aweber plugin - Good/Bad news!!!

I have attempted to write a plugin to integrate amember to aweber and here is the result -

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

I'm interested in the same thing.

Is there a way to have aMember send a direct email to Aweber from the member's email address when they sign up, then they confirm in the email they receive to double opt-in.

I think some other scripts like DLGuard do it that way.

Thanks,

Steve

Hi Steve,

That is exactly what my original plugin did. It would send an email to aweber from the customers email address. They then get a confirmation email just like normal with any aweber list.

Aweber say that this is not permissible as they cannot get a proper audit trail when it is done like this. The only way they will accept subscribers is either DIRECTLY from the customers email client or via a web form.

The good news is that I have modified my original plugin so that after the customer has paid and been directed to the amember thanks page, the thanks page now has an aweber subscribe form with the customer details (name, email) already filled in. They just click the 'submit' button and then they see a customized thank you page with a login link to the member site.

Also included in the form code on the amember thank you page are hidden fields (like amember username, password, address, etc) with all the customer details to be optionally sent to your aweber AR.

If anybody wants to see how it works then go to
http://www.thewebhostingclub.com/amember/signup.php?price_group=3&hide_paysys=free

and sign up. This is a site I am just setting up so you wont see much there but you will be able to see how I have set it up to work with aweber subscription. You will notice that, as a customer, you will only get the confirmation email from aweber and the the first message from my amember AR series with your member details (username, password) AND you don't get your password until you confirm your email with aweber.

I have disabled all of the amember customer emails because I don't want the new member being flooded with emails.

If you have any comments or suggestions the please feel free to contact me.

Thanks


Terry

interesting... if they click "confirm email" in the confirmation mail, then aweber HAVE their record

Great that you have found a way to succesfully integrate aweber.

The problem I still see: After the payment process (e.g. via paypal) the customer will be already billed but his e-mail is not yet sent to aweber. So if the i-net connection would break for example, he will not be in the aweber-database .

Also it needed some minutes until aweber confirmation-mail arrivesd in the inbox. The customer could "panic" due to time delay cause he is already billed. Moreover, if the aweber confirmation mail would not arrive (e.g. will be catched by spam folder), the customer has no chance to login but his account is charged.

Any ideas?

the mail protocol was made to handle internet outages... other than a mail delay I don't see a problem with this

The only way to overcome this is to use the aweber email parser option. This way the customer is added to your aweber database by payment processor after the payment is processed. The aweber email parser supports quite a few well know payment processors including paypal, paydotcom, stormpay, clickbank etc. and aweber will add a custom email parser ruleset for any payment processor you want (as long as you pay them the $35 fee).

I know what you mean here. The way I have set it up (they don't get their password until they confirm) may not be the best way to do it as they probably feel they are entitled to get access without confirming because they have paid for access. That is not part of the aweber plugin, it is just the way I have setup amember.

I did that by setting up the signup configuration (amember CP -> Setup/Configuration -> Global -> Signup Form Configuration) so that the customer selects their username but amember allocates the password.

I could easily change that (uncheck the "Should amember generate the user password" box) and the customer would select their own username/password and they could login to their account without confirming or verifying their aweber subscription.

Terry

Yes, Terry and Alex, that`s how it could work.

Terry, I know that you disabled the amember welcome-mail for the good reason that we don`t want to flood customers with e-mails. On the other hand, there is the problem that for any reason the customer could stand without a login possibility.

1. Using paypal to send customer info directly to aweber could be a good solution. The problem here is, that the customer could use another email in paypal as he wants to add to our mail-list. Is that right?

2. Moreover, what happens when a customer changes his email-address in amember? It would be again hard for amember to include the changed email into aweber database or?

3. Finally, I am a little confused: If someone knows our list names and a customers email, is it possible to exclude the customer from our mail list by sending a mail to aweber? Is it also possible to add someones email to the mail-list in aweber without paying? Is there a way this can be prevented?

Yes that is true so I guess it would be a matter of testing different scenarios and see what works best.

Yes it is true that a customer's paypal email could be different to the one he enters at your member site.

That's correct. Amember can't update the aweber database and aweber can't update the amember database so there could be a mismatch in email addresses.

No you can't exclude a customers email address just by knowing the aweber listname and customer email address. Aweber will only accept remove requests from email addresses that are listed in your listname admin email list.

Yes it is still possible for someone to be added to your list without paying, they just won't have access to your member site until they pay. I don't think there is a way to prevent that.

Thanks

Terry

Aweber script help?

Hello,

I'm excited to get this plugin up and running, but have hit a roadblock.

I have followed all the directions and checked them several times, but for some reason, when I get to the point where I submit the aweber form, it gives me an aweber error like this one:

"Sorry, the account you tried to access was not found in our customer records. To notify the site owner of this message, push the back button on your web browser or check some of the selections below for more information."

I have the aweber web form correct along with the listname (and everything else I can see) and have added my admin name and email to aweber.

Is there anything else I can try?

Thanks,

Lisa

Any chance of you posting the original plugin? I am working with Email Aces and they DO allow this level of integration from remote forms, so I would like to customize the code to work with them and not Aweber. WOuld make a good seamless solution!

DJ

I keep getting this error on the top of the thankyou page:

WARNING: constant() [function.constant]: Couldn't find constant _TPL_THX_AWEBER in line 117 of file common.inc.php


Can you help please?