Why I switched to FeedBlitz, by Carrie Isaac

After months of responding to emails from readers saying they weren't getting my FeedBurner email updates, I decided to check out FeedBlitz. As I started looking at it more closely, I not only got excited about using a service that actually offered customer support and diagnostics, I also got excited about the branding options I'd have with their custom email templates.

Having just finished a new site design, I was excited to be able to expand that branding to my email updates as well. As a local blogger, I frequently run into readers "in real life", and many times they say "I love your email updates"! I wanted to make sure that they understood that there was also a website as well, so I designed my custom email template to look more like the site and contain more links that pointed back to my site. I got lots of compliments on how nice the new updates looked!

I'm often asked if FeedBlitz is "worth the money". Am I seeing a dollar-for-dollar return on investment? It would be hard to say definitively "yes, I'm paying $xx per month for FeedBlitz and I see exactly $xx in revenue from it", but that's almost impossible to quantify. I consider my FeedBlitz subscription fee an investment in my readers. They appreciate being able to receive the updates they requested regularly, rather than experience periodic pauses in services as I often saw with FeedBurner.

I also consider FeedBlitz an investment in my site in that I'm able to monetize the email updates by making a sponsor banner part of the custom email template. I offer site sponsorship packages and it's important to me to be able to include a nice banner for my site sponsor in my email updates, which adds value to my advertising packages.

Though I'm just starting to explore the analytics that FeedBlitz offers, I'm excited to be able to look at what's working in my email updates and what's not. Rather than just "shooting in the dark", I can implement changes and then use FeedBlitz's analytics to test what works best. Which email subject lines induce the most "opens"? What time of day are people likely to read the emails I send out?

In short, the FeedBlitz service has been well worth the money! I'm looking forward to developing my RSS to email newsletter even more, and I'm excited to see what FeedBlitz will roll out in the future.

Carrie Isaac blogs about one-thousand-and-one ways to save money in Colorado Springs at Springs Bargains. She also handles internet marketing for her husband, a Colorado Springs Realtor. You can connect with her on Twitter @carriei.