Blog Broadcast: FeedBurner Integration, Click Tracking

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Blog Broadcast: FeedBurner Integration, Click Tracking

Posted by Justin Premick

Fresh on the heels of the advanced rss to email scheduling options released last week come two new enhancements to help bloggers send email newsletters.

With these features, you’ll be able to take greater advantage of the social proof that FeedBurner’s subscriber counts provide, and more easily track what actions your email subscribers take when they get your newsletter.

AWeber Now Reports Email Subscriber Counts to FeedBurner

We now report how many email subscribers your blog has to FeedBurner.

So if you have a little chicklet on your blog like this: Sample FeedBurner Chicklet

showing how many people subscribe to your blog, and you collect email subscribers via AWeber, you’ll see that subscriber count jump as FeedBurner counts your email subscribers along with your RSS ones — just use your FeedBurner URL when setting up your Blog Broadcast!

Put Your Feedburner Feed Into the Blog Broadcaster

I recently mentioned in passing to a blogger that we would be rolling this out soon, and like the blogosphere got excited even before this went live…

See What People Are Saying About This Feature

…totally blow Feedburner Email subscription away…

We all know how much of a credibility tool the little feedcount chicklet is when it comes to assessing the worth of a blog…

I am very excited about having all of my subscriber numbers in FeedBurner.

Some of you have noticed the jump in your subscriber counts already and wondered when we were going to say something about this integration.

Well, the cat’s officially out of the bag now — we’ve even put out a press release announcing the integration.

Press Release: AWeber Announces FeedBurner Integration

If you’re not already using your FeedBurner URL to create your Blog Broadcasts, you may want to switch to take advantage of this reporting!

If you do this, keep in mind that Blog Broadcaster may think it’s a whole new feed (since you’re putting in a new feed URL). So if you’re currently sending your emails automatically, switch over to manually reviewing them for a bit. See our Knowledge Base for details.

Enable Click Tracking for All Blog Broadcasts

Many users — bloggers or not — take advantage of our click tracking tool to track subscriber activity and gauge the effectiveness of their messages.

Up until now, bloggers wanting to do this for their Blog Broadcasts had to turn click tracking on for individual issues of their email newsletters. This is totally doable, of course, but it’s not ideal.

So we made it better yesterday. Now, it’s easy to turn on Click Tracking automatically for all messages created by your Blog Broadcast!

You can either turn on Click Tracking while editing your Blog Broadcast settings:

Turn on Click Tracking by Marking the Checkbox

Or you can turn it on from the main Blog Broadcast page of your account:

In this example, click tracking is off. Click the text link to enable it.

Bloggers: Grow Your Readership by Offering an Email Newsletter

Offering readers of your blog the ability to subscribe via email, rather than limiting your subscribe options to RSS only, is a great way…

…you know what? Rather than listen to me make a pitch on our own email marketing blog about why email newsletters are so great for bloggers (and they are), go see what other bloggers have to say about it.

This isn’t just my own $.02 here — bloggers really do benefit from sending newsletters.

Convert RSS to Email Newsletters: Helpful Resources

To learn more about how you can use AWeber to engage more blog readers, check out our Knowledge Base:

What Are Blog Broadcasts?

How Can I Use AWeber With My Blog?

Category: RSS/Blog Broadcasts

Tags: New Features, rss to email

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13 Responses

Karin H.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:01 am

How about that!

Just today I created my very first blog broadcast with AWeber. Talk about bloggers synchronicity!
Alex
February 5th, 2008 at 10:15 am

Justin,

Thank you for mentioning my blog post and more importantly commenting on it

You guys did an awesome job that helps us, non-purists bloggers who see the value of using a complete blend of Blogging and eMail marketing to get the social proof big blogging pros enjoy!

Thank you.
Ryan
February 5th, 2008 at 11:37 am

Blog broadcast is the reason I signed up for AWeber. It’s working great so far, and it has really helped show me the power of an e-mail list. Can’t wait to start doing more with the AWeber services.
The Marketing VA » Blog Archive » AWeber and Feedburner Unite!
February 5th, 2008 at 12:56 pm

[…] I’ve been using both of these services for some time now, although separately, because I like to see all my blog subscribers in one area. This morning, AWeber announced that they’re now working directly with Feedburner, allowing subscribers that signup through AWeber (using their blog broadcast service) to show up in your feedburner subscriber page. Hooray! […]
Alex
February 5th, 2008 at 3:01 pm

I noticed this change with Feedburner first hand earlier this week. For what it’s worth, I’d actual prefer Aweber to not report the total amount of users subscribed to FeedBurner. Any chance of making this an optional checkbox? I consider my e-mail subscriber count to be a different metric than rss subscriber count, so for me it didn’t make much sense to artificially inflate my feedburner subscriber numbers. I can certainly see where that would be valuable though. Easy solution for now, just use your non-feedburner rss url in your blog broadcast. Thats what I did.
Justin Premick
February 6th, 2008 at 9:16 am

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your feedback!

When you view the breakdown of your subscribers within FeedBurner, you’ll be able to see clearly how many of them are your email subscribers. That may be helpful to you in determining your RSS vs. email readerships.

I don’t anticipate us making the FeedBurner reporting a checkbox-activated/deactivated option, but as you’ve indicated someone not wishing to include their email subscribers in their FeedBurner counts could simply use their non-FeedBurner feed URL to generate their Blog Broadcasts.
How I Increased My Feedburner Subscriber Number By 47% In One Day » Internet Business
February 11th, 2008 at 7:06 am

[…] Then I found out that if you use your Feedburner RSS URL for the Blog Broadcast, your Aweber subscribers will be counted in the Feedburner total. This was announced on the Aweber blog on February 5, although I believe it was active for a little time before that. […]
Alex
March 2nd, 2008 at 12:55 am

Blog broadcasting is an awesome feature that I didn’t know Aweber had: I didn’t see it under the features list, although I am still doing my research. I almost chose another autoresponder just today because I noticed that they had this feature, in addition to all of the other expected features (that Aweber has also). I am still deciding which autoresponder to use: anyone using this feature? Does it work as well as expected? Any problems with it?
Sales Funnel Secrets Blog » Blog Archive » AWeber & Feedburner Merge
March 4th, 2008 at 11:01 am

[…] Just today, we announced integration with FeedBurner — now, your blog’s email subscribers through AWeber will be counted in your FeedBurner subscriber total! […]
Should You Integrate Feedburner and Aweber? | Bill McIntosh
April 1st, 2008 at 6:04 pm

[…] little while ago, Aweber announced their integration with Feedburner, which was quickly reported by problogger.net. Somehow, […]
Ryan
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:05 pm

I’m kind of confused about how my aweber list integrates into the feedburner chicklet. I have a list of about 900 email subscribers and about 200 rss subscribers (through feedburner) and 100 or so rss email subscribers (through feedburner).

Currently I only send out follow up messages and regular broadcast messages to my aweber list.

How can I add the 900 aweber email subscribers to the feedburner rss chicklet count?

Do I have to send a blog broadcast? I don’t want to email my aweber list every article of my blog but I still want to have it count for the rss chicklet.

(The aweber email newsletters are different than my blog posts).
Justin Premick
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:20 am

Ryan,

To have your subscriber numbers reported to FeedBurner, you need to set up a Blog Broadcast and enter your FeedBurner feed as the feed URL. This is how we know what to report to FeedBurner.

If your blog’s email newsletter content is different from your RSS feed, what I’d do is set your blog broadcast to NOT send automatically, and to set it only to create a broadcast once per month.

Then, when the Blog Broadcast tool creates that monthly broadcast, just delete it.
Ryan
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:08 pm

Justin, thanks for the fast response. That’s a great idea, I’ll give it a try.