Newsflash Email Blast Upgraded

FeedBlitz offers direct emails to subscribers as well as RSS to mail; this is the newsflash feature (at Newsletters - Mailings - Newsflash Email Blast). You can use it to send non-blog emails to a list (or a segment of a list, defined by email addresses or custom fields).

FeedBlitz has added a new step to Newsflash creation that enabling marketers to jump-start their next missive by basing it on one that was previously sent; it's a great time saver if you want to re-use some carefully crafted HTML mail or a nicely turned phrase.

Updated WordPress Plugin

A new version (0.91) of the FeedBlitz WP plugin has been posted at http://assets.feedblitz.com/feedblitzmembermail.zip to resolve conflicts at sites who also have the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin installed. You should now be able to use both at the same time!

"Garbled" mail...

Hi All:

We've had a few instances today (Friday June 12) where the occasional recipient received a "garbled" message. It seems to be pretty rare and somewhat random but nonetheless it's not OK and so a dial that was recently tweaked and which appears to have provoked the problem is being duly untweaked ASAP. Everything will all be sorted in time for the overnight runs tonight (Friday). Apologies to those affected.

Thanks

Phil

New WordPress Email Plugin Integrates Subscriber and User Registration

I'm pleased to announce a public beta of FeedBlitz's very first WordPress plugin!

The FeedBlitz "Member Mail" plugin enables hosted WordPress blogs to integrate email newsletter signup with the user registration screen. With the plugin activated, the visitor selects a "subscribe me" checkbox when they register for an account on your site (see the example on the left). As well as registering the user, enabling the FeedBlitz checkbox seamlessly starts FeedBlitz's mandatory dual opt-in email subscription process.

You get the benefit of simplifying the subscription process for visitors, thereby greatly increasing the odds of gaining a subscriber as well as a user. Crucially, you get all this without having to work with the FeedBlitz API, which up until now was the only way to achieve this effect. Instead, just drop in the plugin, activate it and you're up and running.

You can also customize the text next to the checkbox. However, like all WordPress plugins, it won't work on wordpress.com sites. It only offers email subscriptions to your blog (so no IM or Twitter options). The plugin also does not eliminate the need for a regular subscription form or link on every page of your blog, since you want to be able to capture subscribers who aren't users, are visiting directly from search engines, or who are already users who will never go have cause to go back through the registration process. You can generate a new RSS to email subscription form at any time at Newsletters - Forms - Subscription Forms.

We've tested it on WordPress 2.7 but I see no reason right now why it shouldn't work on 2.5 or later (no doubt someone will tell me if I'm wrong :-) ). Support via the usual channels, comments welcome. You do of course have to have an active FeedBlitz account and an RSS to email newsletter set up. Links to help you with this are in the plugin configuration screen.

Download the FeedBlitz WordPress plugin here.

One final note: Thank you to Jenn Mattern (follow her on Twitter @queryfreewriter) for helping kick the tires pre-release.

Outlook hangs opening emails - solved

Several users recently reported issues with Outlook opening our emails and Outlook "hanging" waiting for images to be downloaded. This issue not only affected FeedBlitz but also FeedBurner and presumably anyone else trying to send email based on certain RSS feeds. It was something of a mystery to us since we hadn't changed anything that might have caused the problem.

The culprit, as found by Google Groups user Kevinbuckleywfb in this thread http://groups.google.com/group/publicity-tools/browse_thread/thread/33377c0ce50bc038?pli=1 was a malformed image URL in some Blogger blogs that causes Outlook to hang looking for a non-existent image (my guess is that it is interpreting the opening "//" as a UNC path "\\" and scouring your local network for machines and files that simply aren't there, which can take some time).

Anyway, as of 3:35pm eastern today (June 2nd) all FeedBlitz emails will now fix the malformed URL responsible if it's in your source feed (whether directly from Blogger or via FeedBlitz or FeedBurner RSS services) and the issue should not recur in emails from us going forward. I also know that the Blogger team is aware of the issue and will no doubt have a fix in place shortly for everyone else.

FeedBlitz RSS Metrics

It's been a while since I've posted here - we've been busy with the new RSS service launched in late March. Execution is key and for the last couple of months we've been tweaking the dials and making small incremental improvements as we've gone along to keep things going smoothly as we've grown. Time, then, for a quick highlight reel for FeedBlitz, the rapidly growing FeedBurner alternative.

• From a standing start we now are already hosting nearly 2,500 active feeds.
• Reporting is faster with:
• Deeper drill-down into reach and activity
• A new time range selector.
• A new "today so far" option.
• Large feed handling is better: If your feed is >512k we'll simply serve the newest articles up to that limit so that your readers always get your latest news.
• SSL is now supported for feed readers.

These improvements complement higher profile changes like our FeedBurner Compatibility Mode, Top Articles autoposter, feed merging splice, tag-based feed filtering parameters, RSS SEO and Google Analytics integration.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the email automation side of things is growing like gangbusters too.

• Active circulation is now well over 10.2 million.
• Our largest list now has over 2.4 million individual subscribers.
• Monthly mailing volume is now well over 110 million updates a month with weekday volumes averaging ~5 MM messages per day.

Thanks to everyone who's using our new RSS service for greater control, branding and timeliness; we'll be innovating further in the coming months!

May 15: Brief unscheduled maintenance under way

We need to apply a fix this morning; limited functionality for the email service for half an hour or so.

update 13:10 eastern - well, that took longer than we expected but all functionality is up and running and mailings are being caught up. Sorry for the hassle there.

FeedBurner Compatibility Mode for Easier Feed Migration

FeedBlitz's RSS service has added a "FeedBurner Compatibility Mode" option to simplify the migration process away from FeedBurner. When enabled, third party blogging extensions and redirects that are hard coded for FeedBurner should also work for FeedBlitz, minimizing configuration headaches for publishers and eliminating potential confusion for subscribers.

Background

Many feed-based extensions to blogging software and services assume that, if a third party service is being used, it is FeedBurner. As such, they are often highly specific to FeedBurner, which can cause problems for publishers when they want to switch to a different service. Changing the settings can be a technical challenge (heck, even finding where those settings are managed can be something of an ordeal).

As the FeedBlitz RSS publisher base has grown over the least few weeks we have seen a number of issues related to this type of problem, and while it can be solved by changing configurations this can be quite a burdensome process for the 99% of bloggers not versed in web server arcana, HTTP protocols and regular expression syntax. Publishers and bloggers feel, rightly, that when switching RSS services "it should just work." FeedBlitz's FeedBurner Compatibility Mode brings that ideal another step closer to reality.

Dizzying Recursion

The primary issue is with plugins such as FeedBurner's own FeedSmith plugin for WordPress, and for hand built Apache-style mod-redirect statements (again, often with self-hosted WordPress sites). This class of web-server modification causes requests from an RSS reader to be redirected automatically to the publisher's FeedBurner feed, so all requests are served from the same location. This ensures that the publisher sees all their feed metrics in one place, and no matter which feed URL the end user tries to subscribe to, they always end up at FeedBurner, giving a consistent user experience.

When changing to FeedBlitz (or any other service) this becomes a problem. When FeedBlitz tries to access the blog's RSS feed it too is redirected by the blog's server back to FeedBurner. If FeedBurner is redirecting back to FeedBlitz a recursive loop is set up, and feeds don't update correctly as the RSS readers get sent running around in circles. Even if FeedBurner doesn't redirect back to FeedBlitz, FeedBlitz never gets access to the blog's original feed, and so is not only limited to showing what's available through FeedBurner, but also suffers from any delays that FeedBurner has in reflecting changes made to the underlying blog. Yuck!

FeedBurner itself obviously doesn't have these problems, even when such a redirect is in place. It clearly isn't being redirected. How does that work? It's simple: The changes made by FeedSmith and similar redirecting strategies specifically exclude FeedBurner from the redirection. As a result, FeedBurner can access the blog's source RSS feed without getting itself tied up in knots.

While it is possible to edit filters, remove plugins to enable FeedBlitz to work the same way, as observed at the top of this post the process can be difficult, burdensome and adds to the risk of human error breaking feeds for everyone. In short, it's complex work for most to do. It adds a lot of friction and risk to the process of evaluating FeedBlitz as a FeedBurner alternative. And that's just not right.

Making It Work

Problem solved. FeedBlitz's "FeedBurner Compatibility Mode" ensures that the exclusions these tools use for FeedBurner also apply to FeedBlitz - all automatically. No need to change filters, modify your blog's settings or learn regular expressions. It just works. For this reason alone, FeedBurner Compatibility Mode is enabled by default for all new feeds. It can be switched off (or back on) using the RSS / Settings screen.

Better yet, FeedBlitz's FeedBurner Compatibility Mode does not affect FeedBurner in any way, and so it is possible to view and test the two services side by side, allowing publishers full control over the timing and details of their eventual transition.

This new setting should work for any plugin or service checking user agent strings to decide how and when to apply exclusions. Even without "FeedBurner Compatibility Mode" being enabled, FeedBlitz will always break out of any recursive call it detects and return any cached data it has (if any).

The Exception That Proves the Rule

Once recursive setup that this can't help with is if a publisher sets up set up FeedBlitz as the source URL for FeedBurner, and FeedBurner as the source for FeedBlitz (this has happened a couple of times). While clearly circular in definition, FeedBurner and FeedBlitz cache feeds to serve to visitors. The recursion isn't in real-time; there are no HTTP redirects for FeedBlitz to detect, trap and break out of.

Instead, each service updates its cached copy periodically, each using the other as a reference. Your feeds will be served fine, but over time (several hours) they'll come with an increasing amount of baggage (e.g. an increasing number of flares in the same article) as they slowly update themselves. If you see this happening, it's not a bug, just a very slow infinite loop that has been set up.

Fortunately, assuming you are using both services to test / migrate to FeedBlitz while still temporarily serving your existing subscriber base at FeedBurner, it's also very easy to fix. Here's how:

1. Go to RSS / Settings at FeedBlitz.
2. Ensure that you have FeedBurner Compatibility Mode enabled.
3. Update FeedBlitz to point to your blog.
4. Save the changes.

When you save, FeedBlitz will automatically resync your feed. You will then have a junk-free version. Once done, go over to FeedBurner and resync your feed in the Troubleshootize tab, which will update its cached copy with your newly fixed Blitzed version. Since the circular relationship has not been broken the feeds should stay fixed as you update your site.

FeedBurner Compatibility Mode - It Just Works

With the introduction of FeedBurner Compatibility Mode, FeedBlitz has eliminated some of the more technically challenging steps a publisher may need to take to switch services.

FeedBlitz - It just works! Start a 30-day trial today.

AutoPost Your Top Articles

Instant post, zero effort! FeedBlitz has now added a great way to keep your feed fresh and posts in front of subscribers - the "Weekly Top Posts" splice. Found at RSS - Splices, the "Weekly Top Posts" feature runs on Sunday mornings and pulls out the top 5 articles from the prior week based on click-throughs and views. The post appears as a list of the top 5 articles, with links back to the originals, and links back to the browser-friendly version of your Blitzed feed.

Check out the FeedBlitz News RSS feed for an example we ran as a test this weekend.

Talking of Splices, we recently extended splices to allow you to merge in photos from Flickr into your main feed.

Send in the Clones (RSS Remix)

Today's new feed service feature enables FeedBlitz RSS publishers to easily duplicate their feeds using the same cloning approach that our email newsletter publishers have enjoyed for more than two years.

Put simply, cloning takes all of your feed's properties, including splice and flare definitions, and makes a duplicate. This is great for publishers who want to offer slightly different versions of the same basic feed and who don't want to have to step through the same screens settings the same options for each, time after time. If you're bringing multiple feeds over to FeedBlitz by hand this is a great time saver.