messages automatically sent to your list subscribers in numerical order. The subscriber will receive each mail at a time interval chosen by you.
The Follow Up Series becomes active with the first draft message. As soon as a subscriber becomes active on the list, Follow UP Series number ‘1’ is sent to them.
When using a Follow Up Series, messages will be sent in numerical order to all subscribers as they join the relevant list. Subscribers usually receive messages until they complete the Follow Up Series.
The Follow Up Series cannot be filtered by tags, as can be done in Campaigns. If you wish to pause the Follow Up Series, you must adjust the ‘wait’ time after a message, or you can manage the Series from Campaigns. Although you can pause a Follow Up Series, you can’t stop it or close it down.
You can send Follow Up Series based on either the local time of the recipient or in U.S. Eastern Time.
To turn a Follow Up Series into a Campaign, you must import a sharing code. For instructions, visit AWeber’s article here.
AWeber Campaigns
If like me, you signed up for AWeber after February 03, 2020, you will no longer be able to use Aweber’s Follow Up Series autoresponder. For you, Campaigns is now AWebers only email autoresponder.
There are four primary functions of the Campaigns platform.
– A trigger to begin the campaign
– The ability to send a message
– You can add Wait times between each action.
– And you can apply tags.
You will find that Campaigns is very flexible. You can choose which subscribers to add to your Campaign by using different triggers.
The Campaign can be triggered as soon as a subscriber joins your list or it can be triggered by whatever tag you choose to apply.
You can even run multiple Campaigns from one list which can either run individually or at the same time.
So what are tags?
Well, they are phrases or keywords that are used to link your subscribers together. In this way, you can assign content or specific messages to chosen subscribers.
By using the “Apply Tag” action, you can add or remove tags from your subscribers. Tags can also be applied to subscribers using Click and Open automation.
Click automation happens if a subscriber clicks a specific hyperlink in a message.
Open automation happens if a subscriber opens a particular message.
By using tags and automation, you can trigger new campaigns; this gives you the ability to send messages to your subscribers based on their interests and behaviors.
A Campaign can be created and left in draft form until you are ready to make it active. By altering the Campaign status, you can effectively manage your series of messages.
Benefits of tags and open and click automation.
When using tags, and the open and click automation tools, you can create a unique sequence of emails, and also, remove subscribers from chosen campaigns as you wish.
Broadcast message automation can also be used to trigger Campaigns.
A re-engagement message sent to inactive subscribers could use open automation to apply a tag if they open the message.
A Campaign could then be triggered based on that tag. You can then continue to engage with those subscribers.
A unique email sequence can be created for your subscribers by combining all of the features of Campaigns.
You can pause a Campaign, close a Campaign, which would stop new subscribers from joining, or stop the Campaign entirely.
Campaign messages are sent based on the timezone you are in when you create the campaign, unlike Follow Up Series messages which are based on the local time of the recipient or in U.S. Eastern Time.
All in all, I think AWeber’s Campaigns is a handy piece of software. It gives us users plenty of opportunities to easily manipulate emails to our subscribers in many different ways.
Hopefully, this post has been of some use to you. Please let me know if it has.
Until Next Time
Pauline Mac
By the way, the reason I am researching these autoresponder features is that I am using it on the course I am taking with John Thornhill.
You can find more about the course here.
This is a guest post from Pauline Harris if you would like to be considered for a guest post please contact me.
