You know that big, daunting task you keep putting off even though you know once you do it, your life will be a lot less complicated? I do. That was me about three weeks ago, before I migrated our automated blog subscriptions from FeedBurner over to Infusionsoft. While it took a lot of work, it actually felt really good to get my hands dirty and the feeling of accomplishment that accompanied the final transfer made it all worth it.
If you’re comfortable using Infusionsoft, HTML and want to deliver blog posts automatically to your contacts, you’ll get a lot out of this tutorial.
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.
Now that you’re ready to make the switch, let’s get started.
For your convenience, I have included an in-depth video tutorial at the bottom of this post.
Prerequisites
You will need full access to your FeedBurner account, Infusionsoft account and a paid subscription to Maven RSS to Email or FeedBolt. Also, be prepared to invest approximately 3-4 hours to complete the whole process that I describe below. I’ll walk you through how to migrate your blog email delivery from FeedBurner to Infusionsoft using Maven RSS to Email, but the steps are very similar to replicate for FeedBolt.
How to Switch from FeedBurner to Infusionsoft
STEP 1. Export your existing email subscribers from FeedBurner and download it as a CSV file. Do this by logging in and going to your Email Subscriptions section. Then download the list of subscribers by clicking ‘View Subscriber Details.’
STEP 2. Review the exported subscribers and familiarize yourself with the data structure. In particular, you’ll notice the “Subscribed” and the “Status” columns. ‘Subscribed’ refers to the date of initial opt-in and ‘Status’ refers to the state of the subscription.
STEP 3. You’ll now import these contacts into Infusionsoft. It may be preferable to create a Custom Field to store the “Subscribed” date for future reference and data analysis. If you’re not sure, appending this data to the Person Notes field will be fine. However, there are some important points to keep in mind about this data import:
–People did not grant you permission to market your products and services outside the scope of your blog.
–Many of the emails will be listed as ‘Active’ but are actually abandoned email addresses. We’ll talk about this later.
–Right now, it’s best to not send them anything yet. Simply focus on getting them imported into Infusionsoft.
STEP 4. Create a tag in Infusionsoft that will be used to identify your active subscribers. Right now, don’t do anything with it … but know what this tag is; it comes into play later. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to apply this tag to the imported list of contacts, but you don’t have to do it yet. Also, create a “test” tag and add yourself to it so you can do testing later. For example, I used “Daily Blog Update” and “Blog Subscription Test” respectively.
STEP 5. Configure Maven RSS to Email to use your Infusionsoft API Key in the ‘Settings’ link at the top. Once you complete this, click the Products link and then click “Access Now” for the RSS product. Fill in the fields for your blog name and the RSS feed address. Finally, choose the tag used for blog post delivery.
IMPORTANT: Do not activate the blog delivery yet! At this point – for safety reasons – set up the delivery tag to use the test tag you created earlier. If you haven’t done so already, add this tag to your own Contact Record within Infusionsoft.
STEP 6. You can skip this step entirely if you wish to create a new email template from scratch! Create your email template used for blog updates. Maven RSS to Email gives you a blank slate, so it may be preferred to create your new template from within Infusionsoft. Simply mock up how you want it to look for blog subscribers. Once you create this template, you will want to view the raw HTML code for it so you can copy it over to Maven RSS to Email. When you paste your HTML code, paste it into the HTML input field of the template editor.
STEP 7. Now you need to update the template to use the Merge Fields found within Maven RSS to Email. It’s important to note the distinction between Infusionsoft’s ~Contact.FirstName~ and Maven’s {{title}}. What’s especially exciting about this is that you can use both sets of these merge fields within your template.
As an insider tip, you can include the Infusionsoft Merge Field ~Company.HTMLCanSpamAddressBlock~ so you can display postal address in a way that fits nicely in your design. If you don’t use this Merge Field, you will end up with an email displaying your mailing address twice.
Remember that Maven RSS to Email is a third-party application and your templates do not save automatically like it does in Infusionsoft. You will want to hit “Save Work” frequently as you’re working to prevent lost work if you accidentally close your browser tab (like I regrettably did).
STEP 8. You’re almost done, so hang in there! Test out your template by using the “Test it Out” section. Since you tagged yourself, you will receive a functional and readable email message.
STEP 9. You will want to send an email confirmation (formerly, double opt-in) to your newly imported contacts. There are a couple ways to do this, but you will want to use an Email Builder template and you will want to run an action when user clicks on the email confirmation link to add to your blog delivery tag that you created earlier in Step #4. For guidance on how to create email confirmation links so you can insert them into email templates, read this help article and this one, too.
–An email confirmation message is a great way to set and reinforce expectations with your contacts.
–Don’t use this as an opportunity to talk about your other products and services; the only call to action should be to confirm their interest.
–Consider including language that communicates how often you will publish new posts, what topics you write about and why you are asking them again to confirm their interest.
STEP 10. Finally, it’s time to tie up your loose ends. Be sure to deactivate your FeedBurner Email Delivery, verify your blog is not redirecting its feed to FeedBurner (ideally) and your delivery and test tags are configured correctly. This will make sure that your subscribers don’t accidentally get two copies of the same post in their inbox.
If you made it to this point, CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve completed all the necessary steps to automatically deliver future blog posts to your contacts with Infusionsoft.
To Double Opt-In or Not?
I want to take a moment to address why using a confirmed email (double opt-in) model will help you achieve great results. If you don’t confirm your old blog subscribers, you risk getting an unwanted call from our Email Compliance Team … and nobody wants that.
I only had about 15% of our blog subscribers confirm their interest when I sent our email confirmation request. This was interesting … why would only a margin of our list want to receive our blog posts? Well, I didn’t consider the fact that I emailed them right before Thanksgiving, along with every other major online retailer.
I decided to wait it out and sent an additional email confirmation request after Thanksgiving to those who did not open or click the link in my previous email and it resulted in another 25%! A week later, I sent a final broadcast to those who did not open and click previously and 10% confirmed their interest. The other fundamentals in these broadcasts performed well, but it was evident that performance was fading — I hit a performance ceiling and there wasn’t much need to do more of them. The period of time between these confirmations was about a month, so consider that as a safe “grace period” to confirm people’s interest again.
This confirmed the theory I had that FeedBurner subscribers were not necessarily as active as I thought. The bounce rate was consistently high (~7%), but wasn’t alarming and was expected. I correlated those who didn’t open and click the emails often had an opt-in date that was older than seven months. After going through this great length to confirm our subscribers, I’ve noticed they have become more engaged by their traffic behavior on our blog. I would venture to guess that you would likely see similar results, too.
You’re probably thinking, “Joe, you cut your list down by like half by adopting a confirmed opt-in model!” Look, list size is a vanity metric just like Twitter followers or Facebook Likes. I may have cut my list down by half, but those who stayed are active, engaged and interested in reading more blog posts from us in the future. If someone doesn’t open or click your emails, what business value do they provide you? Don’t let ego get in the way of making a sensible email marketing decision.
If you have questions about using Maven RSS to Email, be sure to read their documentation included throughout their application. If you’re still stumped, go ahead and ask below, I will be happy to help in whatever way I can.
Video
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Read more about this post, An Inside Look at Migrating from FeedBurner to Infusionsoft (Part 2) on The Infusionsoft Blog.