PayPal Autoresponder and Follow Up Integration

By December 6, 2006

Update: PayPal has changed their interface, making this article outdated. For up to date instructions, visit the PayPal Integration Article in our Knowledge Base.

[This is the first of a series of integration articles that we will be publishing to the blog under the Articles and Tips category – stay tuned for more!]


Following up with customers after they purchase is a critical part of the sales process. This communication helps foster trust and loyalty from people who have already purchased from you.

The Paypal email parser has been developed to provide AWeber users with an automated way to add customers to their AWeber account after they purchase.

This can be used to:

  • Send post purchase email to customers
  • Send out purchased information products automatically
  • Up-sell your customers using email
  • Send customer newsletters, etc

Step by step instructions for integrating AWeber with Paypal

The instructions below will walk you through setting up your PayPal account to add subscribers to your AWeber account as they purchase from you.

A. Add Your AWeber Autoresponder Email Address To Your PayPal Account

When you add an email address to your PayPal account, they require that you confirm it’s a real address where you can receive messages.

    1. Login to your Paypal account: http://www.paypal.com
    2. Click on Profile

PayPal Profile Link

    1. Under Account Information click on Email

PayPal Email Link

    1. Click on the Add button
    2. Insert your AWeber email address and click Save

PayPal Confirm Email Sent

    1. Login to your AWeber account https://www.aweber.com/login.htm
    2. Click on the Leads tab at the top of the page

AWeber Leads Tab

    1. Click on Display in the middle of the page to display current subscribers. They will appear at the bottom of the page

AWeber Display Button

    1. Find the email address: service@paypal.com

Display of Leads in AWeber

    1. Click on the service@paypal.com email address. This will take you to the detailed entry for that address.
    2. Next to the “Verification Email” title, click the link that reads “Click to See”

AWeber Click To See Link

    1. In this email find the confirmation link sent by Paypal

Confirmation link

  1. Copy this link and paste it into Notepad or another plain text editing program. The link needs to be corrected before you go to it to confirm your address.
  2. Make the following changes to the link:
  • The link runs onto two lines. Remove the break so that it is all on one line
  • After the first two = signs the next two characters are 3D. Remove them from the link

The end of the link should be your autoresponders address (in this case, paypal-aweber@aweber.com) Replace any characters that don’t belong with the appropriate ones so that your autoresponder address is shown (including the @ and . symbols) at the end of the link. So in this case, instead of

https://www.paypal.com/us/ece/cn=3D15102124422463880063&em=3Dpaypal%2dawebe=r%40aweber%2ecom

the correct link is:

https://www.paypal.com/us/ece/cn=15102124422463880063&em=paypal-aweber@aweber.com

  1. Now, paste the link into your browser
  2. Enter your Paypal password on this page and click Confirm

Confirm Password In PayPal

You have now added your autoresponder address to your PayPal account.

B. Turn on the PayPal Email Parser

Login to your AWeber account, click on List Settings then Email Parser

Email Parser Link

Look for the rule titled Payment Processor: Paypal Orders, click the check box under the “Active?” column and click Activate/Deactivate

PayPal Parser

C. Create PayPal “Buy Now” Button

Now, create a “Buy Now” button in your PayPal account, and tell it to send the payment notification email to your autoresponder.

    1. In your PayPal account, click “Merchant Services”

PayPal Merchant Services Link

    1. Scroll to the end of the page and click “Buy Now Buttons”

PayPal Buy Now Buttons Link

    1. Click the “Get Started!” link on the left side of the page.
    2. Fill out your product information and scroll to the end of the page.
    3. At the end of the page, click the “Add More Options” button

PayPal Add More Options Link

    1. On the next page, scroll to the section titled “Choose an email address to receive payment (optional)”
    2. Select your autoresponder email address from the dropdown menu and click “Create Button Now”

PayPal Choose Email Address Link

    1. Now, copy the HTML for your Buy Now button, edit your website and place the button onto the appropriate page/s

Copying the button HTML in PayPal

Now, when your customers click on that Buy Now button and purchase your product, they will be added to your AWeber list!

Need Help?

If you have any questions about integrating PayPal and AWeber, or anything else about your account, please contact our customer support team. We have real, live people ready to assist you.

Hours:
Monday – Friday, 7AM – 7PM Eastern time
Saturday, 9AM – 5PM Eastern time

Phone:
Toll Free: 1-800-531-5065 or +1 215-322-2408

Email:
help@aweber.com
https://www.aweber.com/contact-us.htm

Live Text Chat:
Anywhere on the AWeber site – just click the “Live Support” icon!

AWeber Also Integrates With

Clickbank
PayDotCom
1ShoppingCart
2Checkout
StormPay

Keep reading:

Web Analytics 101: Website Tracking for Beginners
[Quiz] What's Your Email Writing Style?
How to Drive Website Traffic and Convert Visitors into Subscribers

Posted By

Justin Premick

Former Director of Educational Products

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82 Comments

  1. Outlook, SharePoint, and Business Technology - Business Productivity Techniques, Tools, and Ideas » Selling Digital Products using PayPal and Aweber

    10/5/2007 5:44 pm

    […] The Aweber site offers a How-To article on this very topic at https://www.aweber.com/blog/articles-tips/paypal-autoresponder-and-follow-up-integration.htm […]

  2. Matunda Pero

    12/30/2007 12:24 pm

    I get started my online business on April 2006. And all the successful marketers that I met out there have given me the
    same advice about Aweber’s follow up hight quality service.

    And once I have my first affiliate website setup since yesterday
    from Cody Moya, I didn’t hesitate anymore to open my Aweber’s account
    even if I do not have much money now to do that. Aweber is the quality
    of follow up I want and the best emails deliverability.

    Thanks to Aweber’s Staff,

  3. Lee

    3/3/2008 5:02 am

    "The problem I have found is that if the customer does not click the sign up link in the Aweber email then I don’t get to find out about the payment."

    Is there a solution to this? I didnt know about a payment until the buyer clicked the confirmation link a week later! How can we can get confirmation of payments even if the buyer doesnt click the confirmation link from aweber?

  4. Scott

    3/21/2008 8:09 pm

    I’m having the same maximum 8 email problem also.

    Here’s a thought…

    Is there a way to append a custom field when a person orders.

    For instance, I would like to put all my entry level customers into the same list and just have a custom field for "product ID", When the person purchases, the field would be appended with a product code (i.e. DF for Dog Food). Then if the customer purchases a different product the field would be appended with the new code while still leaving in the old code. For instance if they bought a Dog Collar (DC) then the field would not show "DF DC".

    So can a custom field be appended to?

  5. Justin Premick

    3/24/2008 7:42 am

    Hi Scott,

    Editing/appending data to existing subscribers in that way is not possible at this time (you can, however, update subscriber records through the "Leads" page of the control panel).

  6. Michael Kellam

    4/17/2008 2:03 pm

    We’d like to implement the Paypal-Aweber autoresponder, but there’s one thing that’s still unclear to me after reading the above posts.

    How can we receive the actual Paypal orders if the customer does not verify or does not verify in a timely manner? We would really like to implement this feature, but we don’t want to alienate customers who don’t receive their orders because we don’t receive the order confirmation from Paypal.

    Thanks!

  7. Paul

    4/16/2009 3:48 am

    Once someone has subscribed via Paypal and I manually put their address on my list, is there a time limiter on the list which automatically removes them once their subscription has ended via paypal, but not intergrated?

    Thanks.

  8. Justin Premick

    4/16/2009 9:15 am

    Paul,

    This is designed to add buyers making single/one-time purchases through PayPal, rather than for recurring subscriptions. It will not remove someone when they terminate a PayPal subscription.

  9. bridgette

    4/25/2009 12:01 am

    Hi Justin,

    One question here.. when someone terminates a PayPal subscription, an email is sent to the associated PayPal email correct (xxx@weber.com). Will this email show up in the subscriber list..how would one know if a custom cancelled their PayPal subscription? I understand that we have to manually remove them from the subscription list afterwards, however I am wondering if/how we are notified that they have cancelled.

  10. Marc Kline

    4/29/2009 9:49 am

    @Bridgette,

    Referring back to Justin’s recent comment above, this integration works best for product purchases, rather than subscriptions.

    The email would not show up in the account, since emailing the list name only adds or removes subscriber – it isn’t used as a reliable means of communication with subscribers or services.

  11. Selling Digital Products using PayPal and Aweber

    5/14/2009 3:05 pm

    […] The Aweber site offers a How-To article on this very topic at https://www.aweber.com/blog/articles-tips/paypal-autoresponder-and-follow-up-integration.htm […]

  12. Wayne

    6/11/2009 6:52 pm

    "Editing/appending data to existing subscribers in that way is not possible at this time."

    Any ETA on when it will be?

  13. Jonathan

    7/9/2009 11:25 am

    Greetings,

    I have canceled Paypal subscriptions to find that it also automatically deleted me from the aweber email list that was delivering the product.

    How can I set up my Paypal/aweber to do the same? It would be a lot easier than having to manually unsubscribe members from my Aweber list after they cancel the Paypal subscription.

    Thanks,

    J

  14. Andrew

    9/15/2009 10:24 am

    Hey, I have been trying to set this up.

    My customers will be buying an information product from my website. Would this be a way to send them to a download link through an aweber list after they pay me through paypal?

    My other thing I wanted ask is, when I am creating a buy it now button I do not have the option "add more options." At the bottom of the page all I see is the "create button" option.

    I am positive I am in the right place because I am creating a buy it now button, is this because I have to upgrade my paypal?

    Thanks

  15. Justin Premick

    9/16/2009 10:05 am

    Andrew,

    You could do that, yes.

    As far as what you’re seeing in PayPal, upgrading, etc – I don’t believe you have to upgrade anything (I’ve never heard of anything like that, and we didn’t upgrade anything in our PayPal account when we documented how to integrate).

    PayPal’s interface may change over time – this blog post is originally from 2006, but we also have a video on PayPal integration in our Knowledge Base which we try to keep up-to-date with any changes they make.

  16. Simi Surin

    11/13/2009 5:11 am

    This is great. And the real icing is the video which is quite informative and detailed. Thank you.

  17. Tyler

    2/8/2010 2:54 am

    When I look at the pic, I just realize how much aweber has changed. How time has passed by??? Clickbank, Aweber and all these super businesses have changed and seen a lot during the years.

  18. Angela

    3/7/2010 10:19 pm

    Justin can you please answer Lee and Michael’s question above – I need to know if there is a way to receive notification of payment if the customer doesn’t confirm their email (if they miss it, etc).

  19. Angela

    3/7/2010 10:22 pm

    Also another question – if the persons Paypal name is not their actual name (like a company name, husbands account etc) then the name that they get signed up on Aweber with is totally wrong. Which means you can’t use their ‘firstname fix’ in an email.

    Is there a way to have a custom field in Paypal passed through into Aweber for the signup?

  20. Don

    3/19/2010 2:27 pm

    Anyone know a way that you can remove the subscriber automatically when they cancel?

  21. Tamara

    5/17/2010 8:36 pm

    Does anyone know if AWeber can be used to automatically distribute unique activation codes to customers after they have made a purchase? Each activation code would be unique to each purchase. Thanks

  22. Justin Premick

    5/20/2010 10:03 am

    Tamara,

    Depending on how that information is generated, it may be possible. Please contact us to discuss in detail.

  23. Joe

    11/1/2010 4:18 am

    I really want to switch to aweber from another popular auto responder service. The opt-in forms are worth the price all together.

  24. Kate

    6/2/2011 5:28 am

    So is this saying that I change my primary paypal email address to an Aweber address, or am I supposed to add an additional one but not make it the primary email?

  25. Amanda Gagnon

    6/2/2011 8:06 am

    Kate ~ Yes, you need to change that primary address to your listname@aweber.com

  26. ascend

    7/27/2011 2:52 pm

    How come you integrate with PayPal but you do not accept PayPal payment for your services?

  27. Justin Premick

    7/28/2011 10:28 am

    We don’t accept PayPal for payment of AWeber accounts for a number of reasons.

    That said, if you want to use them to collect payment from your customers, we’re happy to help you get those customers onto your email list, and so have integrated the two services as noted in this article.

  28. Summer Bock

    3/16/2012 2:41 am

    When I log into Aweber, none of my information is laid out like in the picture on above. I don’t have a “LEADS” or “EMAIL PARSER” header anywhere in my account. Very confusing…

  29. Rebekah Henson

    3/16/2012 8:47 am

    Hi Summer,

    This article is from 2006 and features screenshots of our old interface, which has undergone a significant facelift since then. 😉

    We now have a PayPal app you can integrate with your AWeber account. You can find current instructions for setting that up here: https://www.aweber.com/faq/questions/234

  30. singh

    4/20/2012 12:16 pm

    I am using paypal from long time but do not have enough knowledge to handle autoresponders. Thanks for the complete guide it helps me lots.

  31. Jordy

    9/27/2013 9:40 pm

    This article is useless now that the new Paypal parser integration is in effect.

    I want to know how to check the new Paypal parser to see if it is actually delivering the email when someone makes a purchase.

    How can I do this without buying my own product?

  32. Rachel Acquaviva

    9/30/2013 10:24 am

    Hi Jordy,

    For the most updated information regarding integrating PayPal with your AWeber account, please see this page.

    You can search subscribers to see which ones have come through PayPal. Just search for the add method called “API”, and you will be able to see everyone who received a confirmation message (whether they have confirmed or not). To see who has confirmed, you can add that parameter to your search.

    If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to contact our team!