Feedburner + Wordpress = Free & Easy Email Marketing Solution
After search engine marketing, marketing to your in-house optin email list of customers or prospects is the 2nd most effective form of online marketing for increasing sales. Many individuals or businesses with a small email house list that I talk to still send their email newsletters directly from Outlook (bcc) or Gmail. But when your list start to grow, and if you care about delivery, filtering and the presentation of your messaging, this can become cumbersome. Also, many subscribers no longer like to share their coveted email addresses anymore, and prefer subscribing to RSS feeds instead.
Well, there is a solution, it’s free and you may not need to sign up for any new accounts at all. If you currently use either WordPress for your blog (WordPress.org is the most popular blogging software available), and/or Feedburner (an RSS feed service now owned by Google) for managing / tracking your RSS subscribers, then you are all set. If not, both are easy to sign up for and setup. Here’s how you do it;
WordPress
OK, there are 2 ways to get a blog set up with wordpress, both of which are free. If you already have a web hosting account (I’d likely think you do if you host a website for your business), then they should very likely support a custom installation of the WordPress blog software (you just need them to support PHP/MySQL – most do since these are open sourceE). Just go to WordPress.org to download it right from the homepage, or check with your host if they already offer the latest download. My hosting provider at DreamHost actually provides WordPress blog setups with a 1-click install – super easy and fast to get up and running, especially for newbies. I’ve set up over a dozen blogs using this service alone.
FeedBurner
Now owned by Google, Feedburner has expanded it’s features to include not only RSS hosting and tracking services, but also email marketing. If you already have a Google Account, then you can simply login to Feedburner and start tracking your RSS feeds. You need to copy your WordPress RSS feed to Feedburner to start tracking it. Then, just click on your RSS feed, and go to the “Publicize” tab. From there, under “Services” on the left, you’ll see an option for “Email Subscriptions”. This function allows you to automatically send email updates every time you update an article via your RSS feed.
There is a 24 hour delay prior to sending out an email, so that you can finalize edits or updates. You can then add a snippet of code into any HTML page which will allow visitors to subscribe via email. Or you can simply include a link to a form hosted on Feedburner. Either way, your articles are nicely formatted in HTML and sent out with images and links all as you lay them out on your blog.