But if you want your Aweber list to be single-opt-in, then you can use the Aweber webform (instead of DAP sign-up form) and follow the steps below to integrate DAP with Aweber.

1. Go to DAP admin panel -> manage products page.

2. Note down the product Id of the product to which you want to signup the users.

3. There is a file called dap-aweber.php in your /dap folder. Make a copy of that file and call it dap-aweber-<productId>.php. Replace <productId> with the product Id you noted in step 2.
If the productId = 2, then you will end up with a file called dap-aweber-2.php.

4. Open this file (dap-aweber-2.php), and change this line:
$default_product_id = 1; //Change this to any product id from DAP

So, in this example, change it to:
$default_product_id = 2; //Change this to any product id from DAP

Upload this file back to /dap folder on your site.

3. Now login to AWeber, select your single-opt-in list in AWeber -> Webform -> click on ‘Go to Step 2′ towards the bottom of the page.

http://screencast.com/t/ZTE0MDhhYTY

Click on the thankyou page dropdown and select ‘custom page’.
Set the thank you Page URL to http://<yoursite.com>/dap/dap-aweber-<productId>.php
Replace <yoursite.com> with the name of your site. Replace <productId> with the product Id you noted in step 2.

4. Use the Aweber web form for signing up customers (instead of dap direct signup form).

That’s it.

Everytime a users signs up via the aweber web form to your site, they will automatically be added to DAP.

You can configure the welcome/thankyou message in DAP to send out the dap login id and password
OR
You can leave the welcome/thankyou message in DAP empty. Configure DAP to generate a default password (DAP Admin -> Setup -> config -> Advanced) as shown in the screencast below and set up an autoresponder in Aweber so when the users signup via the Aweber form, they can receive their dap id/password details via Aweber directly.

http://screencast.com/t/MjY0NGI3

DAP is not an email service (like, say, Aweber).

DAP is just a script – a tool, like Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird – that simply sends out email using your web host’s email server.

It is your web host’s mail server that actually sends out the email to the recipient. So once DAP sends out the email, it has no control over what happens next.

It’s just like when you put your (regular mail) letter in the mailbox (post box). It is then up to the Postal Service to actually pick up your letter, and deliver to the destination address.

So if the emails that DAP sends out don’t get delivered to your recipients, there could be more than one reason for that.

Server Blacklisting

If your inexpensive (read as cheap shared web host is hosting a large number of sites on one server, and one of them knowingly sends out spam (or mistakenly gets flagged for spam), that will put the email deliverability of every web site on that server in jeopardy, because your site now shares the same IP address as that of an “alleged” spammer.

So your emails get sent to junk/spam folder by Gmail and Yahoo. Or worse, they just totally disappear into the ether.

Hourly Email-Sending Limits

Almost all shared hosts have hourly email sending limits. For example, DreamHost has an outgoing limit of 300 emails per hour. Which means, a total of only 300 emails can be sent out per hour through any web site hosted on DreamHost. All of the following count towards the 300 limit:

• Emails sent by any scripts on your site – like DAP
• Your WordPress blog notification emails
• Your WordPress admin emails,
• WP forgot password emails,
• WP comment notification emails,
• Forum notification emails,
• Forum emails sent to each other by your users,
• Forum-software Admin notification emails,
• Support software user and admin notification emails
• Tell-a-friend emails
• Viral-inviter type emails
• Emails sent through Outlook or Thunderbird where you have set the outgoing SMTP server to be your web site’s SMTP server
• Emails sent by others using the same SMTP server to send out emails-  like your business partners, employees, etc
• DAP User welcome emails, Payment notification emails, Forgot password emails, Autoresponder emails, Broadcast emails, etc

So do you see how quickly you can go over that hourly limit of 300 emails per hour?

But here comes the worst part

Once you go over that limit, any emails that are actually sent by you or the scripts running on your site, will not actually result in any kind of error. The mail server will respond by saying that the email(s) has been sent successfully, but in reality, on the backend, it quietly “snuffs out” the email. Which means, it doesn’t go anywhere – just gets sent to a “blackhole”. So you keep thinking that you sent out the email. DAP keeps thinking it has sent out the email. But in reality, the emails never actually get sent.

This is the same as you actually putting your letter into the mailbox at the Post Office. But then, imagine this: The postal worker who comes to pick up your mail, quietly goes to the back of the post office and dumps it all into one giant trash can, and destroys all of the mail. So you’re thinking you actually mailed out that important check to pay your utility bill. But the utility company never gets your check, and they slam you with a late fee.

Possible Solutions

1) DAP + Aweber (most expensive, most reliable)

2) DAP + 3rd party SMTP service provider (Fusemail.com or SMTP.com) (less expensive than Aweber, slightly less reliable too)

3) DAP + Good web host (cheapest, can have mixed results – all depends on your host).

You could always use DAP and external SMTP service provider like Fusemail.com or SMTP.com to send out bulk mail through DAP while totally bypassing your web host’s email system. This is probably the next best thing to using a service like Aweber.

And if you can’t afford even that, then simply use DAP on a good web host. We ourselves use just DAP and Dreamhost’s email servers to send out emails to all of our users.

And DAP also has built-in job queues to schedule outgoing emails while also making sure that you don’t exceed your web host’s hourly email sending limits (dreamhost’s limit is 300 emails/hour, I think). We use multiple SMTP servers from our own other web sites, all combined to be able to send a few thousand emails per hour.

But even with a lot of planning, it is easy to go over the hourly limit.

So the next time you see in your Job Queue that emails were sent out successfully, but the recipient never received it, here are some things to check:

1) It landed in your recipient’s junk/spam folder. Ask them to whitelist or add your email address to their contacts list.

2) You have overshot the limit, so you would have to actually send out the email again.

3) Try to send out broadcasts during a low-traffic time – say like later in the night – when you’re not actively sending out emails, and using up precious email counts from that hourly quota.

1. Remove the “ThankYou-Email Subject” and “ThankYou-Email Body” from the Product into which you wish to import users. Save it in a text file for later, and save the Product.

2. Go ahead and do the bulk-add of users from “Users > Add > Bulk-Add Multiple Users To A Product”.

3. Wait for the DAP Hourly Cron to run and finish importing all users. Since the “ThankYou-Email Subject” and “ThankYou-Email Body” of the Product is empty at the time of import, DAP won’t send out those emails.

4. Once all the users have been imported, put back the “ThankYou-Email Subject” and “ThankYou-Email Body” text content, and save the Product.

OPTIONAL

5. At a later point, if you want, you can send out an Autoresponder email or a Broadcast email with the merge codes for the email and password, if you want the newly imported users to get their passwords.

%%FIRST_NAME%%

This will be replaced by the first-name of the user.

%%LAST_NAME%%

This will be replaced by the first-name of the user.

%%EMAIL%%

This will be replaced by the email id of the user.

%%PASSWORD%%

This will be replaced by the password of the user.

%%SITE_NAME%%

This will be replaced by whatever text you have entered in “Setup > Config > Basic > Site Name” in your DAP Dashboard.

%%ADMIN_NAME%%

This will be replaced by whatever text you have entered in “Setup > Config > Basic > Admin Name” in your DAP Dashboard.

%%ADMIN_EMAIL%%

This will be replaced by whatever text you have entered in “Setup > Config > Basic > Admin Email” in your DAP Dashboard.

%%AFF_LINK%%

This will be replaced by the actual affiliate link of the member (Eg., http://yoursite.com/dap/a/?a=1234)

%%SITE_URL_DAP%%

Replaced by your actual web site url (Eg., http://yoursite.com)

%%UNSUB_LINK%%

This is replaced by a 1-click Unsubscribe link that you can add to the bottom of your outgoing broadcast and autoresponder emails.

We often get asked why use Aweber (or other third-party list service) when DAP itself is an autoresponder.

So here’s a brief overview of when and why it makes sense to use DAP or Aweber.

Why Aweber

DAP is not an email service like Aweber.

DAP is just a tool – like Outlook or Thunderbird – that simply sends out email using your web host’s email server.

If your inexpensive shared web host is hosting a large number of sites on one server, and one of them sends out spam (or mistakenly gets flagged for spam), that will put the email deliverability of every web site on that servver, in jeopardy, because your site now shares the same IP address as that of an “alleged” spammer.

So your emails get sent to junk/spam folder by Gmail and Yahoo. Or worse, they just totally disappear into the ether.

Your customers never get your email. Your campaign suffers. Your conversion plunges.

This won’t happen with Aweber.

Aweber (and other premier email service providers) have staff on hand, spend a lot of time, money and resources dealing with regular ISP’s (like AOL and SBC) to make sure their lists – and their reputation – remain clean.

Which is probably why they shut down large lists without much of a warning to you, and do other similar crazy stuff. I guess it works for them – and the other Aweber users, because when you send out an email through your Aweber list, it almost always gets there in your recipient’s inbox.

Which is very cool. Which is why they also charge so much for their service.

But if you can’t afford their high fees, then you can of course use DAP’s built-in email autoresponder, whose deliverability is only as good as your host’s spam reputation

Of course, you can always use DAP and external SMTP service provider like Fusemail.com or SMTP.com to send out bulk mail through DAP while totally bypassing your web host’s email system. This is probably the next best thing to using Aweber only.

And if you can’t afford even that, then simply use DAP on a good web host. We ourselves use just DAP and Dreamhost’s email servers to send out emails to all of our users. And DAP also has built-in job queues to schedule outgoing emails while also making sure that you don’t exceed your web host’s hourly email sending limits (dreamhost’s limit is 300 emails/hour, I think). We use multiple SMTP servers from our own other web sites, all combined to be able to send a few thousand emails per hour.

So given a choice, here are your email options in the exact order listed.

1) DAP + Aweber: Match made in heaven

2) DAP + 3rd Party List Services: 2nd best option

3) DAP + Your Web Host: Very usable and workable option as long as you are hosting with a decent host.

Feel free to comment below if you have any questions.

1. Login to your account at Aweber.com and from the drop-down, pick the list for which you want to add DAP users to (see Image 1. below)

Image 1:

2. Click on “My Lists” and within that, select “Email Parser” (see Image 1 above)

3. On the Email Parsers page, check the check-box next to the parser named “DigitalAccessPass.com” (see Image 1 above)

You will then see something like this.

That’s it for the Email Parser activation at Aweber. Just a couple of more things to be done within your DAP Admin Dashboard.

4. Log in to your DAP Admin Dashboard and pick the product (whose members you wish to add automatically to your Aweber list from step 1 above)

5. If your Aweber list, is called “dap_fans”, then your Aweber “list email id” is “dap_fans@aweber.com”. Just add this Aweber list email id to the “3rd Party Notification” field of the above product, and save.

That’s it!

How This Works

So let’s say you picked the list “dap_fans” in your Aweber account, and the DAP Product “Example Subscription Product” (as shown in the screenshots above).

So once you add “dap_fans@aweber.com” to the product’s “3rd Party Notification Email Ids” field and save it, every time someone gets access to the “Example Subscription Product” product (regardless of whether they buy it, or you give them access on the backend), an email is sent out to the email id dap_fans@aweber.com , which looks like this:

From: Joe Subscriber <joe@subscriber.com>

Subject: New User Signup (3rd Party Notification)

Body:
Name: Joe Subscriber
Email: Joe@Subscriber.com
Product: Example Subscription Product

And because you have already activated the DigitalAccessPass.com parser in your “dap_fans” list, Aweber automatically adds “Joe Subscriber” with the email id (Joe@Subscriber.com) to your dap_fans list. And the parser has been written in such a way, that the product name will be used as your “Ad Tracking” field for the subscriber. So you will be able to group them and run reports on them in your Aweber account.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: If I integrate DAP with Aweber and someone signs up to my membership site and then later on cancels or stops paying, can DAP automatically remove people from Aweber?

A: Short answer: No. Aweber doesn’t have a “Remove” parser, only an “Add” parser. So if someone who DAP automatically added to your Aweber list when they purchased a product, cancels or asks for a refund, you will have to manually remove them from the Aweber list. But wait, this may not be such a bad thing after all.

ExtraTip: As soon as someone cancels their subscription (or just doesn’t pay, or their credit card is declined), then their membership account in DAP automatically expires. Which means they can no longer access any content (unless you have specifically set DAP Config to deliberately give ex-members access to content that they paid for previously when they were a member).

So that means, their access in DAP has expired, but they are still on your Aweber list.

This may not be bad, because if you keep sending them emails (through Aweber) about new content and new videos and new stuff you are adding to your membership site even after they’ve cancelled, when they come back to your site through the link in your email, they won’t be able to access the actual content.

So it’s a great way of continuing to keep even ex-members curious and coming back to the site, only to be presented with a “Sorry, you don’t have access to this”, which may be a great incentive for them to come back and join your web site.

Of course, for this to work, you must put all the key content on your web site, and use the emails just to get them curious about the content, and eventually bring them back to the site to deliver the content. However, if you are going to send out all the good stuff in your emails (which doesn’t make sense anyway) then this may be an issue for you.

Q) Will DAP add only paid customers to Aweber? Or both Paid and Free members?

The link is really between the DAP Product and your Aweber List. So regardless of who gets access to that product – for free, by paying, or admin added – they will automatically be added to your Aweber list. So if you don’t want your free members to be added to your Aweber list, then keep your “Free” products and your “Paid’ products separate, and don’t set up this integration for the Free products.

Feel free to ask your questions below.

- Ravi Jayagopal

First Name: Veena
Last Name: Prashanth
Email: veena@digitalaccesspass.com
Product: Digital Access Pass with WP LiveLinks