Simply Smarter Subscriptions, Part 2

Last week, I talked about an upgrade to the HTML newsletter subscription form that allows:

• Publishers to offer subscriptions to all their publications from a single signup;
• Users to subscribe in a popup window to keep them on the publisher's site;
• Multi-newsletter forms to offer IM and social media subscription options as well as email.

With this post, FeedBlitz introduces a much-improved version of the Subscription Center for subscribers who are subscribing to more than one publication. Now the Subscription Center main page looks something like this:

Now when a subscriber goes to the subscription center they see all their current subscriptions in one place - and can start and stop them from that one screen, without having to click through to anywhere else.

• Want to stop several subscriptions? Simply un-check them from the list and update.
• Want to bring some back? Click the "All available" button and all your subscriptions - active or unsubscribed - will appear. Check the ones you want to bring back, update, done.

Both processes are much simpler and much more intuitive to use than before (a login is still required, however, to access your subscriptions). Subscribers may still click the drop down box in the Subscription Center to work with a single subscription in more detail, of course, but this change makes the most common tasks - unsubscribing and resubscribing from the web site - much simpler and quicker to access.

   

Announcing The FeedBlitz Ad Network!

Now you can monetize your mailing list.

Now you can target ads to committed subscribers, not just casual web site visitors.

The FeedBlitz ad network is now up and running. Using a unique CPM-auction model (see the new advertiser FAQs), FeedBlitz now enables targeted in-content advertising to opted in publishers and bloggers by location, content category and keyword.

Bloggers and businesses alike can start to earn revenues from their mailings by activating their account for advertising in just 2 clicks.

Fully featured, all features available in a single interface, we aim for this ad network to do for email newsletters what Google AdSense and AdWords did for democratizing online web advertising.

• To advertise, go to www.feedblitz.com/f?Ads
• To earn by running ads in your newsletter, go to www.feedblitz.com/f?AdPublisher

The FAQs have been updated, with comprehensive new pages for Advertiser FAQs and Blogger / Publisher FAQs. In addition, the terms of service have been updated to incorporate the ad program.

So go on - what are you waiting for? Let's get started.

   

FeedBlitz Upgrades All Accounts to Newsletter Edition

In case you missed it, last month FeedBlitz announced a major feature upgrade for all our publishers - and an associated terms of service change. To summarize, we're giving each and every account all the features of Newsletter Edition, our flagship service. You will get all of our advanced, professional newsletter and email marketing capabilities enabled for all of your publications at your current price.

Newsletter Features Available - Today

BUT … to help you make the most of FeedBlitz and these new features, we have made them available to you now, a week in advance of ads being added (if applicable). You can use all these features, in any and all of your publications, as of today and for no extra charge.

So log in and visit your Newsletter Center at www.feedblitz.com/f?newsletters to start using Newsletter Edition features in your next mailing. What can you do? Add your logo. Change the layout. Enable a weekly edition. Set up autoresponders. Capture subscriber data. Publicize the podcast.

The Newsletter Edition's full feature list is at www.feedblitz.com/newsletter/features.asp. Highlights now available on every account and for every publication include:

• Email, Skype, AIM and Twitter subscriptions.
• Email layout, graphics and content of your email and landing page customization.
• Delivery schedule customization: Express, daily, weekly - or all of them.
• Subscriber demographic data collection (e.g. name and address).
• Message customization based on subscriber demographics.
• Email newsflash segmentation using subscriber demographics.
• Open and click through reports by subscriber.
• Automatic conversion of your content to a podcast (English only)

Pricing and Schedule

Again, there is no price change for you with this upgrade - we have simply made it available to you early. Ads for publishers on our free services start September 14 - there's a sample at the end of this message if you want to see how it looks. No ads will be added for premium account holders while their account is in good standing.

As we said in the original announcement, our privacy policy is unchanged, and ads (if any) will only appear in emails that are initiated as part of the services we supply to you. You retain full control over your settings and subscribers, and may of course use FeedBlitz to export (or import) anything and everyone whenever you like.

Professional Grade, Blogger Friendly

By making these changes we are giving everyone the same powerful features, we're able to give bloggers the same email marketing and newsletter tools available to professional, corporate marketers - using a blogger-friendly business model.

Businesses who don't want our ads can simply upgrade to our competitively priced Newsletter Edition premium account. If you already have a current Newsletter, Pro or Turbo premium account, that will also prevent ads next week.

Next Steps

You can log in and check out the new capabilities, but if you're tight for time, that's OK - you don't have to do anything at all. No action is required by any publisher. Services will simply continue as is, uninterrupted, with a small ad at the foot of the standard service messages, starting at the end of next week, if appropriate.

Protecting Premium Publisher Brands

Finally, as an added bonus, if you have a premium service currently and it is cancelled or payment fails, we will now protect your branding and your subscribers' expectations by keeping your premium settings as they are. We will simply place an ad in the message footer in lieu of payment, starting at the end of next week.

Premium features, delivered ahead of schedule, free.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

   

New: FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition

Today we have launched a brand new marketing communications service, the FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition. (We've also renamed our prior services as the FeedBlitz Personal Edition, just to keep things consistent.)

What is FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition?

Basically, it brings the personalization and customization features of traditional email newsletters, and marries them to the power and distribution of RSS-based systems. The best of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, all in one single service for simple management.

From a feature perspective, FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition does several core things that neither ordinary RSS to mail services (like the Personal Edition) nor traditional HTML email newsletter services alone can offer. Together, they're dynamite.

The Basics

FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition is a superset of Pro and Turbo upgrades for the Personal Edition. You can brand and manage your distribution schedule in Newsletter Edition as if you had these upgrades.

But there's much, much more...

Personalization

Firstly, we've added subscriber data capture capabilities, so you can ask subscribers their names, addresses or whatever you want. This is standard stuff for corporate email newsletter mailing list services, but has been missing from RSS based services.

In fact, this is the big problem with blogs and RSS based systems. No personalization. It's Web 2.0 doing Marketing 0.1. What marketers have long understood is that the more relevant the content, the more likely you are to be successful. And that means using what you know about the recipient - their name, gender, location, purchase history, customer class, whatever - to tune the messages you send to them. To take a simple example, there's little value to mailing a prospect in Vermont about a seminar in Texas. Yet this is what RSS-based services force you to do - it's a one-size-fits-all approach that makes for disappointing returns and unhappy subscribers.

FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition changes all of this. You can capture subscriber demographics (and add some hidden secret fields of your own), and then use them to tailor the message sent. It can be as basic as "Dear Jane" as opposed to jane@doe.com - or you can apply conditional statements (i.e. if / else ) on both the content and the formatting of the message. Newsletter Edition publishers can even use the import process to define their custom fields on the fly.

In effect, FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition turns your blog into an efficient, effective and easy to manage lead generation machine.

Segmentation

How this solves our Texan seminar problem is that you can also use custom fields to pick the recipients, known as segmentation. Want to send an email blast about the seminar? Define the "South East" segment (and we'll save it for later reuse) and blast away. No rural mountain dwelling folk in the frosty north will be sent the message.

Cross-Media Support

OK, so most standalone email newsletter services can do that. But try getting your seminar information onto your web site - ugh. Can't get there from here. They stop at email, and you need to get your message out to everyone who might want it, no matter how they subscribe to your list.

But now you can, because FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition also enables you to support subscribers who use:

• Twitter
• Skype
• AOL Instant Messenger

So now you can IM your newsletter, or use Twitter to get it to subscriber's mobile phones.

FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition goes further still. It will also automatically create a web page, an RSS feed, and an online widget with your seminar invitation. So you can also support casual web visitors and RSS aggregators, all with the same service. The widget lets you integrate the newsletter into your site with only a few moments' work. All you have to is send the newsletter and you're done - FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition takes care of all of this for you.

Better yet, if your subscriber happens to be reading using an RSS aggregator AND we get the right cookie from them, we'll tailor the RSS feed for them as well. So even the RSS feed can potentially be different (and therefore more relevant) to each individual subscriber.

One to one marketing meets Web 2.0 in the FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition.

And that's vital, because to reach all your potential subscribers you need to let them subscribe however they want. The under 25's are on IM or their phones; email isn't the primary communications channel for them. FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition now lets you reach them the same way you get to email users. All from a single subscription form, with no added effort from you.

Blog-Optional Workflow

FeedBlitz Personal Edition needs a blog or an RSS feed. Fine for us bloggers, but a real roadblock for the other 90% of the world. When your solution starts with: "first get yourself a blog" it's an issue, largely for three main reasons:

1. Corporations worry about IT and control issues.
2. Blogs are scary things that aren't yet fully embraced by mainstream corporations.
3. The workflow is exactly the opposite to how most email newsletters are produced.

The solution to all of these is to avoid requiring a blog. FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition can use a blog or RSS feed, OR it can be set up to accept directly entered articles - no RSS or blogs involved, thank you. This solves objections #1 and #2 because there's no blog. And because the workflow is the same as for legacy newsletter services - first construct your articles, and then publish them to your list - there's no issue with objection #3 either. As far as the user is concerned, it feels like an email newsletter service.

But, because this is Web 2.0, FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition automatically creates an RSS feed from your published articles. Which enables all the IM and social media distribution we mentioned before. FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition really is the best of both worlds (and, indeed, a bridge between them). We even allow you to create your articles via IM or email! But I'll save that for a later post.

So, if you're a power blogger, you can power up your blog to use the personalization and customization features. If you are using a separate newsletter service, you can bring your list over and get much greater distribution from a single service for about the same price.

What Else is New?

We're introducing SpamAssassin reports for all premium customers, so you can see how "spammy" your messages are looking to independent filters. We track the score for each message you send, so you can see how the score changes over time and manage it appropriately.

We have replaced PayPal with a new provider, Authorize.Net, so anyone with a Visa or MasterCard can sign up on our site without having a PayPal account. Better yet, you can change the billing details online too, much simpler than before. If you're using PayPal that's fine - it still works. New signups will simply use our new service.

Publishers (both Personal and Newsletter) now have a publisher dashboard that looks a lot like the Subscriber Center (actually it's the other way around, but that may be too much information). Big friendly graphics and setup wizards make the service much easier for occasional users to manage. The power user menus are still there, but the default is now towards easier use.

And the cost?

Newsletter Edition isn't free. It's based on the average number of active subscribers in the prior billing cycle (month). Pricing starts at $1.49 for less than 10 active subscribers, and grows with your list size. There is, of course, a 14 day free evaluation period, so you can go ahead and kick the tires, no hassle.

In fact, if you're running a smaller list and really want to upgrade to Pro or Turbo but didn't because of price, sign up for Newsletter Edition - the entry level pricing is much lower.

More...

There's a lot more to talk about, but at least I hope I've convinced you that FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition represents the best of the old and the new, a great way to link between them, and the only service you need to send targeted messages to any and all of your audience.