I have a working plugin for aweber Hi red_pape, I emailed amember tech support yesterday and told them how amember could work with aweber, which is via emails. Basically, to add a member - you need to send an email to your aweber AR email address e.g. listname @ aweber.com (optionally, you can add a 'tracking tag' by sending the email to listname.tracking_tag @ aweber.com - where 'tracking_tag' can be letters, numbers,hyphens or underscores but no spaces) This email needs to be seen to be coming from the members email address NOT the amember address so an email would have to be sent to aweber coming from Firstname Lastname <username @ email.com> To remove a member is a lot simpler and very similar to arp - You send an email to your aweber AR email address with the following subject line - REMOVE#username @ email.com#category#listname1,listname2 'useremail @ email.com' is the email address to be removed 'category' is a optional removal category (e.g. amember_deleted lets you know it was removed by amember) 'listname1, listname2' are the additional lists to remove the email address form. The email address that you send this remove request from must be listed in the "List Settings -> Autoresponder Admin Emails" section of the AWeber account from which you wish to remove the lead. I spent some time yesterday and played around and developed an aweber plugin that works. It will - 1. Add a new user to your chosen aweber list for a product. (You specify the aweber list for each product so you can have different lists for different products). 2. Remove a user from your aweber list when they are deleted from your amember db OR when their subscription expires. I have done some testing and it has worked for me. I have sent it to Alex (via a trouble ticket) just to get them to check the code is 'safe & secure' and doesn't affect the amember installation in any way because I am no programmer so I would be happier knowing that the plugin is a viable one offering it out. The worst case scenario is that even if Alex says it isn't written very well and shouldn't be used, he at least can tell from the plugin the basics of how amember needs to integrate with aweber (which is basically via emails). I will let you know what happens Thanks Terry
One thing I didn't mention - my plugin will probably only work if you are using php mail. If your amember installation is using sendmail/SMTP then my plugin will probably not work. That's why I sent my plugin to Alex and his guys because they can probably get it to better integrate into amember. Thanks Terry
aweber plugin - good news/bad news Just to give you an update - First the GOOD news. I successfully created an aweber plugin that worked like a charm. It uses the inbuilt awber email parser and it will not only pass the customer Name and Email to aweber BUT it will also optionally pass along the custmer login name, password, address, and IP address so you could use your aweber AR for total email communication including things like monthly membership detail reminders etc. When you deleted a user or the membership expired then the plugin will unsubscribe them from your aweber list. Alex was happy to distribute the plugin and all was well. Now the BAD news. Aweber tech support says that this method of adding leads to an aweber list is NOT permissible. Awebers only acceptable method for adding leads is for a customer to email your aweber list directly i.e. via their own email client or for them to fill out an aweber subscribe form (the one that is generated from within your aweber control panel). To get a better idea of where they are coming from, here is the last email I received from them - ***Begin aweber repsonse*** > <Are these messages being sent from your server or a third party shopping > > cart? > > > > These messages are being sent from the amember script on my hosted server > > after the customer has completed payment for their membership. I'm afraid that this also would not be a permitted way of adding leads to our service. We need to have an auditable record showing a valid request for information from you. Having the information sent from your own server would not suffice in this sense. Are you currently using a hosted payment processor that can send notification messages when these purchases are made? ***End aweber response***** It appears that the only way they will accept this type of lead adding is if it is coming from a payment processor like paypal, paydotcom etc. In fact the aweber email parser has built in rulesets for a lot of the more common payment processors. That is why they ask the question "Are you currently using a hosted payment processor that can send notification messages when these purchases are made?" To be fair to aweber - they have a reputation to keep of a high deliverability rate because they maintain these exacting standards as far as adding leads is to their service is concerned. What's next Well I haven't given up completely, I have a few ideas that I might run past Alex and I will so what I can come up with that aweber might find acceptable. Thanks Terry
Terry, Thanks for all of your work. I understand aweber will not allow subs unless it's requested from the actual subcriber. What I don't understand is why that other script I had (see screen shot in previous post) simply allowed a non programmer like myself to add the autoresponders email address and .... (that's it) ?? I could have added any autoresponder and it would work "seemlessly" Do you know what the trigger was that allowed this to happen in that script that sells for $50.00 ? Granted I'm ignorant to script writing but why was it "so" easy over there but nows there's this big challenge??? Can't amember use that same feature? What's the difference?
I would guess that the clickbank membership script is probably doing this by either - 1. Doing what my plugin is doing which is sending an email to the aweber list with the appropriate header information to add the new customer to your aweber list. This is against the aweber TOS as I explained above OR 2. The script is using the aweber email parser for clickbank. The aweber email parser already has some built in rulesets for a lot of payment processors including Paypal, Clickbank, 1Shoppingcart, Regsoft, Stormpay and PayDotCom. They also say they can also integrate with just about all 3rd party shopping carts you just need to let them know which one you use. So perhaps the CB membership script uses that technique. I wasn't able to find any instructions on how to setup the email parser to work with any payment processor except for paypal. Those instructions can be found here - http://www.aweber.com/article-paypal.htm Basically you have to configure in your paypal account to send an email on completion of a sale to your aweber list (listname@aweber.com) and the aweber email parser will read the customer name and email address from your paypal sale notification and add them to your list. Clickbank may have a similar feature so by entering your AR email address in the CB member script, it may get passed to clickbank as an additional email address to send a copy of the sale notice to. I am only guessing of course and I have asked aweber tech support for clickbank instructions. I really don't see how that differs to my plugin which effectively reads the customer name and email address from the amember signup form and adds the customer to your list however I wouldn't cros aweber otherwise you might find your account cancelled and you being banned. I am working on a modification to my plugin that will hopefully satisfy awebers requirements so I will let you know when it is complete. Thanks Terry
Hi Terry, I just think you got a bad aweber person who doesnt really understand. Many dont. I do this on my other site using a membership and its only right that a paid member should get updates. We include a tickbox for TOS and its in there that they are agree'ing to opt in to receive updates etc. So this is perfectly fine and I'm rather annoyed that amember's plugin doesnt offer to parse directly to aweber. I would love to get hold of your code to implement this on my site as this is killing us not being able to manage and send to our paid members and its obvious that we wont get anything from amember on this despite everyone asking. Can you please pm me Or if I'm wrong amember please show us how we can have the software send through to aweber parse list from the email address of the buyer etc etc. Cheers Marc
AWebers's policys dont allow software to automatically subscribe users. They need an IP audit trail of the signup to prove its not a spammer signing people up. You can place the aweber signup form before your amember signup, or within the thank you page. David
I have had discussions with Aweber previously BECAUSE Aweber requires an IP audit trail, this is the reason why this is so difficult an issue. Now while its perfectly feasible for an amember plugin to add the users IP details and time etc, it doesn't satisfy Aweber. With large payment processors that have trust relationships with Aweber thse facilities can be allowed but as Amember's source code is almost 99% modifiable for Aweber to allow a Amember plugin to perform the job would highly compromise the aweber policy. It would not be inconceivable for a spammer to modify amember to feed illegally harvested addresses into aweber and thereby cause a rash of valid spam complaints against aweber thereby compromising awebers deliverability performance and almost wreck its business overnight. In fact it would most likely take spammers with all their resources about 48 hrs before this was exploited on a wholesale basis. So they allow companies with closed code and impeccable reputation (at least in the anti-SPAM area) to subscribe members to aweber but not small companies with open code policies such as amember. Its a PERFECTLY understandable and intelligent situation, that they should do so. If amember were to not supply code for modification its conceivable that aweber might consider allowing subscription direct from amember however that would be to the detriment of 75% of amembers users to have that occur
Thats fine we have all of the details needed within amember to do this. IP logs, tick boxes to subscribe, none of the above is an issue and everything can be made to conform with aweber. I manage lists of 60k + in aweber all from another purchasing system (JVM) which automatically does this and I have personally contacted amember to which they did not have an issue. The first reply was a stock standard reply that many have quoted here. However if you put it in the right way and push past their first level standard support you get the information you really need. Now in this case it was about a custom parser to do exactly what everyone here wants. Here is their reply. > Yes it is a third party shopping cart service. > > It is for members that have signed up for our services and updates/news > pertaining to their membership. > > Everything is logged via date time stamp, ip address, customer address, > first name, last name, receipt number, and about 15 other fields I can > give you if you really need it. Unfortunately we can not offer support to a parser that you have written yourself and we wanted to enssure that the information was coming from a shopping cart. I do suggest checking and making sure the email sent out from the shopping cart to your autoresponder has not been changed in anyway. All they are saying is that they wont help me with the parser (Understandable they are not here to support my technical needs). A thankyou page signup is not good enough. My members pay good money to be part of my membership and I know many skip over a form on the thankyou page. Then I end up with complaints or queries as to why they aren't on the update list automatically. Guys I'm not really looking to discuss who's right and who's wrong with aweber, just if someone has a way to parse details directly to aweber with some standard fields they would like. Well I'm happy with my reply from Aweber support and I've not had an issue with them in over 2 years. Thanks Marc
I think where people get tied up is in getting the real information from aweber. This all came about from tellafriend scripts that would automatically tie people into their aweber list. Aweber got peeved at this (totally understandably so) and put this limitation in place. As you can see they just need to clarify where they are coming from, in this case a shopping cart, or any other third party payment process. Perhaps not if you are offering something free (not sure as to that yet as all mine are paid) though if they are paying for your service. Amember in our experience has never had an issue. Cheers Marc