For years, we’ve been using email auto responder services like Aweber to communicate to readers and potential customers. One of the more popular techniques used is the blog announcement – an automated email that goes out every time you create a post. This technique keeps your readers engaged and encourages them to come back to your blog often.
Aweber has a feature that monitors the feed from your blog and when it sees a post – it triggers a pre-formatted email to your list. It’s not hard to configure and is very reliable. But if you are using your auto responder service primarily to send out blog announcements, you are paying for a service that you can get for free – using FeedBurner.
FeedBurner is a free blogger service that takes your rss feed and packages it into many innovative delivery options. If you are new to FeedBurner, it takes a bit to get the hang of what they are really offering. The best way to learn is to simply create an account and start playing with it. It’s free – and the service has been recently acquired by Google.
Burn a feed and sign up for the email service – you’ll get simple code to put on your site that allows readers to opt-in to an email version of your blog – complete with attractive layouts, links, etc. It’s totally double opt-in, and works flawlessly.
Here is what the opt-in form looks like:
Or, include a simple opt-in link: Subscribe to Data SystemsPlus by Email. Feel free to opt in to my blog list!
FeedBurner email is the way to go for blog announcement lists – it’s free, professional – looking and readers know they are not giving their email to be spammed with the one-click unsubscribe.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
This definitely looks like what I’m looking for. Great site you’ve got here – just surprised there aren’t more posts. Good information.
Thank You.
Thanks for your kind comment! We relaunched this site this past month, and I’m working on more content that I believe will be valuable. Thanks again.
Carl
That is a beautiful dog, but you probably already knew that.
Thanks, Suzanne – we have 5 of them, and they really keep us company.
Thanks Carl,
I’ve been using Aweber for years to deliver email updates. Although a long time member of Feedburner, I never knew that it would handle email delivery for blog updates.
Of interest is the total lake of use for the RSS function by the web public. An RSS feed was supposed to give the reader an automatic way to keep up on the latest blog posts. I know of almost nobody that actually uses a RSS aggregator.