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Accessible email marketing

An article about my choice of email marketing service and how to make subscription forms valid and accessible.

As a business owner of course you want to ensure your website is accessible. However, that can seem like an irrelevance if your business is failing because you can't get any new customers - or you can't keep the customers you have.

In running my own business I realise that if I want to survive I need to keep in touch with my clients and that I need to use the right tools to do that. One of those tools is email. Despite the issues of spam and the problems of being overwhelmed by the amount of email we get every day - we can't ignore email as one of the best and cheapest ways to stay in touch.

Email marketing services

To do this, over the years I've used various mailing list applications - and even built my own (which is still a part of my accessible content management system) - but I've come to realise that to do it right and to do it efficiently I needed to sign up for a service that does more than just allow me to send a list of people an email.

In particular, I've become interested in systems that allow me to build a relationship with clients by sending out a pre-determined set of emails. For example, I have a mailing list of people who receive my weekly web accessibility tip. The first time I sent out my tips (many years ago) I did it manually by writing each tip just before sending it to my list of subscribers.

Time for email automation

Now I realise that that was a very inefficient way to do it, and that I need to automate the process - particularly as I now have a large store of ready-made tips to send out. Programs that can automatically send out a pre-written set of emails are called 'Autoresponders'. I was looking for an email marketing service that would allow me to set up Autoresponders.

I spent some time researching various mailing list services - and asked around to find out what other people are using - and found that there are quite a few very good mailing lists services available. There are plenty to choose from, a plethora of services to suit every budget.

My 'research' went on for months - because I'm one of these people who finds it difficult to spend money - no matter how many people tell me that marketing is an investment not a cost. However - I decided to sign up for Aweber as my provider of choice - because it was cheap and it looked as if it offered what I was after (in particular an autoresponder service). So far I've been very happy with the service they have offered. To be honest I've been surprised how well it has worked, and how helpful they have been with their support.

Mailing lists services and web standards

The one issue I've had with all the mailing lists services I've looked at, including Aweber, is that none of them appear to be particularly aware of web standards or web accessibility. For me this means that each time I set up a subscription form I need to alter the code to ensure that my page validates - or I need to make a decision about whether I can live with an invalid page - in order to take advantage of a particular feature.

Most of the changes I've needed to make however have been fairly easy to do. I'll document these in short articles on this site - in the hope that others find my experience helpful.

Having become an Aweber customer and been impressed with their service I have taken the next step and become an affiliate, meaning I'm happy to promote Aweber and pass customers to them via my own website. The form below for example provides a free demo of their service. This form is my first example of how to take their default form and convert it so that it validates to XHTML 1.

• How to convert the Aweber demo form to standard XHTML 1.

Aweber blog