Email Lists for Blogs

I’ve been wanting to talk about this for a while…

It’s a pretty intense topic, with multiple variables so I’ve been holding off. Still I wonder if today is the best day to introduce the topic, with Christmas so close all of our minds are on the season (and not necessarily on making changes to our online businesses).

But this note is of the utmost importance for your business. Why? Well if you’ve studied any course of marketing you’ve likely heard it a million times “The Money Is In The List”.

Of course this isn’t ALL about making money online.

It’s:

• part ‘staying connected with your readers’,
• part ‘website promotion’,
• part ‘keep them coming back’.

How can you accomplish this easily, affordably, and effectively? I’ve tried a number of ways but in the last few weeks I’ve been experimenting on a few other sites (blogs) using my auto-responder account.

Loyal readers can sign up on my blog to receive automatic update notices…

I used to do this with a WordPress plugin (Subscribe2) but I wasn’t really comfortable with the plugin. I always worried about maxxing out my numbers, the database growing too large for me to consistently backup and manage, staying in canSPAM compliance, and other concerns.

The subscription rate for this Marketing Help blog is growing daily. There’s a subscribe box in the right column (on every page) and every three days when you close this blog’s window you’ll notice a pop-up asking in a much more noticable fashion if you’d like to stay in touch. Subscribers sign up, receive a verified opt-in email (that keeps me in compliance), and they’re instantly notified whenever I post a new article here.

The nice part is that not much else is required on my part.

I simply make my post to my blog and my autoresponder account over at Aweber handles the rest. Their system scans this blog’s RSS Feed (every WordPress install has them) and when it finds an update it adds the message to my Broadcast message folder. When I’m ready to send the message out I hit the Queue Now button. (This type of control is far superior to me than using the plugin because sometimes I’ll write 2-3 messages per day on a blog – sometimes I don’t write for weeks) using Queue Now I am in control of when the update is sent out.

How to Set Up A Blog Email Notification List

This is really easy.

1. Login to your auto-responder account.
2. Start a new list (just for your blog subscribers) or select an existing list you want to add blog update notifications to (I don’t suggest this unless you’ve notified your list that you’ll be sending them blog post updates first).
3. Click on the Messages tab.
4. You’ll then see a link to the Feed Broadcaster.
5. Within the Feed Broadcaster page you simply enter in your blog’s RSS feed url (you’ve got one if you’ve got a blog – you might just have to hunt around to find it).

Note: If you’re hosting on blogspot make sure you’re publishing a site feed (in your blog’s control panel click “Settings” then “Site Feed” then ensure the Publish Site Feed option is set to Yes, and you’ll find the Site Feed URL displayed directly below.

Feed Broadcaster is compatible with the following:

1. RSS 0.9 through RSS 1.0
2. RSS 1.0′s modules
3. RSS 2.0
4. Atom

You can make some modifications in how the post is worded (title of the email, date posted, your signature file, etc.) but that’s really all there is to it.

Now every time you post an article to your blog, Aweber will find it and add it to the Broadcast section of your account. When you’re ready to send it out, it’s just one click away!

Laura Childs
More detailed information here: Automated Messages to Your Blog Readers

P.S.: Next I’m going to talk about another way to promote your website in the search engines and across multiple websites using that same auto-responder account, one click to set up, and the messages you’re already sending to subscriber’s anyway.

This is a backwards-compatible technique that:

1. creates a new RSS Feed
2. that you won’t even have to promote
3. AND you’re going to see your content popping up all over the web.

Which will:

• send traffic and,
• search engine positioning goodness,

your way within days (yes, DAYS! with my testing and tracking).

Stay tuned!

P.P.S: The subscribe2 plugin text wasn’t too ‘user-friendly’ and didn’t solicit many visitors, it always read something like the message below. Using my autoresponder account my readers are given a much more descriptive and enticing email to click through to (if you want to see the new and improved messaging, then you should sign up! You can unsubscribe at any time.)

————

You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted.

A new post , ‘Email Lists for Blogs’

You may view the latest post at

http://www.smartzville.com/marketing-help/?p=124

See you on the site!

Laura Childs
laura@smartzville.com

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This entry was posted on Saturday, December 17th, 2005 at 10:43 am and is filed under Making Money with Blogs, Using RSS Feeds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.