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Offering Email Subscriptions
Originally Posted on A Bloggy Mom
Take a look at the blogosphere and you will see that many blogs rely exclusively on RSS syndication to keep their readers up to date. While I do believe that RSS is a corner stone of online publishing, I also think that offering email subscriptions can be very beneficial for a blog, and here are the reasons:
{1} Email subscriptions can increase the number of subscribers to your blog: The blogs that offer email subscription usually have from 5% to 15% of their readers getting updates via email. This may not sound impressive for small blogs (if you have 100 RSS subscribers you will probably get only 5 or 10 more readers by offering email subscription), but it will certainly make a difference once your blog starts to grow.
{2} Not everyone is familiar with RSS: if you are already publishing your blog it is very likely that you find new technologies such as RSS trivial, but you must bear in mind that the vast majority of the population is not so tech-savvy. There are studies, in fact, confirming that only 3% of adults and 6% of teens use RSS readers. Email subscriptions come as a natural way to fill this gap.
{3} Email subscription gives you an opportunity to interact with readers: people getting your feed through RSS do not reveal anything about themselves (except what kind of reader they are using). Email subscribers, on the other hand, must leave a very valuable asset on your hand: their email! Now, while you should treat this information with privacy (i.e. affiliate offers and the like) there are certain situations where having emails from your regular readers can be useful. You could, for instance, send them a quick survey about what topics they would like to read about or what design they prefer for your blog.
Here is a list of Email subscription providers:
* Feedburner
* Feedblitz
Take a look at the blogosphere and you will see that many blogs rely exclusively on RSS syndication to keep their readers up to date. While I do believe that RSS is a corner stone of online publishing, I also think that offering email subscriptions can be very beneficial for a blog, and here are the reasons:
{1} Email subscriptions can increase the number of subscribers to your blog: The blogs that offer email subscription usually have from 5% to 15% of their readers getting updates via email. This may not sound impressive for small blogs (if you have 100 RSS subscribers you will probably get only 5 or 10 more readers by offering email subscription), but it will certainly make a difference once your blog starts to grow.
{2} Not everyone is familiar with RSS: if you are already publishing your blog it is very likely that you find new technologies such as RSS trivial, but you must bear in mind that the vast majority of the population is not so tech-savvy. There are studies, in fact, confirming that only 3% of adults and 6% of teens use RSS readers. Email subscriptions come as a natural way to fill this gap.
{3} Email subscription gives you an opportunity to interact with readers: people getting your feed through RSS do not reveal anything about themselves (except what kind of reader they are using). Email subscribers, on the other hand, must leave a very valuable asset on your hand: their email! Now, while you should treat this information with privacy (i.e. affiliate offers and the like) there are certain situations where having emails from your regular readers can be useful. You could, for instance, send them a quick survey about what topics they would like to read about or what design they prefer for your blog.
Here is a list of Email subscription providers:
* Feedburner
* Feedblitz
Comment
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Comment by My Sweet Savings on June 16, 2010 at 7:42pm -
Thanks so much for the info!
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Comment by pragmaticmom on May 10, 2010 at 3:49pm -
I figured out that the best way to insert Google Analytics is to either: put the code into your blog template OR use a plugin. The best on is on my blogging group blog (http://coffeeshopbloggers.com ) Sorry, I forget the exact name. Once all the code from Google Analytics was removed from my blog, my feedburner worked perfectly! Yay!
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Comment by Sherrie Giddens on May 10, 2010 at 11:46am -
I like this idea, thanks for shareing.
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Comment by Elizabeth Bennett on May 10, 2010 at 11:32am
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Comment by pragmaticmom on May 7, 2010 at 7:48pm
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My RSS feedburner email subscription worked fine until I added google analytics to my Wordpress.org blog. And now my RSS feed has invalid code from the google analytics that suppresses the email from going out. I checked and double checked the google analytic code that needs to be pasted into every post, and it is correct. I read that feedburner is notoriously fickle but I am frustrated with trying to make this work. Any info on this issue? and would using Feedblitz which is NOT free solve the problem? at least they have customer support.
You'd think there would not be a compatibility issue as they are both google products!
thanks,
PragmaticMom
Type A Parenting for the Modern World
http://PragmaticMom.com
I blog on parenting, education and children's literature.
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Comment by Erica Kloetstra on May 7, 2010 at 3:58pm -
thanks for this info. Just asked my hubby to add an email subscription option. :)
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