Add subscribers to Aweber without opting in?

Mike,

You can manually add people to lists in Aweber but you can't begin sending to them until they confirm their subscription. = (

Kinda sucks be it does prevent spam abuse.

Hi Mike,

Pretty sure Aweber won't allow this. It's a big bad issue in the online marketing world and one few companies ever allow cos prospects can claim you added them without their consent etc and cause big trouble for the hosts and you.

Having said that, I'm getting ready to do this for my offline prospects and seriously doubt the above will ever be an issue because they are almost all personal friends, referrals or people I met/meet at networking events much like you, and have built/will build relationships with.

So, to answer your question, try...

1. Email Marketing Software - YMLP allows you to add single or multiple contacts - no confirmation required by your contacts.

2. https://madmimi.com/ also allows you to import names but looks like confirmation is required, not sure, you'll need to verify. You can set up free to test it out.

Now, let me say this, if you want to still go with aweber and do this, you sort of can. Here's what you do...

You set up your aweber list as normal. Set up a web form. Visit your own web form and then enter the email addresses you want, one at a time that way, cumbersome, but that's how you'll have to do it.

Each prospect will receive a confirmation email which they have to open and click the link in it to then be added to your list, so you should probably find a way to contact those who don't already know to expect you will add them to a list and tell them to A) Visit your page to sign up using the form or if that's cumbersome for them B) Check their email and look for one titled "XYZ" whatever the title is, open it and click the link to be added to your list.

You can send a text message blast to those contacts to do either A or B as you feel is most appropriate.

Hope this helps.

Kunle Olomofe

I ran into this with one older list of buyers. It was about 100-125 and they bought and re-bought through a shopping cart not integrated into an auto responder.

I had all their emails in the cart data. I didn't think any would consider it spam if I emailed them thanking them for their past purchases and offering them them a free news letter which always has special savings and coupon offers. I included a sign up link though the auto responder that had a double opt in. I didn't think buyers would have a problem with an email from me but.........

Not wanting to take a chance on getting one of my primary business or personal email accounts shut down if there was a complaint I used a vanity email that I had with Hotmail that I didn't care if it got burned.

I sent a personal looking form email and hit send a lot. I don't think I would do that with a large non-buyer list however. I also did this with a couple offline clients that didn't have huge list of buyers.

Probably overkill on my part but was a work around for me. I'm sure there are many others. And more offered in the posts here. Also my shopping cart has an email response function, most do but I didn't want to risk any problems there. Spammers have made the buyers paranoid!

I will be looking likewise to the posts here for solutions also, should I run into a list or client's list that is large. I also thought that for an offline client I could suggest a mailing with an incentive to go to their website and opt in. We all know now that opting in to a list is one of the first things we secure with any online prospect or customer.

Used to be "get the check" in sales, now it's "get the opt in then the check"

Old Dog

P.S. There is software out there that if you are at a meeting or show you can have them text to a # while right there and it will opt them into a list and they can instantly confirm in seconds while they are with you. Or if you are speaking or demo'ing to a group have them all text to a number you give them and they will all be added to your list. I use a system from Traffic Geyser. I'm not an affiliate!! See even on the forum I'm paranoid!

Couple solutions.... constant contact, or mailchimp.

Another self hosted solution is to setup phplist on your server.

phplist is a script you can get here free for download

I feel Getresponse List Booster will work well in this matter!

Adding them manually without them needing to opt in is not problem; just go into the Aweber control panel and click add subscriber. But by doing it manually, though, they are required to confirm even if it is a single opt in list. The work-around is to create a web form for that list and manually opt them in from there. In list settings, set it to single opt in. And you can manually add them to that list via the web form, one-by-one. If it is say, less than 10 leads per day, it may be doable, although time intensive. You may need to do this behind a proxy or perhaps a smart phone might suffice in order to vary the IP address of the opt ins.......because after seeing them added from the same IP, it’s likely Aweber will either: A) give you a message that says too many opt ins from this computer. Or: B) they will just convert those single opt-ins to double opt-ins and require confirmation.

Caveat: I’m actually a fan of double opt in. Eventually, some of your leads will forget how they got on your mailing list and instead of hitting the “unsubscribe” button, they’ll go temporarily insane and click the “spam” button. At that point, had you put them on your list via double opt-in, there would be an audit trail Aweber could use to defend you against the spam complaint and maybe keep your domain from getting flagged by the spam watchdogs. What you could do is print out your custom thank you page, i.e., http://ourneucopia.com/verifyemail/ and give them a copy so they are expecting the confirmation email. If they are not willing to confirm in that manner, they would probably never engage with your followup letters anyway.

Hope this helps! Best,

Just use GetResponse