10 Things a Real Email Newsletter Can Do That Feedburner Can’t

Calling Feedburner’s subscribe by email option your email newsletter is like calling a scooter your car. Yes, scooters get you from A to B and so do cars. But cars get you there in comfort and style (especially ones with all the bells and whistles).

Yes, Feedburner “newsletters” send content to inboxes. But since it’s the exact same content someone can get by going to your blog, it’s really just a fancy feature called RSS to email.

You should absolutely offer your readers this option. BUT, it’s not technically a newsletter, AND you should get an Email Service Provider to burn your feed for you.

Switching over to an ESP is like selling your blog feed’s rusty old scooter and setting it up with a totally pimped ride. Bells and whistles ga-lore! Let’s name a few shall we?

1.    Know who is actually opening your emails

Yes numbers are nice, but names are better. Does your mom subscribe? You’ll know if she opens them because your ESP will show the email address for every single open. You’ll also know how many of your opens are unique vs duplicates.

2.    Make your email look like your blog

You’ve probably worked really hard on your blog to make it look awesome. Then Feedburner goes in there and sends the text in a plain-jane format. Customizing a template in your ESP to match the look of your blog is really easy. If you have ads, you can sell advertising space on your email. (Click the thumbnails to see the before and after)

3.     Add links back to your blog and to your social media sites

This is where the power is! Email subscribers are your most engaged readers; link back to your site and to your comments to keep them part of the action.

4.    Record what links people click on, how many times and who is doing the clicking

This is the beginning of tracking your impact. In Feedburner, you just get a generic impressions number. In an ESP, you can know exactly what links are getting noticed. You can learn which calls to action work and which don’t.

5.    Find out when, where and how your emails are viewed

What time of day gets the most opens? An ESP can tell you that. Where in the world are your readers? An ESP can tell you that, too. What browsers do they use? Mobile phones? Desktops? An ESP can tell you that too.

6.    Keep a clean list – know which emails are bad and do some house cleaning from time to time

If you’ve got 500 subscribers, you might be feeling pretty good about yourself. If you find out that only 12 of them are reading it and 372 of your addresses are old and gone bad, well, you’ll know you have some work to do.

7.    Know who unsubscribed

Unsubscribes happen, even if you are doing everything right. But if it starts happening in huge droves, you might need to take a look at who is leaving you and adjust course or go after more of the people that are staying.

8.    Spy on your readers and learn what social media sites they prefer

If you embed social media sharing options on your RSS to Email template (which you absolutely should!) just watching the click you can learn where you readers like to hang out. That way you can focus your efforts where you’ll get the highest results.

9.    Know how many times your email is forwarded

This is just a feel good stat, but if you see someone doing it more and more often, you know exactly who is doing it. Thanking them with a personal email will really make them feel special and appreciated (and therefore more loyal and more willing to keep doing it!)

10. Email them with opt-ins for other email lists.

Since your subscribers are your biggest fans, this is the group you want to tap into when you are ready to expand your offerings. When their addresses are stored in an ESP you can easily ask them if they want to join your other lists and your ESP will add them automatically.

What do you think? Can you see uses for the information that becomes available through an ESP? How would it help you connect better with your customers/readers?