Shopping Cart Integration / Email Parser Policy Change

The FeedBlitz email parser integration that enables subscribers to be automatically added to one of your lists has been modified since we launched it. If the list you are adding to is an autoresponder, FeedBlitz will add the subscriber and activate the autoresponder automatically. It doesn't feel right to make them go through dual opt in in this case just so you can say "thank you." 

If the list the parser is attached to is a standard mailing list (newsletter, blog powered or otherwise), dual opt-in will still be required.

   

Adding Google+ to FeedBlitz Feeds and Emails

Following yesterday's announcement of our Pinterest integrations, today it is Google+'s turn.  Google+ has been added to FeedBlitz in two key areas to enable end-user sharing of your posts and links to their G+ circles:

1. As a new social media feed "flare" added to FeedBlitz RSS feeds (enabled at RSS - Social Media), enabling RSS and email subscribers to share the post with their circles on Google+
    
2. As an additional sharing option when an email subscription is activated, added to the screen blogged about here, so that new, enthusiastic subscribers can invite their circles to join your list.

If you use FeedBlitz's email services you'll need to set up a FeedBlitzed version of your site's regular RSS feed if you haven't already done so, enable the G+ social media flare, and then make your list's article source your new FeedBlitz feed. Easy!

So now your readership can share with pins, circles, tweets and links. Whatever next?!

   

Pinterest for Feeds and Emails

I'm happy to announce that FeedBlitz has added comprehensive support for Pinterest - the increasingly popular social pinboard service - to FeedBlitz's RSS (and by extension, blog to email) subscription services.

What we've enabled is:

1. The ability to splice your pins into your FeedBlitz version of your blog's RSS feed (via RSS - Splices), which will include your pins into that feed, and by extension into any emails and updates sent from that feed. The default is to add a daily summary of pins to the feed, but you can change that on the splices page. All you do is put in your account ID, and FeedBlitz takes care of the rest.
   
   
2. Enabling your subscribers to pin your posts to their Pinterest boards, increasing your social sharing. Again, this is via our RSS feed service, the premium alternative to FeedBurner. Go to RSS - Social Media and enable the Pinterest "flare." Your FeedBlitz feed will now have the Pinterest icon added to its sharing options. When clicked, the first image in the post is put up for pinning along with the post's title. The icon will show up in your feed and in any mailings it powers.

This is great news for crafters, art bloggers, photographers, or any bloggers who uses imagery consistently in their posts.

If you want to add Pinterest to your blog's email subscription mailings but don't yet have a FeedBlitz RSS feed, creating one is easy. All you need to do is:

1. Create a FeedBlitz version of your blog's feed at RSS - New Feed.
    
2. Change your FeedBlitz mailings' article source to be the feed you created in step (1) at newsletters - Settings - Content Settings - The Basics (v3) or via the list's settings button in FeedBlitz v4.

You don't have to use that feed anywhere else if you don't want to - but you might well be tempted when you see what we can do :)

Happy pinning, folks!

   

UnWord

Microsoft Word, part of the Microsoft Office suite, is a great word processor. I use it myself for documents, e-books; and I use the rest of the Office suite for email, spreadsheets etc. It's a great desktop app.

It's really easy to copy / paste from Word into a blog post to make creating pretty blog posts with good spell checking super easy. Which is fine, except that unless you have (and use) a special "Paste from Word" feature in your blog's post editor, lots of Microsoft Office-specific custom HTML comes along for the ride as well. You may not see it when you're editing, or even on your blog when it goes live, but it's there. When emails built from that post arrive at non-Office subscribers, and sometimes when Office-using subscribers do something like forward an email, much weirdness can result. Text changing size and / or typeface are common symptoms; or line spacing suddenly not being what you expect. 

The reasons why this happens relates to things called CSS classes and custom conditional HTML that nothing outside of Office and Internet Explorer recognize, and I'm not going into the gory details here. Suffice to say it's there, and it's frustrating to everyone when perfectly happy posts "suddenly" don't display correctly.

When things like this happen, my usual advice is "Don't paste from Word to create posts!"

But that's unrealistic. People are going to do it anyway, and that ought to be OK.

So, here at FeedBlitz, we're going to make it OK.  Tools should interoperate properly and your emails should work, consistently, for as many of your readers as possible. So, as of now, FeedBlitz will attempt to fixup Microsoft Office-related custom markup to minimize the sometimes bizarre effects that it can have; we call it "UnWord."  The results are more consistent rendering across the board, and your emails staying that way when your subscribers forward or reply to them.

There's nothing you need to do; it's automatic for everyone. Now you can use Word to create your posts and they will both look better and behave more consistently across the board. Although, honestly? I still recommend you draft your posts in your blog's post editor. You'll get the best results that way, no matter what.

   

Advanced Email Marketing: Suppression Lists in FeedBlitz

In my earlier post about using Suppression Lists in email marketing, I explained how suppression lists are used to restrict to whom a third party an send a mailing. They're important because selling a direct sponsored email blast to your list can be the best form of one-off email monetization available to you, so you need to be able to use them if and when you get the chance.

This post is the promised "how-to guide" for FeedBlitz users who've sold a dedicated sponsorship email and need to use our suppression list feature.

1) Setting Up - Use FeedBlitz v4

Suppression lists are only available in the new FeedBlitz user interface, so you'll need to try that out. Visit http://www.feedblitz.com/f?v4 to start.

Once you're in, Suppression Lists (along with Custom Fields and Surveys) are in the "Publisher Tools" section of the navigation, just under your Sites. Select "Suppression List Management" in the navigation.

2) Import your Suppression List File

You can import into a new suppression list or update an existing one. If you update an existing suppression list, FeedBlitz deduplicates, so that it's safe to re-add the same addresses if all you have is a single monolithic file from your vendor. There's no practical limit on imported list size, but if the upload is so large that it times out on you, you can split it into multiple parts, or ask FeedBlitz tech support to help you out.

As you import the file and further work on your list, you'll see your activity is recorded on that suppression list's page. You can use that information to prove to your provider how you used the list if you need to.

3) Use the list!

Suppression lists are designed for one-off mailings, so you can use them in either Newsflash ("email blast") or On Demand (manually selected posts from your site) mailings. Pick the suppression list you want to use at the foot of the on demand or newsflash page, just under the subscriber segment area.

And that's it; pretty easy. The mailing will use the suppression list to ensure that nobody on the suppression list gets the email, even of they're actively opted in to your mailing list. FeedBlitz won't mail anyone on the suppression list.

Your use of the suppression list is recorded in the list's activity log, and (for newsflash) saved along with the contents of your mailing. If you like to jump start later email broadcasts by picking one you used earlier, your suppression lists selection now comes along for the ride too.  If you want to use a different list (or none at all), simply change your selection in the newsflash email builder while you're editing your copy.

   

New Date-Based Custom Field Options

Newly released into FeedBlitz, a new custom field type to hold dates. You can use this custom field like any other, such as making it public (so they enter, say, their birthday on your subscription form), or you can make it private (such as their last purchase date). Date custom fields have a handy little popup calendar to help make data entry easier, as in the screenshot below.

If you create a field for birthday, say, you can (for example) create a segment that pulls out people born before 1990 like this:

birthday<"1990-01-01"

If you play with this or any custom field feature (Newsletters - Custom fields in version three, Publisher Tools in v4), you will notice that we've added some more "system" custom fields that - interestingly and not at all coincidentally - happen to be date fields. They are Opened, Clicked, Joined and OptedIn.

Intriguing, huh? More on these tomorrow.

   

Fearless FeedBurner Migration - No Login Required

In yesterday's post about setting up your RSS properly I talked about the risk of getting trapped with a particular feed service because your subscribers are subscribing to their feed URL on their domain, not your URL on your domain.

That's bad enough. What's worse in FeedBurner's case is that people may have set up their feeds years ago (or their web folks did), and they can't figure out how to access their feeds and metrics. Or, from worse to worsest (?), FeedBurner users can migrate their account to Google apps and suddenly find out that a perfectly good FeedBurner login no longer works - and can't be recovered. Not only are you trapped at this point, you have no recourse other than abandoning your feed, its subscribers and starting over. There's no corporate support for FeedBurner at all (but it's free so that's OK, right? Perhaps not...). End up at this point and you're well and truly up the proverbial creek. You're by no means alone in your paddle-less adventure, but that's cold comfort, I know.

This is a tragic turn of events for what was once a fun, supported (and supportive) service. I've written on the topic before, but as I try and provide a little help to frustrated users in the FeedBurner forums, it's sad to see so many people disappointed and frustrated by the complete lack of engagement from FeedBurner's owners. They simply don't understand why Google doesn't care about them (another instance of digital share cropping - what would happen if FeedBurner went away? Yikes...).

Sounds like an opportunity for FeedBlitz, right? Well, not so fast. People frequently can't log in to FeedBurner to use FeedBlitz's migration wizards, so they're stuck. Often, that leaves their readers sitting out there subscribed to a FeedBurner URL, with nothing that can be done by the site owner to access that audience and its stats.

Which means, as I said yesterday, that site owners have to get all those readers to resubscribe. It's the only way to get their readers off that FeedBurner URL, and the only way for the publisher to re-take control of their feed, their readership and their RSS metrics. Even with the pain and frustration many FeedBurner users are now experiencing, the fear of starting over and "abandoning" their subscribers is just too much. They give up, and resign themselves to putting up with it.  The fear and lack of access put even major bloggers on the back foot, and prevents them from making a switch they'd otherwise be more than happy to make. After all, their subscribers are their most committed audience, and surely far too important to abandon to the free but unsupported service that FeedBurner has become. It's a shame to see such confusion descend into lost hope, day after day. But that's what's going on.

Good news, then. There is hope.

As I alluded to yesterday, FeedBlitz does now have a way forward for people stuck in this scenario. It ain't pretty, but it works. Our approach assumes that you have control over the original feed that FeedBurner is polling, that you can use your blog's redirect features, and that you're going to try FeedBlitz out as a premium FeedBurner alternative.

1. First, set up your own feed on your own domain, like I outlined yesterday, if you haven't already done so.
2. If that is different from your FeedBurner original feed (our tech support can help you identify the URL FeedBurner is accessing), set up a permanent redirect from that feed to the new feed you set up in step (1) above.
3. Then set up your FeedBlitz feed at RSS | New based on the URL you set up at (1).
4. Set up a temporary redirect from your feed (1) to your new FeedBlitz feed (3), making sure that you have an exception defined so that FeedBlitz can access your source feed OK without going around in circles.

At this point you have FeedBurner - and everyone using it - redirecting to your new canonical feed on your own domain (good!), and you are then having FeedBlitz serve it for you. Which means that FeedBurner (or whatever you use) is, in fact, accessing FeedBlitz for your feed. This is the key part.

(Note that at this point we don't have to log in to Google at all, so even if you can't get in, you're golden.)

The bad news is that all the people using FeedBurner will still have to resubscribe. No avoiding that without login access. Simply asking them to do it in a blog post is unlikely to have any effect; people are lazy and - hey - the FeedBurner feed's still working (although it's a lot cooler now it's using FeedBlitz's feed goodies).

So here's the kicker. FeedBlitz has a new feature in its RSS settings that will try very, very hard to FORCE all your FeedBurner subscribers - at least the ones who are actually reading your old FeedBurner feed - to change their feed settings and resubscribe.

How? Well, when you enable the FeedBurner migration option at RSS | Settings, you can edit a fairly loud and to the point message (lots of bold text and colors) that says: We've moved, update your settings, oh faithful reader! OK, not quite so Jane Austen perhaps, but you get the idea. When the setting is enabled and FeedBlitz detects FeedBurner accessing your FeedBlitz feed (courtesy of the redirects you set up above), FeedBlitz does NOT send your post to FeedBurner (and by implication, on to every subscriber using it).

No. Instead, FeedBlitz serves the "resubscribe" message. Just to FeedBurner and its subscribers; everyone else gets your regular content. As long as you have that setting enabled in FeedBlitz it will continue to (loudly, persistently, consistently) urge your remaining FeedBurner subscribers to switch over. Not for only 15 days, but for as long as you have the FeedBlitz feature switched on. So people taking long vacations, sabbaticals or whatever will still get it. Everyone accessing your content via your old FeedBurner feed will know, in no uncertain terms, what they need to do. And they will be reminded, every single time you post, until they change.

So, although it's not as smooth as you might like, there's no need to access your old FeedBurner account to switch, which is a huge win. (If you can log in we have wizards to help expedite setup and email subscriber transfer). With this capability, FeedBlitz can basically push every one of your subscribers with a pulse over to your new core feed living at your URL on your domain. You don't need to delete your old FeedBurner feed either, which means all the old links in aggregators will work too. But everyone paying attention will quickly switch because they want your content and NOT an annoying message from the likes of us. As I said, pretty it is not. Effective, though? You betcha.

Sure, not everyone will come over. You're going to have a proportion of abandoned subscriber accounts, and so at the end of the day your numbers will start off being lower here at FeedBlitz than at FeedBurner. But what you gain is:

• Control over your feed and how it's served.
• Knowing you have a supported, reliable service.
• Knowing the people you do have are fully (re)engaged with your content.
• A powerful platform to build on going forward.

That first point is important. You can (should!) configure the message we send to FeedBurner subscribers to direct readers to the feed on your URL (remember we still serve it, because of the temporary redirect).  But you own those readers on your URL on your domain. Don't care for FeedBlitz later on? Well, switch the redirect off - done! They're still yours. They won't need to resubscribe again, because as far as they're concerned they're subscribing to the same feed.

At the risk of harming FeedBlitz's future revenue growth, you could in theory start a trial with us for the sole purpose of rescuing your feed from FeedBurner, and then cancel before the trial ends, planning on the migration message having moved anyone who cares across back to you by then. Obviously, we hope you'll stick around, but it's certainly something you could consider if you want to make that move and take back your feed. Our RSS only prices are just $1.49 a month anyway, so if you don't use our email services you're not going to break the bank if (when :) ) you choose to continue with us.

I hope this helps someone get out of the quagmire. Know that, if any of this resonates with you, at least you're not alone, and there is a way out.

If you're interested and would like help getting control of your RSS feed and your subscribers back, please tweet me @phollows or contact us via support at feedblitz dot com. We're happy to hear from you and will help as best we can, client or no.

   

Tying it All Together - Beefing up FeedBlitz Autoresponders, Part 3

In the first part of this three post autoresponder series I announced the following new features for FeedBlitz's autoresponders:

1. Custom landing pages for autoresponder subscribers;
2. Custom confirmation emails;
3. Event rules and triggers;
4. New "On completion" event trigger.

In the second post, I talked about our AWeber-compatible email parser capability, enabling simple third party shopping cart and form integration.

This last post shows you how to tie them all together. Here's the scenario:

• You want to thank your store's purchasers with a coupon and then a three part "how to" series;
• At the end of the series you want to add them to your full mailing list (so they don't get too much mail while they're in the autoresponder)
• You want to do this with minimal unsubscribe or spam complaints.

Here's how.

1. Create your autoresponder and define the sequence of articles;
2. Create a custom landing page on your site where you deliver the coupon on your site, and tell the autoresponder about it;
3. Set up an trigger event on the autoresponder to subscribe people to your main mailing list on completion.
4. Use the custom confirmation (the dual opt-in activation) email to tell people that there's a coupon waiting for them and all they have to do to get is to click the confirmation link.
5. Set up the parser for the autoresponder to watch for notification emails from your shopping cart, which kicks the whole process off.

What happens is this.

1. The visitor makes a purchase from your store - hooray!
2. The parser picks up the notification from your shopping cart, and sends the opt-in confirmation email to the subscriber.
3. This opt-in email is the one you customized, telling the user about the goodies they are going to get if they click the activation link.
4. The user confirms, and two things happen:
• The first email in the autoresponder sequence is sent.
• They are sent to your custom landing page to pick up the offer.
5. They get remaining articles in your series over the next few days.
6. When the last one goes out, the "completion" event occurs, subscribing the user to your regular mailing list, where you can build upon the trust you've already created between you and the buyer.

Not much work to set up, but what you get at the end is a powerful, fully automated email marketing solution that builds trust with - and who knows, maybe some extra revenue from - your new purchaser.

   

Shopping cart and popup integration - Beefing Up Autoresponders, Part 2

Autoresponders are often used to thank people for subscribing to your mailing list, or to launch multi-step drip marketing series, or as standalone email courses sent to subscribers. These are easy to set up because all these features are inside the FeedBlitz service.

But some of the best uses for autoresponders is to add a new subscriber when they've done something outside your email service's ecosystem, such as when they buy from your online store or when you use a third party popup or widget to solicit new subscriptions.

FeedBlitz has now been extended to easily support third party shopping carts and other third party lead generation products for your site. 

Introducing Email Parsers

Available at Newsletters - Settings - Email Parser and Responders - Email Parser, the approach we've adopted will be familiar to anyone who has used AWeber. Better yet, the approach will work with any third party shopping cart, widget or plugin that supoprts AWeber too, so integration is a snap. Unlike them, however, you are spared having to learn about regular expressions to make it work. Phew!

Here's a sample FeedBlitz email parser screen:

FeedBlitz generates a large, random email address (hidden in the screenshot above) for you to put into the AWeber integration's "list email address" field in your shopping cart's email service settings. Since the email is a feedblitz.com address, it will come to us.

When the email arrives, it is processed by the parser assigned to that address. You can tell it how to detect whether the inbound email is (a) genuine and (b) the kind of email you want to process (so you can differentiate between, say, a sales notification and a shipping update). If you don't know what these values are, you can use the email forwarding function (set to "Always") to get all the messages the parser receives sent on to you; you can then see what it's getting and edit it appropriately.

Then you tell the parser how the data you want to grab appears in the body of the mail itself. One per line, or PayPal style, or comma separated etc.  The parser splits up the inbound email, and then looks at the matches you specify to figure out information such as the buyer's email address and their name.

When a parser's trigger matches the settings, it will create a pending subscription, populate the relevant custom fields with the data it finds, and invite the subscriber to join the list (yes, we enforce double opt-in, because it gets us better deliverability - it's a good thing).

You can set the email forwarding value to forward you the mail the parser receives. So, for example, for new email parser addresses you want to use with PayPal, set the forwarding to be "Always", tell PayPal to use that email address, and when PayPal's confirmation email is sent to the parser it will be forwarded on to you. You can confirm using the link in the email, and then go back to the parser and change the forwarding setting (if you like) to keep the noise down.

Finally, once defined, a parser can be used by any of your lists or autoresponders. The email address the parser listens to is what changes on a list-by-list basis. You cannot change the email address from the long random value which FeedBlitz assigns, and this is by design. It makes the inbound email address fundamentally unguessable and therefore highly resistant to spambots. Spammers are bad. We don't want to help them add junk to your list, which a short changeable inbound email address risks.

So, we've introduced easy to use, well behaved, AWeber compatible (at least as far as the shopinig cart or popup is concerned), easy to use parsers. Another form of API you can use at FeedBlitz, and one that anyone who's set up a shopping cart plugin, PayPal button or Cafepress store can manage. Now you can thank your buyers with drip emails, thank you autoresponders or coupons off their next purchase.

Tomorrow: How to tie parsers and the autoresponder features I mentioned yesterday together for a sweet, effective retail autoresponder solution.

   

Beefing up FeedBlitz Autoresponders - Part 1

Autoresponders - a predefined sequence of emails that go out to subscribers - have long been a part of FeedBlitz's offerings. Most folks using FeedBlitz, however, don't make the most of them. While that's OK, it means that many of you are missing out on one of the keys to making your blog a financial success.

Autoresponders are used by the most successful organizations and online marketers - especially those wanting to boost their affiliate earnings - to automatically market and sell to their audience on an unattended basis. Done right, autoresponders can become your blog's personal ATM. I covered autoresponders in this post in my List Building for Bloggers series, and I'll be talking about them a lot more in the coming weeks.

Today, though, I'm going to tell you what we've been working on here at FeedBlitz to make our autoresponder program more appealing for bloggers who want to focus on more aggressive monetization and making their blogs financial successes. There is much to talk about, which is why I'm splitting things into multiple posts. Here's part 1.

Extending RSS to Email Newsletter Features to Autoresponders

In the responder tab (v3) or the autoresponder's settings page (v4), we have enabled the following features that were previously available only to automated newsletter production (blog to mail):

1. Custom landing page redirect for directly subscribing readers

Many monetization approaches have web site visitors subscribe directly to an autoresponder instead of to your general mailings list. If you want to build your list this way, you can now tell FeedBlitz where to send new subscribers once they activate instead of using our default thank you page. You can use the page you specify like you can its equivalent for newsletters: Recycling popular content, delivering incentives or rewards, etc.

2. Custom confirmation email text

You can now customize the "click here to confirm your subscription" email for autoresponders, again when the subscriber subscribes directly instead of triggering the autoresponder via a subscription to a regaulr newsletter.

3. Event rules and triggers

List automation was previously available for newsletters only. List automation events are triggered when a subscriber subscribes, unsubscribes or (this is new and only for autoresponders) when the autoresponder sequence completes.  This last feature allows you to grow your list by having visitors subscribe to your autoresponder offer or campaign, and then add them to your regular mailings when the autoresponder wraps up. Doing this ensures that only one list at a time is mailing a new subscriber (first the autoresponder, and then your normal list), reducing the risk of excessive unsubscribe rates that you might run by having both lists (newsletter and autoresponder) mailing the user concurrently.

Further, we've modified event trigger functionality for all lists, such that if any trigger on any list adds a user to an autoresponder, that autoresponder will fire off the first message in the list. It didn't work that way before, which was an oversight. Oops!

Automatic for the People

(OK, yes, this is a reference to REM's breakup annoncement yesterday. I'm a fan.)

What this means to you is that FeedBlitz's autoresponders are now as rich in terms of core functioanlity as their RSS to email newsletter bretheren. 

Better yet, as they like to say on late night cable TV ads, "But wait, there's more!"

And indeed there is. But that's for the next post.

   

Pouring Social Media Gas onto Your Email List's Fire

One of the challenges of email is privacy and junk: People are leery of sharing their own email addresses. It's why dual opt-in is essential for maintaining your deliverability and list quality.

But this also means, as I've said before, that when someone activates a subscription to your list, they are pumped. Committed. After all, it's taken work to get themselves there.

And that little burst of excitement can now be used to help accelerate your list's growth here at FeedBlitz.

Once someone activates their subscription from the dual opt-in email, our default landing page invites them to optionally share their excitement on Facebook, Twitter and / or LinkedIn.  They keep their email address private, but they share the news that they just joined your list on their favorite social media networks. As part of the notification the subscriber can create, FeedBlitz adds a link to your online subscription form. All your new subscriber's followers and friends have to do is click the link to start the subscription process to your list.

Here's what the new section of the activation landing page looks like (it's just a picture; it won't work here):

Trusted social relationships help turn that new subscriber excitement into a networked referral. That's more interest for you and, ultimately, more email subscribers more quickly.

There are also similar sharing options now available for select list owner activities too!  See if you can find them...

Update 2011-12-30 - Now with Extra Google+

   

Countdown to v4: Dashboards and buttons and widgets, oh my!

Continuing our "sneak peek" series into the next version of FeedBlitz - aka v4 - this post is about how v4 takes the opportunity to add more dashboards and metrics.

The "always on" navigation I mentioned last time enables more opportunities to provide meaningful insight into your subscribers at more opportunities.  Beyond that, we've simplified the "in screen" navigation and replaced the cascading series of menus with clear, simple, task-centric buttons.

The Main Pane: Delivering the Goods

There are new site dashboards and multi-site summaries. We've added site thumbnails, audience metrics and Alexa rankings.

Within each site, you can see at a glance how your audience divides between the different social media channels, email and RSS. You can quickly see what's growing and what's not, essential data for the modern social media blogger and marketers.

Major task: The green button

At each level, the big green button upper right takes you to the main task for that screen or element. The green button always represents the most valuable sub screen at that point in the navigation. So, for example, at the site level the most important task is editing the settings for the site itself. At the mailing list level, it's sending a mailing.

Other tasks: Orange buttons

The orange buttons represent other significant tasks you can do. Yet more options are available in the rest of the screen or any displayed widgets.

Widgets

At many places in v4 you will find screen elements called widgets, like this one from an RSS feed:

Text in the lower dark bar is clickable, taking you directly to the applicable option for that widget.
Also note that we've tried making the screens more useful. There are no intermediate menus any more; clicking on a feed or a list gets you real data right away.

Next time, I'll drill into the mailing list area, to talk about the new capabilities and ease of use changes there.

   

Are you Ready? FeedBlitz v4 Countdown Starts Monday

The changes we have been making in private beta will be revealed starting Monday as part of our countdown to general availability.  It's faster, cooler and generally full of social media and email marketing yumminess.

Stay tuned. It's worth it.

   

Subscriber Management Improvements for FeedBlitz Mailing Lists

As part of the changes that are going into the FeedBlitz v4 beta, we're not only changing overall navigation but also the way certain individual pages work as well. Some of these changes are sufficiently useful that they merit porting back to the current version.

The following changes should reduce a lot of the more common complaints we get about some of the things that FeedBlitz does!

Hope you like 'em :)

Easier resubscribes

Subscribers who used a site's subscription form to start subscribing after their subscription had lapsed used to have to log in to FeedBlitz to complete the task - a complex and confusing process for some subscribers. This is no longer true; a standard dual opt-in activation email is sent instead. One click there and they're back on the list.

Simpler dual opt-in activation emails

The default activation email (which list owners can change via Newsletters - Settings - Custom Confirmation Email) used to be verbose, and included the subscriber's email address in the activation link. This could create two problems:

1. The chattiness of the text confused some would-be subscribers, and
   
2. The email address confused some email apps, some of which erroneously converted the email address to a mailto: link.

If the subscriber had this second problem and clicked on the email address to activate their subscription, their app would instead fire up their email editor as if they were composing an email to themselves. Not a FeedBlitz bug, but something we can help change.

So, the text has now been dramatically reduced to improve clarity, and the email address in the copy moved outside the activation link, so users who are confirming their subscription won't be tempted to click that part of the text as they do so.

Direct subscriber change of address

List owners, when requested to change a subscriber's address, used the screens to create a request that was sent to the new subscriber to activate. A publisher-initiated dual opt-in, in effect. This was tedious and, since we know our publishers are made of the right stuff, largely unnecessary.

As of now, changing a subscriber's address via Newsletters - Subscribers - Change Subscriber Email Address will usually change the relevant email address immediately, sending a notification email that the change has been made to both the current and new addresses. No need for any activation clicks any more.

Rarely, the old "opt-in" method will still be used, depending on the status of the new address in the FeedBlitz database. This happens if something's up with the desired new address only.

Subscriber screens clarified

Some of the icons on the subscriber screens could be confusing to list managers; these have been replaced with labeled buttons instead. Much clearer.

Subscription audit data visible

A subscriber or a list manager can now access a subscription's audit data - creating IP address and referring page - in case the subscription was maliciously created. Drill down from the subscriptions page or the subscriber pages to view the data.

Clearer account merging

Finally, instructions on how to merge two accounts have been clarified. Sometimes users would feel stuck in a loop because they weren't logged in to the correct account as they tried to complete the merge.

   

An Update on FeedBlitz's Usability Project

Since posting on September (yes, it was that long ago) on FeedBlitz's UI, we've been diligently beavering away to provide the basis for a whole new user experience for email and social media marketers. The process began in earnest in October, and has been on the go ever since.

So this is the first in an occasional series of posts that will highlight where we are in the process and give you clues about where we're going. As we get closer to release I'll be telling you more about the beta versions and how you can get a jump start on using the new service.

Now Tell Me, Who Are You?

The very first step in the process was to take a long hard look at the people who use the site and why. We thought about the people we'd like to use the site, and who aren't.  It's the intersection of current and future markets with the individuals who are in them. Obviously, we also added in the feedback we've received about what works about FeedBlitz as well as the parts that are tougher to use.

We eventually drew up a set of "personas" that we used to name and think about each of these users, the markets and organizations they represent. For example, there's "Bob the Blogger", "Sarah the Savvy" and "Tom the Technical" (yes, I have this tragic alliteration problem). We also have "Suzy Subscriber" representing the recipients of the content we distribute on your behalf. And ten others! Each persona has multiple attributes that cover technical sophistication, the role of social media in their online marketing, how long they've been at it and more. 

When the process wrapped up we had built fourteen distinct personas - too many - but they all represented a few different classes of user. Satisfying the needs of these major user categories at a high level (and deciding which ones we're NOT going to address right now), and ensuring that we meet the needs of the personas that they contain, have been the driving force behind the work on what has become FeedBlitz 4.

A New Navigational Architecture

It would have been really tempting to go the "lipstick on the pig" route and simply pretty up the site, move a few options around and declare victory. A short term win, perhaps.

Not for us, though.

The more we thought about the personas and how these people thought about their work, their blogging and our role in their ecosystem, we realized that we couldn't just tart things up and be done. Instead, we saw an opportunity to completely rethink and realign how FeedBlitz works to more closely match the way the personas thought about and worked in their online presence. Going back to square one with the personas was the key to generating the insights we needed.

I'm not going to give away much more at this stage, but the end result has not only yielded clearer, faster and more natural navigation, but also enabled significant other usability and productivity changes we can deliver to radically simplify common pain points like simply getting started effectively and integrating social media.

(We've shown a few friends of the firm an alpha version of the new UI. Everyone has found it to be easier to use and to find what they need; and everyone has pointed out ways we can make it even better yet. Thank you!)

Still, to give you a taste of what we're up to, here's a quick example of what the new approach and new UI now enable. Instead of all the screens you see in this tutorial to set up your mailing list: www.feedblitz.com/help/tour.asp, the new UI will have exactly one screen you need to complete to get started. That's not a typo: Just one. And it does SO. MUCH. MORE.

More Than This...

So yeah, it's a pretty big deal. By taking our time and thinking about what we offer you from a wholly new perspective is liberating. We have started to flesh out a fascinating new capability that has surprised and intrigued 100% of the people who've seen it. But more on our super secret WOW factor in a later post!

With FeedBlitz 4 we firmly believe we're more than meeting the needs of our current users; better yet, we will be able to more than meet the needs of the additional target markets - and their users - that we've identified. It's exceeding my expectations across the board.

When, When, When?!

OK, such a large rethink and reimplementation requires a lot of work; we're not done. It's going to be worth it, though, so hang in there.

We have a very functional alpha version and our plan is to have a private beta of FeedBlitz 4 running next month (March) with a public beta to follow when it's ready. So, in a sense, very, very soon. A matter of weeks.

Meanwhile, stay tuned for more occasional updates on FeedBlitz v4. As we get closer I'll let out some screenshots for you; I intend to make you all as excited as I am once you get to see it!
Thanks,

Phil

   

No More CAPTCHAs (*sort of)

FeedBlitz has made its CAPTCHA invisible for our premium upgraded customers. Which means, for the most part, people subscribing to paid up feeds will no longer have to fill in all those numbers and letters.

Usability and accessibility wins, for sure, but isn't this a huge risk? Aren't we going to get tons of bots now?

Well, we think not (and this is the "sort of" part). Using the same technology that's in our Wordpress Comment Form plugin and additional concepts that built from there in the anti-spam plugin built by Andy Bailey of CommentLuv fame, there is in fact a CAPTCHA on the form. It just doesn't need a human being to fill it out. It's effective enough as-is in discriminating between people and bots.

The visible CAPTCHAs return to reduce risk if and when necessary, but for most people most of the time there won't be any CAPTCHAs required if they're subscribing to an upgraded feed. You can see it in action here on the subscription form for Seth Godin's blog (oh, wait, you can't! See? That means it's working.)

So, yet another reason to upgrade! Start a trial now at www.feedblitz.com/f?NewsUpgrade

   

QR Codes for Mobile and Offline Subscriptions

Another "quick win" feature! You can now get a QR code (a popular 2D barcode format) for your FeedBlitz subscription form, which simplifies subscriptions from offline and mobile readers (the one on the right is for this blog's subscription form).

You can put it on mobile web sites, t-shirts, billboards, business cards, collateral - practically anywhere - and anyone with a QR code reader (basically any modern smart phone with a suitable app) can scan the code with their device and go to your form and subscribe. Neat!
Available now at Newsletters - Forms - Subscription Forms.

   

Important FeedBlitz API Access Change

If you or your organization is using the FeedBlitz REST API (docs here) to integrate with FeedBlitz, there's an important change you need to know about. As of February 15th, 2011, the current API access endpoint (https://api.feedblitz.com) will CHANGE, as will the way you authenticate to the API.

All API accesses should now use an API key (get one at My Account - API Key) via the following end point:

https://www.feedblitz.com/f.api/<resource>?key=<your_api_key>

For example, if your API key was "QWERTYUIOP" then this call would return your user information:

https://www.feedblitz.com/f.api/user?key=QWERTYUIOP

This end point is available now for production use and transition testing. After February 15th the old endpoint will be torn down and become unavailable.

We're making this necessary change to improve the availability of the API and make it more secure. If you have any questions please contact FeedBlitz technical support.  The API page at www.feedblitz.com/api.asp and the reference manual it links to have been updated to reflect this change.

Please update your apps as soon as you can!

If you're not using our API but would like to integrate FeedBlitz more tightly with your site, see our knowledge base API area here.

   

The One-Click Random Email Subscriber Pick

Running a contest, drawing other other incentive program to help promote your mailings? Sometimes you have to pick a winner ... and that can be a pain. Export readers, upload to excel, throw a dart at the printout ... there ought to be a better way to pick a random winner. And now there is.

So we've released a feature early that was intended for the new FeedBlitz UI because it's so gosh-darned useful. It simply picks a random subscriber from the selected list who isn't you and who's currently active. Simple, fast and drop-dead easy to use. What's not to like?

Find it at Newsletters - Subscribers - Random Subscriber, and ramp up your email subscription incentives!

   

Related Articles Increase RSS Engagement

FeedBlitz has added "related articles" to its premium FeedBurner alternative RSS feed service. By adding this content to your feed, any one article becomes a platform for launching the subscriber back into your blog, even if you're using full post feeds. More opportunities to engage means more site visits and, in the long run, greater monetization opportunities.

Many blogs feature related articles, but many are driven by client-side scripts, and so don't make it into the underlying feed. This denies the blogger's most ardent readership a critical re-engagement opportunity.

FeedBlitz has solved this problem for all our feeds, adding up to three related articles by default. The feature can be tuned, including changing the number of related articles to show and the heading text, at RSS - Settings - Per-Post Customization.  To disable the feature, simply set the article count to be zero.

Related articles will appear for current feed entries when the feed is next updated, a splice changes, or the feed is refreshed via the RSS tab at FeedBlitz.com.  To see it at work, check out the FeedBlitz News feed here (scroll to the foot of each article).