In my recent First Impression review of Aweber (a newsletter service with some nice features for bloggers) a number of readers mentioned that the thing that was stopping them from using Aweber was that those who subscribe to them using Aweber’s Blog Broadcast option would not be counted in the Feedburner RSS subscriber counter that so many bloggers use.
Aweber have heard this feedback and in the last couple of days have started reporting their numbers to Feedburner. As a result we’ll start seeing bloggers who use the ‘blog broadcast’ service with higher subscriber numbers reported.
This makes the Blog Broadcast option a fairly attractive package now and one that I’m considering moving over to for a number of reasons (note: to this point I only use Aweber for weekly newsletters, and have not use the ‘blog broadcast’ feature).
What I like about it most is that it allows bloggers to have lots of control over how the blog broadcast emails look and are timed.
Most bloggers who offer the ability for readers to subscribe to their RSS feed via email tend to use Feedburner’s own service – a reliable service that I’ve been using for quite some time.
However Aweber adds some great functionality including:
Scheduling – Aweber’s service allows you to not only choose the time of the day that you want to send blog broadcasts to readers but allows you to send them out at certain times of the week or month. So you could choose to send them every morning at 6am so readers have something to read when they get up – or you could make it a once a week service on Fridays as a wrap up of the week) or you could do it at the end of the month. In comparison to Feedburner’s ability to schedule based upon the time of day Aweber’s features win hands down.
Design – Feedburner does give some limited design options with their service. You can add a logo, choose font color, style and size of headings and the body of your emails – but that’s about it. To be honest I quite like the design of their emails – however if you want more control Aweber again offers some great options. They offer 50 premade templates to publishers to choose from (html and text based). These enable you to brand your broadcasts to a much higher degree than just a logo.
Aweber also introduced today the ability to automatically track what links readers are clicking on in Blog Broadcast emails. This was already available but had to be manually activated. You can now set it for every email you send and get the nice reports that Aweber produces after each email to let you know what your readers are clicking on in your posts.
Keep in mind that Aweber charges for their services while Feedburner’s are free. As a result most bloggers will probably stick with Feedburner which offers a reliable service – however I can see Aweber as becoming a more attractive option for many bloggers who are blogging on a more serious level and who want to customize their RSS to email service to a higher degree.
That says a lot to me when a company listens to people’s suggestions/complaints and acts upon them. I’ve heard of aweber before but was reluctant to try them because of the above mentioned complaints. But, I will give them a shot and see how it goes.
I love the fact I can schedule my feeds. So often I post at weird times. I’d love to have some control over when my readers see the feeds. I really think one day a week would be nice, say Thursdays all my posts get fed.
I’ve always wanted to use AWeber for my mailing list, and now I think is the perfect time to try them out.
The only fault I see in this is that webmasters will be able to “game” their RSS numbers. There are those who actually have more people in their mailing list than they do RSS subscribers. Although it might be a good way to boost RSS numbers, it’s really just convincing people to pay extra for it by using AWeber’s service.
Darren, I use the feedburner email for some of my subscribers and my main complaint is that when the email comes in it does NOT have my name as the FROM email instead has the Blog Name.
Some people may like this but this creates a lot of confusion to some subscribers and they fail to see/notice the email since it does not come from me.
So the question is: If I use Aweber can this problem i have be fixed to where the email appears to come from ME?
Thanks
Great info on Aweber, been thinking about trying them out.
The scheduling would be more useful if it can be setup by the subscriber, not by me as the publisher. Is that a possibility with any subscription services on email?
To me, this would be far more useful to my readers than me picking when to get it. I’d even consider subscribing some of my blogs on email instead of RSS if this was available.
I have Aweber set up for my blog and still figuring out how to get the most out of it. The fact they are now reporting to feedburner is good news indeed …
I’ve been using Aweber for a number of months now and I too find it very useful to be able to send out your broadcasts at a specific time of day. Like Darren mentioned, I usually send out the broadcasts early in the morning so that my readers have my email in their inbox first thing in the morning. This really makes my website “jump” and it’s always fun to view the stats as more and more visitors come back to my website.
I have been using feedburner. Though I havn’t used aweber, I liked the concept that a reader can set the schedule for getting blog post delivered.
Setting the schedule is an important piece of functionality.
That is really awesome news for Internet Marketers like myself that use Aweber daily to build lists. Do you know, does the blog optin allow you to send them broadcasts too?
This would then be a huge addition to my new blog that I’m just kicking off
My blog has no where near the readers yours has Darren, but this sounds like a great tool that I should get my hands on before its to late and they skyrocket the price.
I will probablly check it out myself as well and thank you for letting us all know about it!
I have a question if possible !
Do you mean that the number of email subscribers will actually add up to the number of RSS subscribers in feedburner widget ?
I have recently had a crash that caused my blog to go down for 3 days and my rss feedcount went down to 1 reader although I do have about 200 email subscribers !
Thanks
Thanks all for letting us know what you think of the integration!
Mike,
It’s possible to set up multiple groups of subscribers/schedules (example: people who want daily emails vs. weekly ones) and allow people to choose a group when signing up. Just requires a couple extra steps to set up.
Email me at justinpremick [at] aweber.com if you want more details.
Loren,
With AWeber you can set the “from” line on your emails (both name and email address) to be yourself, your blog or whatever you feel is appropriate for your subscribers.
Antoine,
If you send your blog newsletter through AWeber using our Blog Broadcast tool, the # of email subscribers you have for that blog will be reported to FeedBurner, and they’ll then add that to your RSS subscriber totals – so that the number displayed on your chicklet aggregates both RSS and email subscribers.
In your FeedBurner stats you’ll be able to see what proportion of your subscribers are email ones vs. other sources (Google Reader, Bloglines, Newsgator, etc).
Hope this helps!
I was under the impression (from a past investigation of Aweber a few months ago) that Aweber recommends you NOT use their RSS Broadcast with Feedburner feeds…
Is anyone using Feedburner “burned” feeds with Aweber RSS Broadcast that can speak to that?
@loren nason
You can do so by using Feebblitz’s service.
Thanks for all of great posts about RSS to email!
Sounds like I’ll have to give AWeber a try. I think they have all of the features I’m looking for. Currently I’m using FeedBurner for blog updates and GetResponse for other email marketing – and I’m not crazy about either!
Ideally, I want an email marketing service that also offers blog updates that can be scheduled and customized. I don’t mind paying for a service, but I only want to pay for what I want, need and like. And I’d much rather have only 1 service that fits all of my email marketing needs. So I’m going to give AWeber a try ASAP!
Hi,
I decided to add email subscriptions to my blog this week. I looked at bothe feedbliotz and aweber and choose aweber. Both offer a good set of functionality plus subscriber numbers but the number 1 reason I went for aweber is that the feedblitz site was down most of the time on the day I wanted to use it. Then when it came back it was so slow which rendered it unusable. Call me fickle or what…..
cheers
Tony
My blog is still in the process of growing and starting up but I feel that after a month it has been long enough for me to start doing this myself. I’ll give it a try and mention how it goes :)