Twitter Your Email Newsletters

Posted by Justin Premick

If you follow online marketing circles, you’ve likely seen (and participated in) a lot of discussions about social media and using it to grow your business.

While social media isn’t a replacement for email marketing, it can complement it by helping you connect a larger audience to your site and campaigns.

One social media tool that a lot of you seem to be using (and that we also use here at AWeber) is Twitter.

Today, we’re happy to announce that you can now use your Twitter and AWeber accounts together to expand the reach of your email newsletters.

Publish Your Email Newsletters to Twitter

Now, whenever you create a broadcast message in AWeber, you have the option to automatically “tweet” that email too!

Here are a couple examples taken from real AWeber users on Twitter:

How It Works

To use this feature:

Go to the Broadcast page of your account.
Create a broadcast.
Before saving your broadcast, mark the “Syndicate” checkbox.

Mark the “Twitter” box and enter your login/password

When you send your broadcast, we’ll automatically update your Twitter status with the subject line of your email and a short link to an online version of your email.

Twitter Email Newsletters FAQ

A couple quick questions and answers:

Can I choose which broadcasts get tweeted?
Once you enter your Twitter login and password once, we’ll assume you want to tweet all of your broadcasts.

If there’s a broadcast you don’t want to tweet, just unmark the checkbox while editing it.
How many Twitter IDs can I link to my account?
You can link one Twitter ID to your account at any one time. You can change which ID is linked to your account by entering the login/password for it in step 4 above (this will replace your previously selected Twitter ID).

Have any other questions? Ask them below or get in touch with us.

Using Twitter? So Are We.

You can find several of us on Twitter:

AWeber on Twitter

Tom

Sean

Justin

Tags: email newsletters, New Features

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56 Responses

shara Cohen
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:44 am

can I do this for Blog Broadcasts?
Dennis Harris
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:54 am

What a great idea, thanks for the idea!
Bob Jenkins
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:20 am

Justin,
Thanks for making this live. I’ve been posting my archive of broadcasts for a while as a link from my blog, and this new Tweet feature will help get more eyes on our emails!

I find Twitter to be very helpful at connecting me with people who I might never know were it not for an introduction from another member. Social networking is an important part in growing a business - no matter if you own a brick and mortar store or a local sales professional, or an internet marketer who has two dozen websites.

Looking forward to seeing results with this new feature!
Brett McEllhiney
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:36 am

Hey guys,

This is great! Can’t wait to start using this.

Will definitely try it on my next broadcast which should be sometime today!

WOW!!!
Staying ahead by offering more | Three Turtle Marketing
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:26 pm

[...] out AWeber and then go to their blog to see how easy this is to add and you can use AWeber to help you be more [...]
Doug
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:10 pm

This is old news - there are many email to tweet products out there already. Regardless, it’s a good idea.
Andy Knight
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:16 pm

I have the same question as Shara. Can we use this with a blog broadcast? I’m already manually posting tidbits from our newsletter into Twitter. This would make like easier. Great work.
Maureen
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:33 pm

Wow- this is a good idea. I’m new at Twitter, but now I can incorporate this feature from the beginning- thx
Lara Galloway
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:41 pm

Wow! Was just loading up my ezine and hit save…noticed the "Add to Twitter" feature and clicked on it, hit send and BOOM! There it is in the twitterverse! Thanks for making this so easy. Love the integration and aweber’s willingness to make this product work the way we all want it to!
susan
October 23rd, 2008 at 2:08 pm

so cool! love that you guys are always improving the system!
Ricardo Weatherly
October 23rd, 2008 at 2:13 pm

Hey Guys,
This is a great feature to be added to Aweber,s already awesome arsenal of tools, and makes my job of connecting with my readers that much more easy and efficient.
Jeff Davis
October 23rd, 2008 at 2:16 pm

This is why I love aweber, they stay current with the
marketing trends, and I love twitter, and this is pure
genius!

Thank you so much for adding value and making
marketing a snap!
Justin Premick
October 23rd, 2008 at 2:26 pm

Shara and Andy,

As I understand it, if you’re sending broadcasts automatically they will not be published to Twitter at this time. I’ve talked with our lead developer on this feature about making that possible.

Dennis, Bob, Brett,

Glad you like it! We’re excited to roll this out and from what I can tell, it’s already seeing a lot of use and great feedback from Twitter users.
Alex
October 23rd, 2008 at 2:38 pm

This is a feature that I NEED, and is a good start. However, it doesn’t take into consideration mailers with a different twitter account for each mailing list. Ideally, I would like to have the ability to ping a different twitter account for EACH of my lists. This could potentially go somewhere in the list settings page. I understand that I can just change my account settings each time but this is a bit of an annoyance. Also, if I intend on sending 2 mailings from separate lists on the same date and time, it is virtually impossible to ping multiple twitter accounts with this method.

Also, the ability to tweak the text of the tweet would be nice. {!firstname_fix} certainly isn’t relevant anymore with Tweets, and the sender’s language/style might certianly be different than with an e-mail subject line. Aweber staff: feel free to e-mail me if you’d like to open a broader dialogue about this topic.
Gary Jones
October 23rd, 2008 at 2:48 pm

Will using it increase your FeedBurner stats?
Alexander Morentin
October 23rd, 2008 at 2:55 pm

Awesome. This will save me a lot of time.
Thanks.
Aweber Lets You Twitter Your Email
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:14 pm

[...] can get the full story from Aweber’s blog, but let me share a couple of thoughts about why this is so [...]
John haydon
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:44 pm

Justin,

Great job here.

How does tweeting a blog broadcast differ from using something like Twitterfeed?

P.S. You need better looking affiliate ads…
Justin Premick
October 23rd, 2008 at 4:17 pm

Alex,

Thanks for the thoughts on multiple accounts. I see what you mean.

We did make a conscious decision to make it one Twitter ID at a time to start, but depending on demand there’s always a possibility of making it list-specific in the future.

Gary,

The AWeber-FeedBurner integration is separate from this (that has more to do with showing the number of email subscribers you have, rather than sharing your message content).

John,

I’m not really familiar with Twitterfeed, but from what I can see it takes content from your RSS feed - great for blogs, but doesn’t help someone with a "regular" email newsletter (i.e. one not being generated by RSS).

The nice thing about this tool vs. that is that it’s not handcuffed to an RSS feed. You can go in today, manually create an email newsletter, and have it not only sent to your subscribers but also simultaneously published to Twitter.

(P.S. I totally agree re: affiliate ads, and we’re already working on some new ones )
Kristin Kopp
October 23rd, 2008 at 4:30 pm

Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant!

Thanks so much for creating this opportunity for expansion.

I love my Tweeties and send them encouragement and strategies throughout the day. If you’d like that please join me at http://www.twitter.com/kristinkopp

The most excellent piece of news here is that we can use our broadcasts to encourage our twitter followers to join our list because of all the value we offer in our follow up messages.

Brilliant!
Thank you.
Rikki
October 23rd, 2008 at 4:41 pm

As someone new to IM, Twitter and Aweber I am beginning to see the real advantage of this combination along with social networking! The dawning of a new age has arrived! Rock On!
Joe
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:33 pm

Great Idea Guys…..

I’m really looking forward to this!!!
Alex Sysoef
October 24th, 2008 at 5:47 am

You guys are awesome!

Thanks for great option! Now I can show off my HTML eZine to my Twitter followers!
F
October 24th, 2008 at 10:11 am

Glad to see this feature added to Aweber. That’s one less step now in the process of encouraging dads!
Alex
October 24th, 2008 at 10:14 am

Justin,

I just published my first mail->twitter and {!firstname_fix} showed up in the tweet. I was thinking this would be removed automatically. Is there a way to prevent this from being tweeted?
Chris Vendilli
October 24th, 2008 at 11:58 am

Thanks fellas…

This is fantastic. I use aweber & twitter and was recenlty toying with the idea of grabbing my aweber rss feed and using it with TwitterFeed to auto-update my twitter account. But since you guys came up with this, you just saved me the trouble.

Here’s my twitter profile:

http://www.twitter.com/chris_vendilli - feel free to follow :o)

I also have a free report with videos on how to ethically use twitter for marketing purposes… I’m going to add something in there about this new aweber feature. Thanks again!
Justin Premick
October 24th, 2008 at 12:02 pm

Hi Alex,

We’re aware of the personalization showing up and are working on a fix.
Aweber - Twitter E-mail Newsletters
October 24th, 2008 at 3:44 pm

[...] http://www.aweber.com/blog/new-features/twitter-email-newsletters.htm [...]
Paul Counts
October 24th, 2008 at 3:52 pm

This is awesome! I am very excited! What a great idea. It is so much easier to get a lot of Twitter followers, and to be able to now reach your followers with your marketing message, it is brilliant! Great work as always.
Phil
October 24th, 2008 at 7:56 pm

Hi,

I second the requests for Blog Broadcast and multiple accounts support.
Narina Prokosch
October 25th, 2008 at 9:38 am

First broadcast with link to Twitter. Worked like a charm. Thanks so much.
Douglas Lampi
October 26th, 2008 at 5:15 am

Great to have Aweber staying at the cutting edge, making it easy to sew together all my communication needs!

Social Media like Twitter can also help build your email subscriber list. Follow me details!

@douglaslampi
Raymond Chip Lambert
October 26th, 2008 at 3:09 pm

I’m looking @ AWeber and saw this feature - great idea. But how about services like hellotxt.com where I can update all of my status features on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, Plaxo - etc. simulatneously.

That would be fantastic
Jared Young
October 26th, 2008 at 6:31 pm

As a small business marketing consultant, I frequently teach my clients about how to market using social media. As a regular Aweber user, the addition of Twitter functionality makes it easier for me to practice what I preach.

Adding Twitter also makes it easier for me to recommend Aweber to my clients. Most of my clients are small business owners and entrepreneurs with very limited time to do extra marketing. Combining email marketing with Twiter saves them a step and makes it easier for them to use Aweber.

Thanks!

PS: Feel free to follow my Twitter profile: http://www.twitter.com/originalquill
Doug Barger
October 27th, 2008 at 7:06 am

Hi Justin,

Great new feature!

I sent out a broadcast tweet to test out the functionality of the
new feature by giving away a free, new software just released and
was glad to see the number of people who downloaded it as a result.

Way to stay ahead of the pack and I appreciate you guys.

Incidentally I’ve put my twitter address in the website field in this post so that anyone who wants me to follow them can follow me and I’ll return the favor.

Brilliant as usual guys!
Justin Premick
October 27th, 2008 at 8:35 am

Raymond,

Thanks for asking!

I’ve had a couple people asking similar questions - how to get their email newsletters into Facebook & other sites.

One nice thing with Twitter: so many of those sites already integrate with it in a way that when you update your Twitter status, you also update your status on those sites.

So if you tweet your email newsletter, you’ll also syndicate it to those sites.

A couple resources/examples on this:

Integrating AWeber, Twitter, Facebook:
http://easytechvideos.com/aweber-twitter-facebook/

Facebook Twitter App:
http://apps.facebook.com/twitter

MySpace Twittersync:
http://www.myspace.com/twittersync
Twittering Around With Twitter - Small Business Branding
October 27th, 2008 at 2:56 pm

[...] (you can read the story at Aweber here) [...]
Bill Henthorn
October 28th, 2008 at 2:47 am

Fantastic stuff. Keep up the great service!
AWeber Integrates Twitter Into Blog Broadcasts | eZinePress.com
October 28th, 2008 at 8:15 am

[...] AWeber Communications (Newtown,PA, USA) just announced that you can now use your Twitter and AWeber accounts together to expand the reach of your email. See their Blog post here: Twitter Your Email Newsletters [...]
Carrie Pierce
October 28th, 2008 at 10:58 am

Hi Guys,
Great info! This is exciting!
Spent this morning setting it all up and just wanted to thank you for the tip.
Can’t wait to use it with my next ezine broadcast!
Carol Bentley
October 28th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

I was really excited about this… then felt disappointment that blog broadcasts are not included. That’s my main connection with people at the moment.

Also - I agree about needing multiple twitter connections to allow for feeding from blogs for different lists.

Keeping fingers crossed that I soon be smiling again…

But aweber is still awesome - as demonstrated in your post that I included (with your permission) in my newly published book.
Angela Connor
October 29th, 2008 at 3:30 pm

This is an excellent idea. I use twitter to broadcast my blogs but I do it manually. Automation is always a plus. One thing to keep in mind though is there is a fine line between doing more "blurting" than "engaging" on Twitter. twitter is an excellent outpost but it’s also a great two-way communication tool.
Guy
October 29th, 2008 at 3:58 pm

I’m a bit late to the punch bowl.

Who drank it all!

Fortunately, in this case the late bird gets the worm too.

Thanks for the great information about Twitter. I’ve been wondering if their were any streamlined approaches for submitting information to their service. Now I don’t need to wonder any longer do I?

Thanks again
Debra Conrad
October 29th, 2008 at 8:43 pm

Have tried to use the new email newsletter to Twitter feature twice. I thought maybe last week was just a glitch but this week didn’t work either.

I may be dense but shouldn’t I see this under Twitter updates?
Justin Premick
October 30th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

Carol,

Blog Broadcast support will be coming shortly.

Debra,

We’ll be in touch shortly to help you.
Corrado
October 30th, 2008 at 1:11 pm

Is there a way to track the clicks received from Twitter, yet keep the results separate from email clicks ?

Thanks
links for 2008-10-30 < Chris Abraham
October 30th, 2008 at 4:37 pm

[...] Twitter Your Email Newsletters - Inbox Ideas: Email Marketing Tips by AWeber (tags: twitter real newsletter marketing internet ideas for email) [...]
Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)
November 5th, 2008 at 3:57 pm

Update:

Blog Broadcast support for the auto-Twitter feature has been released today.

Personalization tags that were previously appearing in some Twitters are now automatically removed.
Debra Conrad
November 5th, 2008 at 4:03 pm

Yeah! Now maybe the whole email to twitter thing will work for me with broadcast emails. I’m going to give it a try and will be sharing results.

Thanks Tom for letting us know.
AWeber-Twitter Integration Now Works With Blog Newsletters - Inbox Ideas: Email Marketing Tips by AWeber
November 6th, 2008 at 9:45 am

[...] a quick note to say that the Twitter your email newsletters tool now works for Blog Broadcasts, [...]
Nicole Simon
November 9th, 2008 at 7:41 am

That kind of feature is interesting and puts aweber back on the map for consideration for my newsletters - but ^just for the record, I will not be able to use the feature at all, for the simple reason that I do not have that ‘one’ account everything goes to.

rather than going through the hoops each time to change passwords I would not use it at all, and I assume most other people also dont. meaning - your metrics of people to use it or not is therefor off.

i understand why it may be complicated to run this with several accounts tied in, but it would be worth the while.
Debra Conrad
November 10th, 2008 at 11:51 am

Woot! It worked! I can see the Update in Twitter. Of course eyeballs would have to be watching my thread on twitter to see it.

This is what it will do for your business!

If you use a variety of ways to "tweet" new blog posts - this is just one more way to let your twitter followers get to know what you are and your business is about.

If the "tweet" includes a link to an article on your blog - then the reader will also be exposed to your newsletter sign up page.

This is giving those that follow you on twitter a "sneak peek" at what your subscribers get in their email box if they choose to sign up.

So many ways to use this little add on feature…

Thanks again Aweber… you are always thinking!
Colleen Lilly
November 11th, 2008 at 11:45 pm

Super idea to link twitter! Love it and no doubt it will pay dividends! Thanks for all your hard work.
Aweber and Twitter Head on Collission » Jeff Wellman’s Layoff Your Boss Marketing
November 12th, 2008 at 6:49 pm

[...] http://www.aweber.com/blog/new-features/twitter-email-newsletters.htm [...]
B
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:09 am

Hi guys,

I like your article & it’s something we’ll start to do here!

We also Facebook our email newsletter by adding it as a note to our Bluewire Media page & then notifying fans too. Also posting it to my personal profile is a good way for it to connect to a larger audience.
Aweber Integrates Twitter Into Their Service : Work at Home with Gobala Krishnan
December 30th, 2008 at 10:40 pm

[...] to the Aweber blog: Today, we’re happy to announce that you can now use your Twitter and AWeber accounts together [...]