I want to share with you one of key changes we made with our blog. Specifically, we made a change to how we deliver updates to subscribers via email. We no longer use Google’s FeedBurner service to deliver our blog posts via email. When we made this change, I was asked by some of you why we did it. Well, I’ll help shed some light about why we made this change in this three-part blog series.
1. Introduction – An explanation as to why we moved away from FeedBurner
2. Tutorial – Step-by-step guide explaining how to migrate to Infusionsoft
3. Results – A look at the performance, lessons and more.
Don’t get me wrong — I love FeedBurner. For the past several years, it had become the de facto standard in managing (and delivering) blog-based RSS content on behalf of blog owners. However, since Google acquired the service, product development seems to have stalled and communication has been unusually light. The lack of frequent and transparent updates from the team has led publishers to become less trusting in the service. We have often relied on their popular (and free) email delivery feature, where subscribers would receive an email when a new post was published. In the recent months, a series of actions have occurred that would disconcert even the most loyal of users. Phil Hollows, founder and CEO of FeedBlitz, an alternative service to FeedBurner, offers a play-by-play analysis on these changes
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I’m not saying FeedBurner is dead or necessarily provides a bad service. For many years, it was the ideal solution for bloggers, but it’s no longer a service we can rely on for business purposes. I’ve also carried a bit of guilt that our own content was being delivered by a different email provider (Google). Our sales and marketing software is incredibly powerful, so why would we use another service?
I’m sure you can understand that the idea of having a reliable blog-to-email service was quite attractive. After some research, I didn’t have to look too far to find an alternative method of delivering blog updates to subscribers. My search resulted in discovering a great add-on developed by Marketing Mavens aptly named Maven RSS-to-Email: The Blogger’s Delight. Alternatively, you can use FeedBolt, too. They are both respectable solutions for publishers who want to deliver RSS content to subscribers through Infusionsoft.
Configuring this service was actually much easier than I thought! If you’re savvy with merge fields in Infusionsoft (you know, ~Contact.FirstName~), you’ll breeze right through the setup. All you need is your blog’s feed address, Infusionsoft API key and a tag in your application used to target recipients. After some testing, you’ll be ready to export subscribers and hit the kill-switch on FeedBurner email delivery.
In my next post, I’ll describe exactly how to complete this migration along with the results. As a teaser, I’ve encountered a number of (good) surprises and have slept easier at night since I’ve made the change. I’ll also detail a few risks to watch out for along the way.
What questions do you have about migrating away from FeedBurner? I would love to provide answers about this change in my next post. Leave me a comment below!
Image credit: violinha
Read more about this post, An Inside Look at Migrating from FeedBurner to Infusionsoft (Part 1) on The Infusionsoft Blog.