Making your blog's RSS
feed available so people can subscribe to receive updates via email is
an important part of increasing traffic to your blog. However, if the
design of the emails that subscribers receive from your blog look
terrible, they might not click on the included links to visit your blog.
They might even unsubscribe. Either way, you lose traffic to your blog.
If you use Feedburner to create and manage your blog's feed
and RSS email subscriptions, you can spend fewer than 5-10 minutes
making some simple changes to your blog's RSS email design that turn
poorly formatted or boring RSS email messages into sleek marketing
pieces.
Following are three basic steps that you can do right now, which will
have a significant effect on the user experience of your RSS
subscription email messages. Begin by logging into your Feedburner
account and navigating to the Email Subscriptions section within the
Publicize tab of your account. Next, follow the steps below:
1. Customize Communication Preferences
Click on the Communications Preferences link in Feedburner's Email
Subscriptions section, and make sure the Email "From" Address field uses
the email address that you want recipients to see as the sender of your
RSS email messages. It's important to use a real email address,
preferably with your blog's URL as the extension. An email address for a
real person is less likely to be flagged as spam than an anonymous
address such as "contact@email.com" or another general mailbox
description.
Next, enter a subject and body text into the Confirmation Email text
boxes for the confirmation message that is sent to people when they
initially subscribe to receive your RSS feed updates via email. The
purpose of this email message is to confirm subscribers' email
addresses, so be personable and explain that their subscriptions are not
active until they click on the activation link in the message body.
Be sure to click the Save button to put all of your edits into effect.
2. Customize Email Branding
Click the Email Branding link within the Email Subscriptions section
of your Feedburner account to customize the actual RSS feed email that
your subscribers receive when you publish new content on your blog.
First, enter an intriguing and relevant title that will appear in the
subject line of subscribers' email inboxes. You can also choose to
include the title of your most recent blog post and a count of how many
new posts are included in the email.
Next, upload a logo image from your hard drive to your blog and copy the URL
for the uploaded image to your clipboard. Return to the Email Branding
section of your Feedburner account, and paste the URL into the Logo URL
field. The logo will appear at the top of the email messages that
subscribers receive when new content is available on your blog. It is
recommended that the logo be no more than 200 pixels by 200 pixels, and
it must be in JPEG, PNG, or GIF format. You can use one of the free or
affordable tools to edit images if you need to change the size or format of your blog logo or other graphic to use in your RSS email messages.
Finally, use the font, size, and color options to format the content
in your RSS email messages. Headline settings refer to blog post titles,
and Body settings refer to the body text of each individual blog post.
Scroll down to see how your chosen settings will look in the Preview
area.
When you're satisfied with the email branding settings, click the
Save button. All of your changes will be visible in the next scheduled
RSS email message that is sent.
3. Customize Delivery Options
Finally, navigate to the Delivery Options section of your Feedburner
account and choose the timezone and email delivery time from the
drop-down menus provided. This is the time you want your RSS email
messages to be sent to subscribers each day that new content is
available. Consider the topic of your blog and when your target audience
is most likely to be online, viewing email, and reading content. Choose
a delivery time that is likely to put your RSS email message in their
inboxes when they have the time to read it.
Once your delivery settings are configured, click the Save button and
your design optimization is complete. Be sure to subscribe to your blog
via email, so you can see your blog's subscription email messages just
like your audience of subscribers sees them.
Source weblogs.about.com
3 Steps to Make Better RSS Email Subscription Design with Feedburner
