Some of you may have noticed that we’ve included a “Subscribe to TechCrunch by Email” widget on the right sidebar of TechCrunch for the last few days.
ReadWriteWeb and I have been quietly testing a superb new FeedBurner blog-to-email product that addresses every feature I requested on No. 2 of this list. This new (free) Email Subscriptions product launches officially this morning and can be found under the “publicize” link at Feedburner.
Key features:
- Free
- Daily emails
- Blog Branding - Feedburner plugs are all at the bottom and minimized
- Very good HTML/CSS rendering - posts look just right in the email (see screen shot below)
- Blogger owns the email list and can export it at any time
Feedburner has existing partnerships with Feedblitz and Squeet for their competing products - those partnerships remain in place and bloggers will have a choice as to which of the three services to use.
My recommendation to bloggers: consider using this product. There are a lot of people out there who have not made the jump to RSS readers yet. You want to get your content in front of them, and this is another way to do it. Based on some stats that Fred Wilson (an investor in FeedBurner) published last year, we can expect about 1 email subscriber for every 5 RSS subscribers.
You can register for the TechCrunch daily email in the widget above or in the right sidebar.
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Fantastic. Just what bloggers have been looking for and all under one roof too. You’re right, This will fire well.
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Maybe I am wrong, but Bloget existed already for e-mail suscription… No ?
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Isn’t this what FeedBlitz does?
Hey Mike, Yutter does all of this and a little more for free. We are all about the blog branding and not the service branding. We add your logo to every email, subscribe, unsubscribe and confirmation pages.
We actually just added some analytics and are working on more. More importantly if you do use FeedBurner for your feed, those stats will be counted as well.
I’d love to use it, but I’m getting Feedburner internal errors. Perhaps lots of people are using it now it’s got the TechCrunch treatment.
Feedburner was already giving this out in colloboration with feedblitz earlier, i had one for my site from some time
They have added squeet along with feedblitz now.
I have been using squeet for some time and am very pleased with the interface and support. I recommend it
http://www.squeet.com
Then there is also
http://www.shootthebreeze.net/blogalert/index.php
i’d like to see Techcrunch compare it to zookoda and see which one works best. I chose zookoda initially because it looked like it addressed all the requests you made in your original post.
“Blogger owns the email list and can export it at any time”
This statement concerns me. Is there a privacy policy associated with the service or is that up to each blogger?
nah, i’m pretty sure zookoda kicks its butt:
* feedburner relies on a browser pop-up for confirmation, so if my browser has popups turned off…?
* zookoda lets me edit the subscription form within the zookoda site, which is less likely to uckup my blog template than if i edit it while it’s in my blog template with feedburner.
* zookoda gives me detailed reporting on opens, clickthrus, popular posts, etc. feedburner’s stats still refer to the total audience for my feedburner feed, it doesn’t break out email subscriber separately
* zookoda lets me do one-off mailouts from the zookoda site to, for instance, repeat a mailout to a subscriber who didn’t receive the email in the original sendout
* zookoda renders CSS pretty well too. it also lets me edit the email template and gives me blogger-based templates to start from.
…i’m going to run both subscription forms on my blog for a while and then survey my readers on what they prefer. stay tuned…
I would really be interested to get some more information on how implementing the feedburner email works.
Are you going to follow up on this in a week or so?
Ohad
If your audience is less techy than yours, Mike, I think you’ll see an even higher email/RSS ratio. For Pulse, which I’ve branded as a serialized “networked book” available via RSS, the ratio is more like 1:2 email to RSS.
I can’t say I’m thrilled with the Feedburner stats, either. They’re often late, contradict themselves, and don’t offer much (anything) in the way of customization. And I’m using the Pro version.
I’m very happy with Feedblitz, on the other hand. I’ve got complete customization and branding (with a nice interface, new stats appearing all the time), and variable polling so I can almost exactly specify when readers get the email.
I think this is brilliant. Why?
- Because I can now house all my feed related subscriptions under one roof
- I can brand my emails for free
I have been using Feedblitz (and have been very happy), but this may cause me to switch.
Ooo, I like! I’m not an avid reader of TechCrunch, but I enjoy it, and I think this is just the thing for me.
Looks like a good product, look forward to the first E-Mail!
Who really wants to receive rss through email? Don’t we get enough spam and junk through email already? This seems like a good idea but it isn’t going to be a big change. Most people will go on using RSS readers and their equivalents. My email has enough usage already. Blog-to-Email … No thanks, I’ll pass.
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I don’t see why Google doesn’t go ahead and build rss-to-email into Gmail. It would be perfect. Perhaps there could even be an excellent little app/extension that could automatically subscribe it into your email (regardless of service). I think this could be something that Flock should be working on. Seriously, somewhere along the line, it’s going to have to be that when someone clicks a feed link (any feed link) it is easily handled, giving you the option to subscribe via whatever service you like. I’m talking about the average, everyday user here, not early adopters who have a desktop feedreader. Here’s what I want: I want to click an RSS link and then I want my browser to ask me what to do with it in a simple manner like: “Would you like to subscribe to this?” I click Yes, and then it either gives me options or I pre-set a default service type (and this should include all of those ajax/flash homepages, feed readers, email, etc.) Unfortunately, the word “Feed” doesn’t mean anything to most of the world.
Thanks!
~R
Seeing this service convinced me to offer email subscription on my blog. I’ve been setting up FeedBlitz for clients for some time now, but the branding is awful!
I’d also like to see a really good email to RSS service so I can get email newsletters via feed. The best I’ve found so far is http://mail2rss.org/ and it’s small enough that I’m worried it’s going to go away, as others have before it.
Disclaimer: I’m working closely with Axosoft on the next release of Squeet, which is due soon.
Using Feedburner for email subscriptions is an excellent option for publishers that don’t mind:
- non-compliance with CAN-SPAM;
- providing their readers with a non-scaleable solution for rss to email that offers no way for to manage their subscription(s), define delivery options, or otherwise get the most out of rss to email;
- setting the RSS movement backward by collecting email addresses…are you an email marketer or a blogger? What do you plan on doing with the email addresses? PRIVACY is an essential ingredient of RSS subscription.
The bottom line, as far as Squeet is concerned, is that your readers shouldn’t be forced to choose between using a web- or app-based rss aggregator and a lack of privacy and functionality just because they happen to prefer email delivery. This disregard for readers can say a lot about a publisher, and will eventually become a stain on any feed that practices it.
Look for Squeet’s upcoming new release within the next couple of weeks. It remains dedicated to providing the best product for publishers, readers, and the RSS community - one part of that is the commitment to moving rss forward by respecting the core value of personal privacy.
YES!! I can finally get rid of that FeedBlitz crap.
Feedburner may be overdoing the fair support of the other two feed-to-email services… So far I haven’t used it, but I believe I’ve started the process, just forgot to implement it on my blog.
Today, after reading TechCrunch, I went to Feedburner to set up the new service. It defaulted to Squeet, I copied the script, customized it an placed it on my blog - all the while thinking that this was the new Feedburner service. It wasn’t until I read Fred Wilson’s post that I realized I just installed one of the “other guys”.
Back to Feedburner, where finally I found the option to deactivate the service, then select Feedburner.
Steve Olechowski podcast
“My guest on the show today is Steve Olechowski - Steve is the COO and one of the co-founder’s of FeedBurner.”
http://www.podleaders.com/stev.....i-podcast/
great. more email. who the hell wants that.
all these automated introductions in overfull inboxes do is create more chaos and annoyance.
feeds (of any format) are the way to go. Not more junk mail fighting to get through my spam filters.
email itself needs a revolution. a backwards step to what is was designed for.
i have had too many personal accounts ruined by acts of identity and honesty - only to be abused by systems that coerced me into supplying the ability for that system to diluge my indox with stuff I dont want.
My real world/real time choices are the best algorithm. I want to browse again - not get fed what some script thinks I want.
Feeds to email defeats the original objective - IMHO.
Koz, I don’t think it defeats the original objective. In my mind, the original objective was/is to simply get content to readers without them having to look for it. In other words, send content to someone so they aren’t required to actually visit 45 websites to read 45 blogs. In that way, I think that feed-to-email is a very intuitive method of content delivery. Personally, I have all of my feed-to-email content “skip the inbox” of my Gmail account and label it “Feeds” so I can view it whenever I want. (By the way, I primarily use rssfwd.com)
Just more of my opinion.
~R
Schweet.
Thunderbird has supported blogs for at least the last two releases. The functionality is much better then bloglines for preserving information that you may want to reference/use later on. Its also seems faster and more managable to me. I get the previews via email and then readthe full stories of anything that strickes my fancy.
Siddiq
I’m fascinated by those who seem to have an ideological hatred for email newsletters.
I’m using Feedblitz and am very happy with the fact that they require double opt-in. I would never put anybody on my list anyway, they see an announcement on my blog and that’s it.
My press release service uses a blog and the newsletter subscribers outnumber the newsfeed subscribers 3 to 1. At ProHipHop it’s closer to 2 to 1.
I used to use Bloglet but it failed. I use Feedburner for a lot of things but I’m using the customizable version of Feedblitz and I’d have to see a really good rival appear to make the switch.
Glad to know about some other services from the comments. I’ll do a little roundup at ProHipHop sometime soon.
I have been using Squeet for a few months now and it has been a useful tool for me. I like to have all my web 2.0 posts in gmail so they are searchable. I simply filter them to their own label. I also prefer not to use another application, in this case a reader. I use Firefox’s live bookmarks but recently I have been to busy to take the time to check for new stories. I out grew Livebookmarks so Squeet has kept me up to date until I decide to give a reader a serious try.
Just another vote for Zookoda, though comparing it to the Feedburner Email isn’t exactly fair. Feedburner appears to be very hands-off…you simply give your readers a place to sign up and then they recieve your posts via email. Zookoda is much more indepth. I’ve been using for about 2 months now and am very impressed.
Like the others mentioned above, you can view, edit, and manually add and delete subscribers. The email templates and sign-up forms are completely customizable and they include an excellent reporting feature to analyze how readers responded to the email. Views, bounces, forwards etc.
Also allows one-time emails, for letting readers know about a special event for example in addition to the “Broadcast” feature which is the same as the Feedburner Email.
Feedlinx (http://www.feedlinx.com) rounds out the list with awesome tools for your subscribers. It even has an easy-to-install WordPress plugin.
Email is great for users who aren’t ready for RSS, but what about your sophisticated subscribers who might want both? I use Feedlinx to read the same feeds through email and my feed reader. My feeds are in synch, so if I read a feed in my feed reader I don’t receive it a second time in my email.
For some feeds, I prefer email because email grabs my attention better than my feed reader. I like the flexibility provided by Feedlinx, allowing me to read my feeds across multiple machines, feed readers, and email.
Who really wants to receive rss through email? Don’t we get enough spam and junk through email already? This seems like a good idea but it isn’t going to be a big change. Most people will go on using RSS readers and their equivalents. My email has enough usage already. Blog-to-Email … No thanks, I’ll pass.
they slapped our face but we’re still happy
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say.
Ive had dreams with scenes like that in em, but usually only when I was awake.
PS I wonder how Blunkett would feel about the fact that this same person explained how she understood this way of using words by saying its the kind of thing Haider does in Austria
I tried Yutter and had many problems.
Feedburner is excellent. My only small complaints:
- YouTube videos do not show
- formatting looks terrible in Hotmail in my Mac Safari and Firefox brosers, but fine if reading hotmail from MS Entourage
It’s a great service. A blogger friend of mine tried it, and he said . . . his traffic has improved significantly, with more people coming back to check out updates.
It’s a great way to keep subscribers in the loop about your site/blog.
What is its connection to feedblitz, which we are using now?
Is someone going through your emails?
Are they doing more than reading your email?
Are they sending emails from your account to third party recepients?
Nobody is going to want to get rss through their email account. Its been already said, people will stick to readers but not emails, not with all the other junk clogging up our inboxes we have to sift through.
At times FeedBurner feeds die
Hey what is wrong with the email system?
7 out of 10 times the mailbox owner asks the sysadmin to log into their mailbox.
2 out of 10 times the management asks the technology department to log into various users mailboxes.
1 out of 10 times it is an internal or external hacker.
thanks friends
Wrong.
No, really wrong.
Right now any blog allowing email subscription via RSS is leaving themselves wide open to massive spam of their entire email list, and it will look like the blogger is the spammer.
Have you been getting junk emails that appear to be coming from your own server? Try turning off the feedburner by email option and you’ll still get the spam but it will be broken code, the spam message itself fails.
That may sound like a big pointing finger, it is, and I have the email spam to prove it… all I need to do is turn feedburner email back on and it flows like no tommorow instantly.
I subscribed to my own email to see what the end user sees, it’s not pretty if your blog has been targeted.
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