A new plan to help you define, refine, and maximize subscriber engagement and audience targeting for stellar results.

Increase Visibility

The data and capabilities to reach your subscribers when they’re most likely to open your emails.

Boost Engagement

Increased visibility leads to higher open rates, higher click-throughs, and overall higher engagement.

Power Revenue

And when engagement increases, so do the odds of meeting and exceeding your revenue goals.

Building on the foundation of FeedBlitz Core’s suite of email marketing features, FeedBlitz Accel offers access to brand new features and updates on a few classic FeedBlitz Core features.

Features to make connecting with your audience at the right time even easier:

• Inbox Activity Detection: Trigger a one-to-one email send when your subscriber is active in their email app. Grab their attention by emailing your subscribers when they’re most likely to open, i.e. when they’re in the inbox.

• Enhanced reporting: The real-time data FeedBlitz clients love is getting a boost with time zone, subscriber domain, and recipient region-specific reports. Gain clarity on the best time to hit send with engagement insights by the time of day, recipient domain, and subscriber time zone.

• New Sending Windows: Shake up your single campaigns with new sending flexibility. Increase open rates by pacing your campaign send over a set time frame or send based on subscriber time zone.

• Audience Shaping for RSS to Email Campaigns: Continued innovation in RSS to email mailing with audience filtering. Shape the audience of your RSS to email automated campaigns by applying groups, engagement filters, and segmentations.

Advanced automations to help you save even more on time and resources:

• Automated RSS to Email Follow-ups: You’re already automating your campaigns, now it’s time to automated your follow-ups. You automatically send new content, and now you can automatically send follow-ups to those who didn’t initially engage.

• Campaign-Based Automated Triggers: Extend your favorite list-based triggers to individual campaigns. Automate your subscriber management based on interactions with individual campaigns.

• Automated List Hygiene: Ensure a healthy, engaged mailing list, automatically. Set parameters to automatically remove (or move) unengaged subscribers from your mailing list when the metrics are matched.

Setting you up for next-level revenue potential:

• Conversion Tracking: Connect activity on your site to individual email subscribers. Another brand new feature, set goals and better target your audience by linking engagement on your site to particular email subscribers.

And as a bonus feature, all FeedBlitz Accel clients will have access to FeedBlitz’s Transactional API. Turn FeedBlitz into your own SMTP cloud service and send your most vital emails backed by FeedBlitz’s industry-leading deliverability.

Ready to find out what your email marketing can really do for you? You’re clear for lift-off.

       

You can create the best email in the world, but it won’t matter if it doesn’t make it to your subscriber.

But what does deliverability mean? And how and when does it actually happen? And is there anything you can do to help?

The answers to those questions and many more are what you will find in this post. There’s a lot of ground to cover when it comes to email deliverability, so without further delay, let’s jump right in.

In this post, you’ll learn:

• What is email deliverability?
• Key terms related to email deliverability.
• What happens when you send an email?
• Actions you can take to boost your deliverability and sender reputation.
• How FeedBlitz safeguards and boosts deliverability.
• Why deliverability should be your ultimate determining factor.

What is email deliverability?

Deliverability is a fairly common buzzword in the world of email marketing. However, unless you’re in the business of establishing and safeguarding it — or have had your email efforts impacted because of the lack of it — there isn’t a lot of clarity around the term and how companies achieve, monitor, and protect a high deliverability status.

In the simplest of terms, deliverability is the processes and protections that allow your emails to reach your subscribers. It sounds pretty simple, but everything that takes place to get your emails from creation to open is much more complex.

Knowing the ins and outs of email deliverability will help you make wiser decisions regarding your email marketing efforts. And it’ll also offer vitally important clarity when deciding which email service provider (ESP) to work with.

Because again, you can design the prettiest emails possible, filled with the best content of your life, but it all means nothing if you’re with an ESP who cuts corners and your emails don’t actually get delivered.

Key terms related to email deliverability.

Anytime you’re working with a complex topic, starting with a foundation of key terms is best. The following terms will be helpful to know as you dig deeper into this blog post:

• Deliverability – getting your emails to a subscriber.
• Inboxing – getting your emails to a subscriber’s inbox (including Gmail’s promotions tab) as opposed to the spam folder.
• Reputation – receiving internet service providers (ISPs) review, judge, and estimate the safety of emails being sent by a particular email address — based on their own top-secret set of rules and guidelines — which ultimately determines whether your email will be allowed or denied.
• Authentication – a process to further validate the sender of your emails established through SPF, DKIM and DMARC, which use DNS to ensure permission has been granted.

What happens when you send an email?

Deliverability checks are not something that takes place one time, in one specific step of the email sending process. It can — and does — happen at multiple stages of the process every time one of your emails begins to send.

To help give you a better idea of how and when this can happen, we’ll start with all the things that happen when you send an email, i.e., the path your email takes from the moment it begins sending to its arrival at your subscriber’s door.

There are many more steps than you may realize, and that’s because most of the process takes place behind the scenes. The full process is a bit more nuanced and detailed than what’s outlined here, but the six steps highlighted below will give you a solid frame of reference for the process.

While most ESPs follow similar, if not the same steps, below is a FeedBlitz-specific version to help show additional checks performed throughout the way:

Step 1 – You create an email. And when working in FeedBlitz, before you’re even able to send or schedule the mailing, the content is checked against our in-house protocols. For example, you won’t even be allowed to send an email that may potentially be rejected by ISPs.

Step 2 – The email begins sending. A unique email copy is created for each subscriber and sent to one of our outbound SMTP servers. (SMTP = the internet’s email protocol)

Step 3 – Our SMTP servers send the email to the ISP. FeedBlitz’s SMTP servers then send your mailing to the receiving ISP’s servers.

Step 4 – ISP reputation check. The receiving ISP’s inbound email server runs a series of reputation checks (on the sender) and content scans (on the email).

Step 5 – Receive, reject or quarantine. The ISP will then either allow your email through, immediately reject it, or quarantine the email by sending it to a subscriber’s spam folder.

Step 6 – Email received! (or bounced/rejected) FeedBlitz gets feedback on whether your email was received or recorded as a bounce/undeliverable.

At any step of the process, deliverability and reputation checks can kick in and prevent your email from arriving.

Luckily, the strict standards and practices many ESPs (like FeedBlitz!) have in place work to catch anything before the email even reaches outbound servers. They will also diligently monitor all feedback loops from ISPs and swiftly suspend any list whose feedback is not up to par.

Actions you can take to boost your deliverability and sender reputation.

Good email deliverability isn’t only in the hands of your ESP. You as a client can have a significant impact on your reputation with your subscribers, which can and will boost your individual deliverability success.

Below are five action items you can do to help boost your own deliverability and sender reputation even further.

1. Set up authentication for your sending domain.
   
   Authentication is an added layer of verification to let ISPs know you are the true, valid sender of the email and that you’ve okayed FeedBlitz to do that for you. It involves SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. However, DMARC is typically used by high-level enterprise clients.
   
   FeedBlitz servers send your campaigns on behalf of the sending email you supply. (Note: This is why you may notice your email reads via feedblitz@mail.feedblitz.com in email apps like Gmail or Outlook.) Authentication provides additional validation by saying, “Yes! This email is from me, and I authorize FeedBlitz to send it on my behalf! But please show me as the true sender.”
   
   This reinforces the level of trust an ISP forms with you and your emails. Hello, reputation booster.
   
   Are you a FeedBlitz client and not sure where you stand on your authentication? Click here to log in and run a quick scan.
   
   And if you’re ready to put authentication into action for your FeedBlitz-support campaigns, these steps walk you through how to set things up for your account: Protect Your Brand with SPF and DKIM and What Is and How to Create a DMARC Profile.
   
   
2. Keep an eye on engagement data for your campaigns.
   
   How your email is received by subscribers is a strong indicator of the reputation you have with your audience. Are they opening? Clicking? Complaining? Unsubscribing? These data points are very important to FeedBlitz, fellow ESPs, and to individual ISPs who decide whether to prioritize (or deprioritize!) your emails.
   
   Healthy engagement is the strongest indicator of a healthy mailing list. And everyone likes healthy when it comes to deliverability.
   
   In FeedBlitz, you can track engagement data for each campaign from the list dashboard, dive deeper into in on the individual mailing dashboards, or pull a full engagement report to see engagement data over a chosen period of time.
   
   Note: Not sure what a good open rate is? Check out this episode of Win the Inbox to learn more.
   
   
3. Review your content strategy and email best practices.
   
   This may seem a bit broad, but it relates back to something in section 4 of this post: Your audience ultimately determines what is or is not spam.
   
   Along with your quality content, you want to deliver a smooth, seamless experience for your subscribers. This means taking into consideration details such as:
   
   – Are you mailing regularly? A consistent cadence sets your subscribers’ expectations and can heighten open rates.
   
   – Is your branding all connected? From your website to your email template, the colors, the images, etc.? This helps with brand recognition, emphasizing you are someone the subscriber knows, likes, and trusts. (Again, better engagement is the result!)
   
   – Are you sending the content your audience signed up to receive? This can be a big determining factor in the frequency of how often a subscriber opens your emails. Deliver on what you promised when they signed up!
   
   – Is your template accessible for different audiences? This is where font size, color contrast, alt text for images come into play. The easier your email is to read and engage with, the wider your audience can become.
   
   That’s a small selection of things to consider, but it’s a great start to creating a smooth experience for your subscribers.
   
   
4. Subscribe to your own list.
   
   Somewhat related to actionable #3 above, subscribing to your own mailing list not only ensures the end-to-end subscriber experience is up to your standards but also lets you know immediately if your emails are potentially being routed to somewhere other than the inbox.
   
   This also falls into best practices as you’re able to view test emails across different platforms and devices before hitting send.
   
   Again, the idea is to make sure your subscribers are having a seamless experience with every campaign you send, so it’s always best to check on different devices and email agents when possible.
   
   
5. Remove people who are no longer opening or clicking your emails.
   
   While FeedBlitz handles unsubscribes and bounces for you automatically, if there“s one thing the team recommends the most to clients across the board, it’s removing inactive subscribers. This keeps your list — and engagement data — healthy.
   
   If a subscriber hasn’t opened or clicked one of your mailings in 60+ days, chances are they’ve lost interest. So instead of keeping them on your list with the mindset of “a bigger list is a better list!” set them free and move forward.
   
   In FeedBlitz, there are two ways you can go about this: one would be to send a re-engagement campaign and check if these inactive subscribers are still interested in sticking around, and the other would be to identify and remove them in one fell swoop. The choice is yours. Just remember, the name of the game is healthy, engaged mailing lists!

Some of these action items you can work on and complete right away, and others you may choose to take a week or month to focus on. Either way, the suggestions outlined above will not only have a positive impact on your deliverability but also on the relationships you have with your subscribers.

How FeedBlitz safeguards and boosts deliverability.

In this section, you will learn some of the secrets, standards and practices FeedBlitz has in place to protect and boost email deliverability.

These practices not only keep our clients’ emails going but allow us to consistently maintain our industry-leading deliverability rate of 99.8%. When an ESP works hard to safeguard their reputation, they’re also working hard to safeguard yours.

It’s important to take deliverability practices into consideration if you’re comparing ESPs to see which is a good fit for you. While an ESP may not go into great detail on their in-house practices, you’re welcome to use the six items outlined below as a guideline for questions to ask.

Without going into too much detail — we do have to protect some industry secrets, and we’re highly aware that bad actors read this to learn how to try and skirt the rules — below are six deliverability-related items you may find interesting. (Or, at the very least, you may find them insightful if you’ve ever had a list suspended or mailing halted!)

1. We own all of our servers.
   
   That means when you’re sending with FeedBlitz, you’re not sharing a server with anyone who hasn’t been well-vetted or anyone who also isn’t being monitored 24/7/365. We have complete control over our infrastructure.
   
   Owning our own servers is hugely important. Some ESPs do not own their servers, and ultimately, they do not have full control over their reputation management. This leaves you vulnerable to your emails being potentially stopped if an unknown bad actor sends from the shared server your emails are sending from, the entire server, and everyone on it, is taken down.
   
   When this happens, the server’s IP can be added to a blocked list which is monitored by ISPs (who then reject your emails, not letting them through the door), as well as third-party lists many ISPs check as well — all because of emails you didn’t even send!
   
   One bad apple really can ruin the barrel in these situations…which is why FeedBlitz doesn’t cut corners when it comes to protecting deliverability.
   
   
2. Feedback loops and changes with major ISPs (i.e., Gmail, Yahoo, Comcast, etc.) are constantly monitored.
   
   Meaning, we keep very close tabs on things such as how your audience interacts with your emails, any rejections or bounces which come through, oddly large groups of hard bounces, and velocity-based triggers. Resulting in your email having the best chance of getting through to your subscriber.
   
   As part of the monitoring process, if one of our servers is being throttled by an ISP, your campaigns will be quickly routed away from the machines in question so they can continue sending while further research is completed on the server and IP.
   
   If an ISP has cleared out a batch of old or undeliverable emails, we’ll confirm this is correct and not merely a glitch in the email ecosystem.
   
   
3. Every email list and every subscriber is checked before they’re even allowed in the door.
   
   And that is not an understatement. It doesn’t matter if you have 10 subscribers or 10 million subscribers, each and everyone is checked against our own set of internal block lists, matched against 3rd party known purchased or rented lists, and will result in immediate suspension — and quite possibly being blocked from FeedBlitz all together — if an email address returns as a spam trap.
   
   We ruthlessly guard imports to protect the reputation of all FeedBlitz clients. If a list is suspended due to a blocked import or poor quality metrics (more on this below), it will remain suspended for at least 24 hours while the import file is being reviewed. After reviewing, the deliverability team will evaluate whether or not the import will be allowed to proceed and if the list will be reinstated.
   
   To put it plainly, we check receipts on each and every subscriber you try to bring into our home so our clients can rest easy knowing everyone is held to the same high level of quality control.
   
   
4. Before you’re able to leave the editor, your emails go through the same content filters ISPs will run when deciding whether to allow or deny your email entry to the subscriber.
   
   Step four in the process listed above is where the destination ISP runs a series of checks to then decide what to do with your email.
   
   FeedBlitz created a series of content-based checks within the Visual Mailing Editor (VME) to mirror those an ISP will run.
   
   And while the industry has evolved quite a bit, and there is less emphasis on the presence of common spam/trigger words when it comes to deciding whether to allow your email through or not, it is still a factor to take into consideration.
   
   These content scans are also a safeguard against making sure your account has not been compromised.
   
   It’s frustrating, but bad emails can still come from good places, and that’s why multiple checks and balances are in place throughout the email creation and sending process to help ensure the success of your efforts.
   
   Important note: Because reputation extends to the links in your emails as well, this is why FeedBlitz doesn’t even allow an email that links out to a bad IP to be sent. We’re always looking out for you!
   
   
5. How your subscribers engage with your mailings has a big effect.
   
   Just because a mailing passes our filters, ultimately, it’s up to your audience to decide whether or not it’s spam.
   
   Even if your email isn’t flagged as spam, ISPs (and FeedBlitz!) track all feedback from subscribers in how they interact with your mailings.
   
   This includes opens, clicks, and unsubscribes. It all has an impact on your deliverability. ISPs keep just as close tabs on this as we do. For example, when emails aren’t opened frequently, a subscriber’s ISP makes note of this and can demote or deprioritize them.
   
   FYI: If a mailing comes back with a lot of unsubscribes or complaints, it’s suspended in FeedBlitz for at least 24 hours while our team conducts a thorough review.
   
   This all works to keep your reputation and the reputation of all FeedBlitz clients in as good of standing as possible. And as you’ve probably picked up on by now, we don’t play around when it comes to sending reputations.
   
   
6. New practices are regularly implemented.
   
   As the world of email evolves, so do we. Our team continually adjusts our in-house practices and protocols, as well as implementing new items. For example…
   
   – In April of 2022, we informed clients our deliverability team was increasing our email capacity by 40% by warming up a new batch of servers. Deliverability
   
   – Large lists with a very low open rate (<10%) will be run through an auto-purge feature to maintain open rate stats and engagement data? You guessed it, deliverability
   
   – New DMARC checks are live in the authentication dashboard of your account settings. Again, hello, deliverability
   
   Some updates are minor (auto-purge, for example) while others are more substantial (i.e. a new batch of servers). Regardless, all current and new practices are multi-pronged to address a variety of deliverability-related factors.

That’s a very small handful of the practices in place which keep FeedBlitz not only in good standing with all major ISPs but also leading the industry with a consistent 99.8% deliverability rate.

Because when your ESP has a good reputation, you have a good reputation, and your emails are much more likely to reach your subscribers.

And that’s the ultimate goal, isn’t it?

Why deliverability should be your ultimate determining factor.

Email deliverability isn’t as exciting as email templates or a buffet of features you may or may not use. However, it’s email deliverability that will actually get your emails to your subscribers. And even though it’s incredibly important, it’s not always top of mind when considering who to work with on your email marketing.

If you’re in the market for a new ESP, factor the provider’s deliverability practices and rate into your search. Ask their team if deliverability is a high priority for their company (which it absolutely should be!), and they’ll be more than happy to chat with you about it.

You don’t even need to get super technical here. A few key questions to ask would simply be:

• What is your deliverability rate?
• Do you own your servers? If not, do you use shared servers?
• How do you handle bounced and undeliverable emails?
• What do you do to safeguard subscriber imports?

Those four questions, paired with the information in this blog post, will give you a strong overall sense of a provider’s deliverability prioritization, helping you make a better-educated decision on who will facilitate communications with your audience.

Because again, you can create the best email in the world, but it won’t matter if it doesn’t make it to your subscriber.

Ready to send your emails with FeedBlitz’s industry-leading deliverability?

Head to this page to start your free trial. Questions? Feel free to reach out with any questions through our Support Page. While live support is available Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern, and you can always find helpful information 24-7 at the resources linked here.

       

Every email you send and every update that goes live is an opportunity — and that includes the opportunity to generate revenue.

Now picture this: Sending campaigns to your email list and automatically earning revenue without directly selling any goods or services.

It may sound too good to be true, but that’s precisely what happens when you choose to host ads in your emails:

You create a passive income stream from the content you’re already sending out to your subscribers.

The purpose of this guide is to offer considerable insight into email ads. Specifically, the ads provided through the FeedBlitz integrated ad network. It will also help debunk any myths, address any hesitations you may have, and offer a glimpse into the actual earning potential available to you.

Here’s what we’re going to cover in this guide:

1. Are email ads right for me?
2. Two ways you can earn revenue from ads in your emails.
3. The FAQs of ad sizes, placements, and types.
4. Pulling back the curtain: The 2021 and 2022 ad revenue of three FeedBlitz clients.
5. Case studies: How monitoring and making adjustments to your program can increase earning potential.

*Our team has covered a lot of ground for you, but reach out if you’re left with any questions. We’re happy to help.

Settle in, and let’s get started. It’s time to learn about your truly unlimited earning potential.

1. Are email ads right for me?

We start by asking this one question for anyone curious about getting started with email ads:

Are you currently running ads on your site?

If your site is currently hosting ads, it’s a simple, seamless transition to start incorporating them into your email content. Your audience has already become accustomed to seeing them on your site. Your emails also offer additional, coveted ad space and an opportunity to generate revenue.

Monetizing one without the other means you may be leaving revenue opportunities on the table.

If you are not yet running ads on your site, this does not mean you shouldn’t run ads in your emails. If you plan to run ads on your site but don’t meet traffic minimums to join a premium ad network, you can run this process in reverse. Running ads in your emails can prepare your audience for the appearance of ads on your website. The FeedBlitz integrated ad network has no traffic or list size minimums.

2. Two ways you can earn money from ads in your emails.

Monetizing your emails doesn’t require a massive mailing list or sending content within a specific niche. Creating a revenue stream from the emails, you’re already sending may be easier than you imagine.

Earning revenue is an opportunity available to anyone sending email campaigns. When focusing your email monetization efforts on working with ads, the two most common tactics are:

1. Selling space in your email and manually inserting ads. This method relies on sponsorships, partnerships and affiliate relationships you create and offers a variety of possibilities as it could cover images, logos, videos, or text.

However, selling space requires substantial work to establish relationships and agreements, including creating a media kit, gathering your site and email history data, securing multiple agreements across platforms, etc.

2. Ads that are inserted automatically into your emails through an integration with an online ad service. This automated option allows an ad network that you sign up for or that is integrated with your email service provider (ESP) to supply and place ads in designated space(s) of your campaigns.

Many email marketers often incorporate both types of ads in their emails or switch between them for different campaigns. (Important note: FeedBlitz does allow for both in the same email. There is no exclusivity clause that would create a conflict with this!) This is an excellent way to diversify your income through email advertising.

If you’re new to working with ads or prefer a more hands-off approach, working with an ad network is a great option to test the waters—especially if your ESP is directly integrated with an ad network.

At FeedBlitz, we offer a one-click advertising option to all clients. With one click of the mouse, you can turn ads on in your account, starting with your next email campaign—without the extra work of selling the space yourself.

And unlike many standalone ad networks, there are no scripts, tags, markups, pre-approval processes, or minimum traffic counts to meet before you can begin generating a passive income from your emails. Essentially, zero barriers for you to overcome or hoops to jump through just to get started.

3. The FAQs of email ad sizes, placements, and types.

Thinking about introducing ads to your email campaigns can spark many questions…

How many ads?? Where would they go? What would they look like?!?

And that’s understandable! This section will break down some of the most common questions about ad placement, content, and more.

• Ads are available in three sizes: marquee, banner, and square. The variety of sizing allows for optimal flexibility in the placement and frequency of the ads in your mailings.
  
  Yes, one size does outperform the others, but we’ll get into more detail by looking at the case studies below.

• Yes, you can start small and ease into slowly adding more units. You can even begin by placing an ad at the bottom of your campaign and then gradually moving it higher or placing a second ad unit. This will help your audience become accustomed to seeing ads in your emails.
  
  And remember, your audience is already accustomed to seeing ads if you host them on your site, which provides a smooth transition to placing them in your emails.

• Regardless of whether you use automated or single campaigns, you control the number of ads in your emails, the size of your ads, and the placement of ads. Turning ads on in your account does not mean your subscribers will be overwhelmed with ads. You choose the number, the placement, and the size right from the Monetization settings in your account or the template when creating your campaigns.

• If you’re unsure how or where to place an ad in your mailing, check out one of the free Quick Start templates in the Monetizing category to get started. Available for both single and automated campaigns, these templates already have ad blocks inserted and are all fully customizable.
  
  You can also drag and drop a new ad block into your mailing at any time when using the visual mail editor (VME). Just be sure the ad settings are turned on in your account for an ad to appear and for you to accrue revenue.

• All ads are brand-safe. FeedBlitz only allows brand-safe* ads and no politics whatsoever. Regarding the exact ads that show in your emails, it depends mainly on the available ad inventory and the end-user’s anonymized internet activity.
  
  When setting up your ad program, you do have some influence over the ads shown by choosing your preferred categories. It’s important to remember, however, these selections only provide guidance. They are not the primary determining factor for the exact ads shown.
  
  *If you ever feel an ad is not up to par or is not brand-safe, our team is always happy to review it to determine if it violates the policies. The ad will be removed from the inventory when warranted.

• You do not have to have ads in every email you send. The flexibility of the ad program is just that—flexible. You can choose when, where, and how ads appear in your mailing and can choose to remove them entirely at any time for a particular campaign or an entire mailing list.

If you have additional questions not covered above, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Our team is always happy to provide more insight or walk you through placing ads in your campaigns.

4. Pulling back the curtain: The 2021 and 2022 ad revenue of three FeedBlitz clients.

When talking about ad earnings, it’s one thing to say:

“Our clients typically see ad earnings run between $2 to $3 (USD) per 1,000 opens for US-based readership, depending on real-time ad markets and available inventory.”

(Because they do, that is the general earning rate for ads in emails.) However, it’s far different to show actual numbers of subscriber counts, open rates, and earnings.

As you’ll see below, ad earnings vary greatly and depend significantly on list size, mailing frequency, and open rates. To help you better visualize your earning potential, you’ll find the average monthly ad earnings of three FeedBlitz clients and a summary of their email practices for better context. (Clients are listed as A, B, and C, to protect their privacy, with their average monthly ad earnings listed by quarter.)

Client A is a coupon/deal blogger.

Client B is a craft blogger.

Client C is a recipe blogger.

Did you notice that all three of these clients more than covered their FeedBlitz fees with the income generated from the ad program? (In fact, over 70% of participants in the ad program for 2021 and 2022 earned more than enough to offset their FeedBlitz fees!)

Looking through Clients A, B and C, hopefully, you could identify which client either most closely resembles your current setup or a client you may aspire to match—or surpass.

Earnings not only depend on list size, mailing frequency, and open rates, they can also fluctuate month to month, depending on ad inventory, supply, and demand. Which explains why we always see a bump during the holiday season—November through December—in revenues as retailers tend to flood the market with inventory.

What is most impressive about this method of monetizing your mailings is that it provides unlimited earning potential as it all hinges on your preferences and practices.

5. Case studies: How monitoring and making adjustments to your program can increase earning potential.

Embracing the opportunity that including ads in your emails provides starts with turning on the ads themselves. The next step is to monitor your progress and adjust your approach to optimize that opportunity.

Below you’ll learn about two clients who increased their ad revenue in 2021 by making simple adjustments to their ad placement. Then you will read about a third client who has found great success with the ad program through another popular email marketing tactic.

They’ll be labeled Clients E, F, and G to protect their privacy. You will also see the percentage increases for the first two clients after their change and average monthly earnings for the third client.

Client E is a coupon/deal blogger who emails approximately 57,000 subscribers daily.

• They have an average unique open rate of 29% and generally run three ads per email.
  
• Our team began working with this client in September 2021. They privately sell the top ad spot in their mailings to sponsors, but this placement doesn’t always have a sponsor.
  
• After reviewing their program, we suggested turning on the marquee ad at the top of the email option in their ad settings and allowing marquee-style ads within the body of the email. They continued to run three ads per mailing. When they do sell the top ad space, they can easily turn off the top marquee unit.
  
• This edit yielded a consistent 200% increase in revenue in the following months.

Client F is a performance marketer who emails a total of 1.1 million subscribers, split into many lists, daily.

• They have an average unique open rate of 17% across their lists and were displaying one ad per email.
  
• After reviewing their program, we suggested a change to their template that would place an additional ad unit.
  
• This adjustment yielded a consistent 31% increase in revenue in the following months.

Our top recommendation for all clients running ads is to switch your ads to marquee size ad units. (And if you only change the size of one ad, let it be the first shown in your mailings.)

The final client highlights a popular email marketing strategy used to encourage higher open rates and better engagement.

And you guessed it, higher open rates = greater impressions = higher revenues.

Client G is a political blogger who emails 3,000 subscribers split into four mailing lists, mailing at least once a day.

• The average open rate across all four lists is 40%.Their average monthly ad revenue for 2021 was $450, compared to their average monthly fee of $49.
  
• Client G offers the same content to all four mailing lists, each set to a different mailing schedule. Their subscribers then receive content on a schedule that suits their preferences, encouraging higher open rates and greater engagement.
  
• While this client’s subscriber numbers are lower than all of the previous examples listed, we wanted to show this client to highlight how mailing frequency and engagement can significantly affect your earning potential.

Your earnings can be easily increased based on small changes to your ad settings. And while not every tweak to your ad settings will guarantee a higher return, if you’re feeling stagnant with ad earnings, we always recommend making an adjustment, monitoring, then adjusting again as needed.

Maximize earnings with the Banner Ad Rewards Program.

To increase your earning potential even more, FeedBlitz implemented the Banner Ad Rewards Program in 2023. Through this rewards program, the base earnings of all banner ad program participants are boosted by tiered performance incentives and a loyalty bonus, which can increase revenue shares by up to 15%. Learn more about how the Banner Ad Rewards Program can raise your ad income.

Embracing your unlimited earning potential.

Monetizing your email campaigns with ads is one of the easiest and quickest ways to build a revenue stream that genuinely offers unlimited earning opportunities. And, as you’ve read above, it doesn’t take a giant mailing list to get started or to see results. Especially if you’re already hosting ads on your site, it’s a simple transition to placing ads in your emails.

There’s no reason to leave money on the table. Embrace your opportunities!

Are you interested in giving email ads a try with the FeedBlitz one-click advertising program? Head to this page to start your free trial. Questions? Feel free to reach out with any questions through our Support Page. While live support is available Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern, and you can always find helpful information 24-7 at the resources linked here.

       

A simple and easy way to bring the holidays into your email marketing – without having to start a design from scratch – these Quick Start templates are available in every FeedBlitz account year-round.

The Fall-themed templates offer various image layouts, all using Fall-like color schemes, for seasonal promotions or to change

things up with the changing of seasons.

Every Quick Start template is designed to reduce the time you spend crafting eye-catching emails and have all been tested for mobile optimization across various platforms and devices.

Embrace the spooky season with Halloween-inspired images and color palettes.

Quickly and easily swap out the images with your own or browse the hundreds of thousands of images, free for commercial use, available to you through our Unsplash and Pixabay integrations available in the Visual Mailing Editor. Edit any template in the library to match your branding, colors, social icons, and more, with festive fonts also available.

These templates and many more are available to all FeedBlitz users in the Quick Start Template Library. Just one of the many perks of emailing with FeedBlitz.

Not a FeedBlitz client? Head to this page to start your free trial. Questions? Feel free to reach out with any questions through our Support Page. While live support is available Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern, you can always find helpful information 24-7 at the resources linked here.

       

What do you do now? By when? How? And what will it cost?

Here are seven steps to help you work it all out – with minimal disruption and without forcing your subscribers to sign up again.

Step One: Recognize you have until July 1st August 15 (at least) to figure it all out.

So at the time of writing (April 14th July 22), that’s 75 22 days away. This gives you time to plan a transition – and the larger your mailing list, the more important planning your migration will be.

Google also says that FeedBurner emails will stop “starting in July.” (now, maybe “mid August”) That might end up being later than July 1st, but that isn’t very precise either. We think it’s safest to plan that no emails will be sent by FeedBurner from July 1st onwards.

Step Two: Don’t download your emails just yet.

Or at least, you can, as a backup, but there’s more work to do than just that download. That’s because:

• Your FeedBurner subscription forms are still collecting email addresses.
• Your future FeedBurner mailings may still cause unsubscribes and bounces.

In other words, any download you make now will be out of date pretty quickly.

It also means that FeedBurner email going away is a whole lot more than downloading your email subscribers. You need a place, an email service (known as an email service provider, or ESP) to put them, so you can still get your word out to them after FeedBurner email is finally shut down forever.

Put another way, downloading your email subscribers is basically your LAST step, not your first.

You will have to be able to log in to your FeedBurner account, however, to download your subscribers. This might not be possible for you. Maybe the account was started by someone else years and years ago, and the info has been lost. Maybe the “migrate to Google login” didn’t work out or happen. Either way, now you’re stuck. If this is you, it’s a bad news, good news situation. The good news is that there are ways to encourage your email subscribers to move. The bad news is that they will have to re-subscribe. We at FeedBlitz have a lot of experience with this, so contact support for help.

Step Three: See this as an opportunity for you.

When you switch from FeedBurner to a FeedBurner alternative, you’ll quickly discover that there’s more that you can do with a modern email service. So this is a chance to do more – to make the most of your emails to your subscribers while still delivering the ease and power of automated RSS email campaigns that build your newsletters for you.

What you do NOT want to do, if you’re used to FeedBurner, is settle for just a so-so RSS blog to email solution. If you settle for a service that doesn’t have RSS to email in their DNA, it will ultimately make a lot more work for you to get your mailings out. Make sure that you can get both the automated production and bulk email delivery you want – and that you’re used to.

So your most important criteria are going to be:

Can my FeedBurner replacement email service deliver RSS emails at least as well as FeedBurner?

That means:

• Daily updates at the time and time zone of your choosing.
• Basic branding with logos and colors.
• The ability to optionally truncate your posts and provide a custom call to action.

That’s a bare minimum, though.

Can your FeedBurner alternative do more than FeedBurner could?

But what more might you want to do, if you could? Here are some things to think about, just for your RSS emails alone:

• Schedules other than daily: Do you want posts delivered ASAP or a weekly digest on Mondays? How about three times a week? RSS email services can do that now.
• Topic / Tag / Category segmentation: If you could filter what’s sent out by how you categorize or tag it on your post, what might that mean? Could you make mailings more focused to your readers by offering topic-based mailings?
• Personalization and Segmentation / Custom Fields / Groups: How about capturing a subscriber’s name and personalizing their RSS emails. Or grouping subscribers based on what event they came from, or their interests, or behavior (e.g., Adding someone who’s bought from your e-commerce store to the “Customers” group).
• Better branding and cool RSS templates: Would you like a more sophisticated look to your RSS emails? Do you want them to render well on multiple email apps and mobile devices? Would you like more control over activation emails and forms? What if your new RSS to email service could extract featured images and move them to the top of your post, so your mailings became much more interesting than an emailed version of your blog.
• Would you like to monetize your RSS mailings? The old FeedBurner Ad Network (FAN) was discontinued by Google shortly after they acquired FeedBurner, cutting off a revenue stream for FeedBurner users. Did you know, however, that you can put ads in emails? And that they can work really well? If your website has ads, then an RSS to email service that can help make you money by adding ads to your emails as well could be really (and literally) valuable to you as an extra income source. In a related vein, if you use affiliate links in your emails, is your email service OK with that? Not all are, so check that out if that’s one of your content monetization strategies.
• Video in email: If you have a YouTube channel, or use Vimeo, or embed a Facebook video in your blog post, do you want that to appear in your emails as well?
• Reporting, analytics and metrics: Your next email service should be able to tell you how well your mailing did. How many times it was opened, clicked through, and (most importantly) who did that. What can you gain if you could discover which of your posts really worked for your email subscribers and which weren’t so great? How would that help your business?
• Easy subscriber management: Can you import? (FeedBurner couldn’t.) Can you export, group, manage, merge, tag and more? Can you set actions and triggers to change what a subscriber sees based on their activity?
• Smarter truncated posts: If you use truncated posts in emails to drive traffic to your site, would they be better if they were more than a block of ugly text?
• Funnels and autoresponders and automation: What could you do if you could send your new blog subscribers a thank you note. Or a thank you gift, as an incentive? Or start a sales funnel to encourage them to buy from you, or attend an event? Is there an API, or links to services like Zapier, to integrate your RSS emails with your other services?
• Single vs. Dual Opt-In. I’m a big fan of dual opt-in; but single has its place too. How would you like your new provider to handle that for you?

What more could your Feedburner replacement do with email that Feedburner could not do?

Aside from some of the opportunities above, there are non-RSS email features that you might want to consider.

• Send bulk email without an RSS feed. In other words, a traditional, manual newsletter.
• Funnels and autoresponders. (I already covered these above)
• Follow-up emails. So you can (re)send an “In case you missed it” email to your blog subscribers who didn’t open your email – and a follow-up to those who did.
• Cherry-pick from your blog. Send an email powered by your blog, but build it by hand from the posts – giving you the best combination of automated email creation with complete manual control.

That’s a lot of potential things to think about. It’s also a lot of potential for your business or organization that you can now tap into.

Step Four: Think about what you want from the company behind the service, as well as the product itself.

Feedburner was good enough for many bloggers. It was bare-bones minimal, and it was free.

So what would you like from your FeedBurner replacement?

• Technical support. All modern professional ESPs will offer support for most of their customers. Some may limit that support if they offer (and you use) a free version, so be sure you know what you really want from customer service as you consider what to do next.
• Subscriber import. Now you can collect emails at an event and add them to a list.
• RSS to email commitment. You don’t want to be forced to do this again, so how core is RSS to email to your new provider? Is it central to what they do or an afterthought?
• Compliance. Dirty little secret: FeedBurner wasn’t GDPR compliant. You need to be.
• Fees: What is the fee structure? Are there overages? Do they charge for active subscribers only or for “leads” – even if they’ve unsubscribed? Is there a free option, and – if so – what are its limitations? Can fees be offset by greater ad revenues or better targeting to improve product sales? In other words, make sure that the financial relationship you end up in with your new provider matches your business needs and goals. And if it doesn’t, understand your switching costs and alternatives.
• Large list capability and scalability. Got a list in the tens or hundreds of thousands? Millions? How well does your new RSS to mail provider handle that and, if it’s important to you, how quickly they can mail (say) the million people on your list. Do they encourage large lists to mail – or do they throttle you and charge extra? Large list owners otherwise happy with RSS to email need to be very sure of the business model.
• Deliverability. Can your next RSS to email service actually get the email through to your subscribers? How can you test that? Does it own its infrastructure, or does it use someone else’s cloud? (Or, in other words, are you effectively signing up for two email services, and are you OK with that?). What is your provider’s acceptance rate?
• Security. Is two-factor authentication important to you? Do you want to add users (your VA, perhaps), with role and scope-based restrictions?
• Authentication: Can you improve your ability to get past junk filters by proving the email is really from you?

Step Five: Prioritize

Having talked a lot about what you can do with a modern email service committed to RSS to email and blogging, what you need to think about is what’s important to you. Bare-bones features at rock bottom pricing? Or the chance to do more and grow? How do you see your usage now, and how might it change in the future, and who’s the RSS to email service that can handle that? What are you prepared to pay for that, and available support (or lack thereof)?

You don’t have to get too fancy here, but it certainly helps to write things down. Here at FeedBlitz, when we build requirements for a new project, we start by breaking them down into three broad categories, or priorities, numbered P0 (priority 0 – the most important) to P2:

• P0: Must have. If the capabilities here aren’t ready, it isn’t good enough.
• P1: Highly desirable. Not mission-critical, however, some of these options can be dropped if necessary.
• P2: Nice to have: We would like these ,but if they don’t make it in, it isn’t a big deal.

If you just make a list of your P0s to P2s it can really help you figure out what you need vs. what you want. It doesn’t have to be a fancy spreadsheet, it can be as simple as itemizing your needs as a series of bullet points. As a filter, it can make the difference between choosing the right next step, or having to revisit this all over again in a few months.

Step Six: Choose the long trial.

The thing is, there is a hard deadline here. In July, FeedBurner email stops. For good. You have to get this done by then.

By now you might be seeing that moving email services isn’t just a question of changing a form and importing subscribers. It’s complicated. It’s a hassle (you’ll see how much in step seven). It is not just a case of downloading your FeedBurner email subscriber and declaring victory.

You have at most ten weeks or so to figure this out. The last thing you need is to rush this, especially as it’s been forced on you.

So our take is this: Don’t be rushed by a vendor you’re evaluating. Let’s face it, the fact that you have to do this at all is an unplanned and likely unpleasant surprise. Do you have time to devote to this in a 7 or 15 day trial? Were you planning on blogging in this timeframe or not? Can you do the deep dive to evaluate the solution, company and customer service in just a week or two, given everything else you already had planned?

You’re already in a schedule squeeze (July!). Give yourself time to figure this out and make a good evaluation. If the company you’re researching isn’t flexible during your evaluation, imagine how they’re going to be once you’re locked in.

Step Seven: The Migration Steps.

Research and planning:

• Prioritize your current and future feature needs from your RSS to email FeedBurner replacement.
• Prioritize your business needs.
• Research RSS email vendors, start a long trial.
• Select your vendor.

FeedBurner replacement implementation:

• Replace every FeedBurner subscription form with forms from your new vendor.
• Replace FeedBurner subscription links with links from your new vendor.
• Replace any integrations with third-party forms, landing pages and services with the equivalent from your new blog mail provider.
• Double-check PDFs and printed materials for about-to-be-outdated subscription links and instructions.
• Run your new RSS blog emails in parallel to get rid of any wrinkles.

End your use of FeedBurner’s email services:

• Log in to your FeedBurner account:
• Export your FeedBurner email subscribers, and upload to your new service.
• Disable FeedBurner email to prevent future accidental email signups you might miss.

If you can’t log in to your FeedBurner account, then life gets more complicated – but we can help. More on this in a later post.

The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Here are the latest FAQs about what we know of Google’s plans for FeedBurner, and how they might affect you.

Finally: Why you should consider FeedBlitz as your FeedBurner replacement

If you’re worried about the end of FeedBurner email but LOVE the ease of RSS powered newsletters, talk to our support team (we won’t turn that into an unpleasant sales experience, I promise), or me – Phil Hollows – personally.

Did you know? FeedBlitz powered the original FeedBurner email service.

RSS to email is core to what we do because that’s how we got our start. We have the industry’s best RSS to email capabilities, are GDPR compliant, have outstanding deliverability, coupled with full local support, monetization opportunities, and no hassle no overages pricing. We love email. We love RSS. We love bringing them together. We invite you to explore this site and our knowledge base.

       

Learn how you can turn your emails into revenue streams.

3 ways your emails can generate income without direct sales:

1. Become an affiliate (and use an affiliate-friendly ESP).
   
   Affiliate and referral programs are designed to reward participants who recommend their product or service. Essentially, if you know of something that you use and love and you share that love with your audience, you can be rewarded—whether financially or with complementary items—based on the number of people who sign up.
   
   Search for the products, goods, and services you use regularly to see if an affiliate program, discount codes, or referral links are available. Incorporate them into your emails or link them in your template for a simple way to earn rewards or generate a side income.
   
   And then, start telling your audience, and sending timely reminders, via email! Please note that some affiliate and referral programs and some ESPs have strict rules about affiliate marketing. We highly recommend to you check before you send to ensure you’re in full compliance with both the affiliate program and your ESP’s terms of service.
   
   At FeedBlitz, we don’t restrict your mailings associated with affiliate programs. As long as you’re compliant with your individual affiliate program’s policies, you are welcome to send as many emails including affiliate links as you’d like.
   
   
2. Insert ads into the emails you send.
   
   If you’ve put ads on your site, why not in your emails? Both your site and your emails offer coveted space, are viewed by your audience, and are opportunities to generate revenue.
   
   When it comes to inserting ads in your emails, there are two main categories:
   
   1. Selling space in your email and manually inserting ads based upon an agreement you have secured.
   2. Ads that are inserted automatically into your emails through an integration with an online ad service.
   
   Either option is a viable way to earn income from your emails without directly selling to your audience.
   
   FeedBlitz offers a one-click advertising program to automatically insert ads into your emails and you get to determine where the ads are displayed. Our clients typically see ad earnings run between $2 to $3 (USD) per 1,000 opens for US-based readership, depending on real-time ad markets and available inventory. If you mail frequently and to a large audience, this can help to offset the costs of your email marketing or used towards another endeavor.
   
   If you’re monetizing your website by showing ads, but not taking your emails into consideration, you could very well be leaving money on the table.
   
   Highlighted Box: Want to learn more about FeedBlitz’s one-click advertising program? It’s quick and easy, and all ads are G-rated. (We work directly with the ad company to ensure any political or inappropriate ads are quickly removed from inventory.) Check out our monetization program or enable ads in your account.
   
   
3. Sign up for your ESP’s affiliate or referral program.
   
   An email service provider is a service just like any other. And many services offer their own affiliate or referral programs to reward clients who tell their friends and network about them. With some ESPs, you may automatically be enrolled, and with others, you may need to manually sign up to get started.
   
   FeedBlitz offers a robust referral program, now in place for all clients, with no caps or limits, with members earning a revenue share every month while the referral’s account is in good standing. The referral program works on a 2-tier basis and is a great option to generate another stream of side income while you are mailing your list. Details about the program and tier reimbursement details, are outlined in great detail here.

Nurture your audience to grow revenues.

The options offered above heavily depend on the sending habits you currently have (i.e., frequency and open rates) and the relationship you have with your audience. With minimal setup and minimal ongoing efforts, the highest potential of earning comes from an active audience who regularly open your emails.

However you choose to monetize your mailings, we highly recommend your priority should be sending high-quality email content that offers value to your readers. This not only builds a foundation of trust but leads to increased open rates. Whether selling something directly or indirectly, both are ideal when it comes to earning revenue online.

Are you ready to start earning revenue with your emails? Learn more about our free trial and reach out to us on our Support Page to contact us via email, chat, or even over the phone. Live support is available Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern.

       

More hassle-free set it and forget it email campaigns at your fingertips.

Greater flexibility for your automated campaigns.

Previously, automated campaigns were restricted to a specific day a week for weekly emails or only one, select day a month for monthly emails.

But as of now: Mondays and Fridays? Can do. Weekends only? Check. Daily, except for weekends? Ask and ye shall receive.

And it’s not just for multiple days of the week. Interested in the 1st and 15th of the month? Way ahead of you:

You create the content, we deliver it to the world – on your schedule.

No longer the one-size-fits-all approach to automated emails, this update moves FeedBlitz clients one step further towards fully customizable RSS-to-email campaigns.

Maintaining regular contact with your list – automatically by using the new content added to your website – not only works to keep your list healthy and your subscribers engaged, but it allows your content to work double-time. Simply post to your site and the email campaign sends it to your list, without the need to login and create the campaign each time, so you can focus on other tasks at hand.

Let’s get started.

These scheduling options are available for every FeedBlitz client, beginning with your free trial. For questions, reach out to us on our Support Page to contact us via email, chat, or even over the phone. Live support is available Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern.

       

Win the Inbox with eye-catching email campaigns and save time when it comes to design.

Sleek lines, bold colors, content boxes and buttons in your email templates? You’re covered.

Fully customizable, FeedBlitz’s email templates were designed to be visually appealing, and to cut your time investment by already containing some of our most popular content blocks, appealing fonts and button styles right out the gate.

Gone are the endless rabbit holes of color-matching and element placing to get your template just right, before you begin adding content. Search the library to find templates offering groups of product images, large background images, matching call to action buttons, social icons, and subscribe icons.

Use the templates as they are, switching the text to match your own messages, or use the layouts as a base to kickstart your own design. Either way, rest assured, all email templates have been reviewed and tested on a variety of email platforms, and devices, ensuring they render properly on desktop as well as mobile.

Highlight your content in new ways.

Our growing library of email templates includes a variety of simple newsletter templates, along with advanced templates set up to easily promote email courses, online challenges, product updates, and more. (Yes—we really do mean and more!)

Whether it is imagery, video, text, or multiple products – there is a template available for you to highlight your own unique content to stand out in the inbox.

Easily sort by categories or quickly search by keyword to find a template that works best for you. If, by chance, you don’t see a template that fits, simply contact support and let us know. Our team is releasing new four new templates each month and is always open to suggestions or requests.

Available for every FeedBlitz client, beginning with your free trial. Getting started really is as simple as choosing your template, tweak it (if necessary), add your content, hit send, and your email’s out the door!

Interested in checking out a free email template or two (or 20 or 30)? Get started with your free trial. For questions, reach out to us on our Support Page to contact us via email, chat, or even over the phone. Live support is available Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern.

       

Standing Out from the Promotions Tab Crowd

This matters because gmail owns the bulk of consumer emails right now, and so being able to stand out within gmail itself is a huge competitive advantage for mailers.

To help you do that, FeedBlitz will find the featured image from your blog, newsletter or email, and ensure that if your email appears in a gmail app’s promotions tab bundle, your featured image will appear. This makes your email stand out from the clutter, encouraging opens and downstream engagement.

Since a picture says a thousand words, here’s an example from a client:

See how Lisa’s email stands out? That’s because (a) it’s been bundled on the gmail promotions tab, and (b) FeedBlitz built the email to be bundle-ready, so that an engaging image pops out.

That’s neat and easy – and, as of today, zero extra effort for FeedBlitz clients. If you send an email using FeedBlitz, it just works.

So what is a gmail promotions tab bundle anyway?

Depending on what gmail knows about the subscriber, it may group an email at the top of the promotions tab as part of a “bundle” – the recipient sees it highlighted as “Top Picks,” “Top Promotions” or similar text (the copy varies depending on what gmail thinks the email is about).

If an email ends up at the top of a bundle, it is typically followed by maybe one more bundled email, and then by a couple of google ads (aha!, says my inner cynic, way to emphasize those, Google).

Still, a bundled email appears at the top of the promotions tab even if other emails arrive after it, so it’s a way to maintain visibility and stickiness for your messaging.

Bundling, though, is neither guaranteed nor predictable — sometimes we’ve seen an email arrive and be positioned normally, then refreshing the promotions tab (by dragging down and releasing it) caused the email to be bundled. (I personally would like the app to behave consistently and do that without mystery manual intervention.)

There aren’t any guarantees that your email will be bundled, and it clearly varies based on the individual recipient. (Also be aware that the Inbox tab doesn’t bundle – it’s only the promotions tab, and only on gmail’s apps).

Nonetheless, this is an important development that gmail is rolling out, so I’m going to explore it a little further so you can work on taking advantage of it.

What are the benefits of gmail promotions tab bundles for email marketers?

Back in the day, the email marketing community was very worried about bulk email and newsletters being siphoned off by gmail to the promotions tab. The fear was that open rates would suffer, with consequent drops in open rates and revenues. That didn’t really happen, and the promotions tab is just a handy pre-built folder to find non-personal mailings.

When your email gets bundled, however, things get a LOT better for an email marketer.

• Your email gets pinned to the top of the tab and becomes temporarily sticky.
• You can stand out by having images and deals highlighted without the email being opened.

Both of these encourage opens and engagement, and these are good things. This is an interesting, engagement-based feature, and although the extra image and deal highlighting is currently limited to gmail’s apps (not, as far as I can tell, their web browser interfaces), it is an opportunity for every business, large or small, to strive to make their email marketing better.

Being bundled – and making the most of that when it happens – goes further, though. It helps establish a virtuous cycle: the more bundled an email gets, the more engagement it will garner, making it more likely that future emails will also be bundled. It’s an accelerant for good email marketing and organizations that do email well. To the winners, the breaks, as it were.

[There is a catch to the images that show with a bundled email, however, and that is that if a bundle shows your email’s bundle-ready image, that image is cropped and letter boxed – only the middle sliver is shown.]

This leads to two questions, one specific to FeedBlitz, and one a more general email marketing question:

• How does my email get to be bundled in the promotions tab?
• How does FeedBlitz help?

Let’s hop to it.

How does my email get to be bundled in the gmail promotions tab?

It’s a gmail-specific algorithm, and clearly their goal is to only bundle or highlight relevant emails that have a history of positive engagement. Bundling is also personalized, and the app’s bundling decision will vary by recipient. In other words, your email may be bundled for some readers, but not for others. Clearly the way to increase the likelihood of your email getting to the top of the bundling heap is to double down on engagement and best practices, so that not only is your reputation as a sender / brand excellent, but also your engagement with readers is consistently positive.

How?

• Ensure your open rates are good by writing compelling subject lines and making the most of pre-header / preview text.
• Create good mixed content (text, headlines and imagery) to encourage time within the email.
• Have compelling and relevant calls to actions to click through from the email to relevant content, offer or other call to action, including secondary ones such as “join my patreon” as well as “20% off” (or whatever!).
• Keep your list clean by removing non-engaged subscribers, which will help move your open rates up.
• Have a featured-image near the top of the email that is at least 322 x 82 (even if it is rendered smaller on your email).

How FeedBlitz helps with gmail’s promotions tab bundles: Finding and Promoting your Featured Images

As of today, if your email contains a meaningful or explicitly featured image, FeedBlitz will do the work to ensure that if gmail bundles your email in an app, that featured image will be displayed with it.

It just works.

This is true for traditional newsletters, RSS-powered blog subscriptions, funnels and transactional emails we send for you. In other words, as a FeedBlitz client, you do exactly nothing more than what you’re doing right now, and it just works. Automatically! Our featured image algorithm is part of our service, and has been around for years, restructuring blog-based emails from “here’s a blog post in your email” to “here’s an interesting and dynamically restructured update from the blog” – this featured image detection algorithm is how we create post thumbnails or hero images on the fly.

For RSS powered mailings, that’s a good thing; the whole point of an RSS-driven email subscription service is to set and forget, after all. So RSS-powered campaigns are all going to be promotions tab bundle ready, and neither the campaign nor the mailing template needs to be changed.

For emails and newsletters that are built using our visual drag and drop editor, a.k.a. the Visual Mailing Editor (VME), the test email dialog now shows a preview of the featured image FeedBlitz found, and how it will (probably) appear if it’s bundled in the gmail app, like this:

If, however, there are other candidate featured images in the mailing, the dialog lets you cycle through them using the arrows, so you can pick the one you like best. The preview we show is a very good facsimile for what gmail shows, but it isn’t a guarantee – the developers at gmail like to mix things up and keep us email service providers (ESPs) on our toes.

When you’re building your email in the FeedBlitz VME, you can pick the image you want to highlight and set it to be featured as part of the image block’s properties, pre-empting the test email step.

How does FeedBlitz find featured images?

There’s a certain amount of secret sauce here, but basically we look for large images that stand out. Basically, our featured image algorithm is emulating what a human eye would immediately be drawn to when your email is first opened, and promoting that image up into the gmail bundle.

You can influence our algorithm, for both traditional and RSS-powered mailings, by attaching a CSS class containing the word “featured” to the HTML image tag you want to emphasize (if you don’t know what that means, that’s OK, remember that the algorithm works automatically, and is very, very good at what it does without any human guidance).

Once FeedBlitz has found a set of candidate images that could be featured, it take the first one with the “featured” CSS class tag, or otherwise the first one it finds. (A postscript here: If the algorithm is not consistently finding the image you want it to, please drop a line to support for advice).

       

Zoom in to discover where your emails are being read.

A new way to look at the behaviors of your subscribers, the maps and corresponding data show where your audience is when they open or click your emails. Take a bird’s eye view by looking at countries, or zoom in to drill down for specific regions and/or cities.

Working with this information can offer ideas for location-specific content or, broadly thinking about time zones for different countries, what times of the day seem best to send your emails.

The geographic data and mapping feature is available for all email campaigns sent after October 1, 2020, and any Monthly Insights reports for October 2020 and afterwards. After tweaking this feature in the first few weeks, the development team is looking to how and where else to can expand its abilities to other areas of the app.

Interested in giving this and all of our great features a try? Learn more about our free trial and reach out to us on our Support Page to contact us via email, chat, or even over the phone. Live support is available Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern.

       

There’s more to running a remote company than keeping up with technology.

Keep your now remote company running smoothly for the long-term.

It may have felt like a scramble in the beginning with a sense of “just figure out whatever works best right now and get it in place!” leading the way as you quickly adjusted sails to navigate these new waters. Now that you’ve had time to settle into the idea of managing a remote team, you may be noticing that what worked in the beginning, isn’t setting you up for the long term, and your company culture is starting to take a hit.

Finding the remote rhythm can take companies and start-ups months, sometimes years, to sort out. Our management team went through their ups and downs, and they’re still learning valuable lessons every day. And so, to help you along your path, our CEO and Director sat down to offer a few tips they’ve learned while managing a remote company for 15 and 7+ years.

Tips from long-term remote managers on how to keep your culture alive and employees engaged while working from home:

Heather, Director: Three little letters turned out to be a huge frustration-reducer. Those letters are AFK, otherwise known as “Away from keyboard.” Your team members and colleagues don’t know that the doorbell rang, or that your kid clogged the toilet and you’re preventing a household catastrophe, or that the dog chased the hamster our the back door for the third time this week. They can’t see you!

To be clear, I’m not suggesting key loggers or mouse trackers. You will know if your team is productive without that level of demoralizing oversight.

If you’re showing as available and not responding, this can be very frustrating for the other person. When you need to step away from the computer for a bit, drop a quick AFK to let your team know you’re away but will be back soon. Just try to be sure to let them know when you’re back. (Take it from us – it’s easy to forget that part.)

Phil, Founder + CEO: Set specific times of the day where you can check in to manage routine action items surfaced by your staff (emergent situations are obviously different). This helps your team set expectations with the people they’re interacting with while allowing you the chance to find and get into a work groove. There are no added questions of when you, as management, will undoubtedly be available.

Heather, Director: Even while staying in fairly close contact via tools like Slack or Teams, it’s important to remember that everything you write is interpreted by the other person through their filters and vice-versa for what you read. You might not have intended the tone of your message to sound short, or annoyed, but your team member may “hear” it that way.

Body language and tone of voice are critical when it comes to effective communication, especially when times are stressful. And online, this can be lagging. If left too long, this atmosphere can quickly become toxic and erode your online culture. We’ve learned to work around this by using virtual meetings to check in and reset the tone of communication. Additionally, the heavy use of emojis in chat channels helps to ensure closer interpretations of intentions are received. (We all have our personal celebratory or fumbled emojis …. are just a few )

Phil, Founder + CEO: Remote working tools are just that, tools. And while text channels and emails are great, you don’t have a literal watercooler or break room to squeeze in any face to face human interaction.

Set aside time for your teams to video chat, and let them chat. Not after work hours, not on their lunch breaks, just as in an office we pop by a coworker’s desk for a quick chat or linger after meetings to catch up for a few minutes, carve out time during the workday when it’s OK for your team members to hop on a video call and just chat to catch up. When you’ve nothing but the walls, your pets, and the same people in your house 24/7, it’s essential to have casual face to face interactions outside the home.

Communication and boundary-setting are top-priority.

If anything, remember that every person on your team, whether a seasoned work from home professional or a remote newbie, is going to be experiencing extreme emotional and mental distractions. This calls for an increased amount of flexibility, understanding, and grace from managers and c-suites.

Communicate regularly and openly with your team, figure out what boundaries look like for both management and team members, and work to respect these boundaries from all sides.

In truth, we don’t know how long stay-at-home orders will remain in place. Some companies can’t wait to get back in the office, and others are starting to consider keeping things remote even after the orders are amended. Either way, we hope these tips help you make the best of the current situation to emerge with a stronger, more cohesive team when we all come out on the other side.

Do you have lessons you’ve discovered over these past few weeks of managing a remote team and working from home yourself? We’d love to hear more or answer any questions you may have! Our team is always available for strategy sessions, whether it be on working from home, managing a remote company, or – our area of true expertise – email marketing.

Reach out and let us know how we can help. We’re only a quick chat, call, or email away.

Are you ready to be the hero of your email marketing? Learn more about our free trial and reach out to us on our Support Page to contact us via email, chat, or even over the phone. Live support is available Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern.

       

If you’re like the rest of us, distractions seem to be at an all-time high.

3 time and energy saving strategies to keep your email marketing active

1. Automatically email new blog posts to your mailing lists.
   When time is short, it’s normal to debate which project to tackle: should you add a new post to your site or send an email to your mailing list? With an automated RSS to email campaign, you can do both at once.
   
   Once you have an automated RSS to email campaign in place, new updates to your site will automatically be emailed to your mailing list, sent on the schedule of your choice. With an automated mailing campaign, there’s no need to decide whether to create a new post or write a new email.
   
   You post the update to your site. We send the email for you, automatically
   
   
2. Resending evergreen content from your website.
   Resending older content from your site is an excellent strategy to send relevant content to your subscribers, which keeps your email list engaged, while side-stepping the need to create new content.
   
   Even if distractions are on the rise and your attention is pulled in multiple directions, it only takes a few minutes to Edit & Resend an email from your archives or to send a new email with previously published content on your site.
   
   Check email my subscribers off that to-do list!
   
   Concerned about resending content to people who may have already seen it? For starters, it’s good to remember that your open rate percentages aren’t always the same subscribers. That means, if you average 17-20% open rates on your emails, it’s not the same 17-20% on every email.
   
   Still hesitant about resending older content? Add a note to the top acknowledging the resend. We’d bet your list will completely understand being hard-pressed for time, themselves, and still appreciate you taking the time to reach out and provide value.
   
   
3. Bring back archived funnels and past email challenges.
   Have you ever created any courses or challenges? When your attention span and energy are limited, there’s no better time to pull them out of the digital drawer and offer them to your subscribers.
   
   Make a few edits if needed, then edit or create new forms and share them with your list (or if you have multiple campaigns you’d like to run, offer options to sign up for all of them!). You can easily set up tags or custom fields – for future targeted mailings, and you’ll be well on your way to keeping your list(s) engaged and emailed.
   
   FeedBlitz clients can easily restart any funnel campaign at any time, sending subscribers who’ve previously completed the campaign back to the beginning. It’s also incredibly easy to clone any existing funnel campaigns to diversify your email offerings and set up campaigns powered by our sophisticated automation.
   
   

Being low on time and focus doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your email subscribers.

The three tips explored above allow you to take full advantage of the automation capabilities at your fingertips. They were created to save you time in normal circumstances, but are doubly beneficial in times of extreme stress.

In true set it and forget it fashion, you’ll be keeping your list active and engaged, to ensure they’ll still be there ready and listening when we all come out on the other side, without taking up too much of your time.

Be the hero of your email marketing. Learn more about our free trial and reach out to us on our Support Page to contact us via email, chat, or even over the phone. Live support is available Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern.

       

Finding your ideal work from home rhythm isn’t as easy as you may think.

Remote working tips from full-time remote employees of a fully remote business.

From day 1, FeedBlitz has been a fully-remote company with employees across the country, communicating through online portals, from different time zones. Many transitioned to their remote positions from regular in-person office environments.

While they’ve all had time to find their remote strides through trial and error, we know you don’t necessarily have the length of time to discover your own work from home quirks. And so, we polled some of our department heads for their personal best tip or trick to working remotely:

James, Customer Support Lead, remote for 3 1/2 years: Take breaks! People think they need to be hyper-focused and super productive at all times because they’re working from home. I definitely did when I first made the switch. But seriously, take small breaks throughout the day, just like you would in a typical office. It not only boosts your focus, but turns out it’s pretty good for productivity.

Heather, Director, remote for 7 1/2 years: Set clear expectations and boundaries with your teammates and with your others in your home (your spouse, roommates, kids, whoever) about when you must be left alone and when you have a little more flexibility for interruptions. And, if possible, try to keep those times fairly consistent. It’ll be hard at first, but pretty soon you’ll be surprised, everyone in your house or apartment will learn to figure out where things are for themselves. (You aren’t the only one who knows where they left the remote!)

Also, don’t forget to try to get a little fresh air at least once during the day. There’s more to life than your workstation, and a little sunlight can be a good reminder!

Jennie, Content Manager, remote for 4 1/2 years: When I need to do some serious concentration or hammering out first-round drafts, turning off all notifications and alerting the team I’m going into my cave helps me stay wicked focused. In an office, it’s easy to put up a sign or sneak away to a quiet corner to be undisturbed, but online…no one can see you, and it’s odd and confusing if people disappear from the chat channels without a word.

Phil, Founder + CEO, remote for 15+ years: Of course set expectations and maintain boundaries — which can be hard if you’re WFH with kids! But also, I’m a believer in establishing a space for work and ideally it’s worth having a door you can close (plus a home office deduction on your taxes might suddenly be possible). Home offices also tend to have poor ergonomics – cramped desks, chairs that aren’t designed for the use you’re giving them now, monitors that strain your eyes, poor lighting, etc.

If you’re going to work a lot remotely, especially if you have (or find yourself suddenly having) back and neck problems, I can’t overstress the importance of a good quality adjustable office chair. While a Herman Miller Aeron might be out of your budget (but oh so worth it if you can), get a decent chair (and see if your employer will let you expense it; if not, it might still be deductible) and a good desk that’s the right height.

The most important tip of all: Find what works best for you.

There are 100’s of different systems and combinations and possibilities for creating a remote working routine. What works for one person or company won’t necessarily work for the next. Hopefully, these tips will help spark ideas of what would and would not help you.

Have you discovered random, unique tricks to being remote? We’d love to hear about them – we’re always experimenting with new systems and tips.

Ready to be the hero of your email marketing? Learn more about our free trial and reach out to us on our Support Page to contact us via email, chat, or even over the phone. Live support is available Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern.

       

It doesn’t matter how pretty or sophisticated your emails are if they aren’t getting to the inbox.

And getting to the inbox depends on the sender reputation of your bulk email service provider (ESP).

Not all ESPs are the same.

In simple terms, deliverability means the likelihood of your emails reaching your subscribers’ inboxes. It’s one of the reasons you choose to work with an ESP. We focus on achieving the highest deliverability rate and sender reputation possible to ensure the emails of our clients all reach their desired destinations.

What is a sender reputation?
A sender reputation is how individual internet service providers (ISPs) rate ESPs in terms of how safe they are as senders. A sender reputation lets Gmail, Apple mail, Yahoo and all the other ISP email services know that your ESP is trusted, and that it’s A-OK to allow your emails to reach the inbox. It’s a complex process that requires diligence and constant monitoring.

We can’t speak for every ESP on the market, but at FeedBlitz, protecting our deliverability and sender reputation is our leading principle. Without it, the emails you send are as useful as smoke signals in a thunderstorm.

How do ESPs get emails to the inbox?

Excellent deliverabillity requires a complex and continuous process to maintain. An ESP’s sender reputation is protected through a system of automated processes, monitoring, and manual review including:

• Strict checks for all imports. Every email address added to our system is checked against known spam traps, blacklists, and honey pots. Questionable email addresses are flagged by our system and stop the import.
  
  *Fun fact: Our system also runs a plagiarism-style check on imported lists, this flags any sets of email addresses imported into more than one account. Purchased lists don’t meet our standards.
  
  
  
• 24-hour monitoring of all mailing lists. Every mailing list is checked for spam complaints, bounce rates, and excessive unsubscribes. If the list fails to meet the minimum standard, it is automatically suspended. This ensures the health of mailing lists across all clients of an ESP.
  
  …because an ESP is only as healthy and reputable as its weakest list!
  
  
  
• Continuous adjustments for individual ISPs. ISPs are always tweaking their spam filters usually with very little notice. Accommodating for these changes requires constant adjustment of internal email servers to meet these requirements..
  
  
  
• Preventing questionable emails from being sent. Before a single mailing campaign is scheduled or sent, FeedBlitz runs a series of checks to enure the content doesn’t contain features that might be flagged as spam. This includes checking for common words, phrases, and content styling (multiple, unnecessary page breaks, for example), which could cause the email to be caught by an ISP’s spam filter.
  
  Flagging one potentially bad email and preventing it from being sent protects the reputation of all emails.
  
  
  
• Automatically removing bounced emails. Sender reputation is bolstered by an ESP frequently sending mail healthy mailing lists, creating a strong track record with ISPs. To maintain this reputation email addresses that bounce or return as undeliverable are automatically removed from your mailing list.
  
  You wouldn’t keep knocking on a door if you knew no one was home, would you?
  
  

Be the hero of your email marketing.

When email is the primary method of communication between you and your audience, it only makes sense for your ESP to ensure your emails are reaching the inbox. What do all the bells and whistles matter if your emails can’t be found?

If you’re struggling to consistently reach the inbox for some recipients, or your your ESP’s open rates are disappointing you, reach out. We’re confident we’ll be able to make a positive difference in your email marketing.

Learn more about our free trial and reach out to us on our Support Page to contact us via email, chat, or even over the phone. Live support is available Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern.

       

Creating an efficient and effective system for communicating with your now remote team.

This situation presents quite a problem for your remote team. However! You most likely already have the solution to this at the ready: The platform you’re currently using for your email marketing.

Similar to creating an email list and importing your email subscribers, you can do the same thing by creating a list (or multiple lists) of your team members.

Reasons to consider using your email marketing platform for team communications:

Don’t let important messages get lost in chat channels.

Chat rooms and apps are key players in any remote company, including here at FeedBlitz, but it’s easy to lose or forget essential notes or updates when using different channels and rooms. (Also important to note: some of these platforms have a limit on archived messages, as well.)

Your email marketing platform has features to better organize your team emails. Work with its tagging or group options to create quick, targeted email sends, and even schedule future email communications.

Does your Outlook, webmail, or chat platform offer that? No? Bummer! Good thing your email marketing platform already does.

No one likes a read receipt.

In the world of bulk sends, a read receipt is often the most logical step when you want to ensure your team members have received your memos. But how often do you get excited when that little box pops up? Not often? Neither do we.

Your email marketing platform automatically tracks open rates and opens by subscriber for every campaign sent. Meaning you can see which members of your mailing list opened your emails without leaning too far into watchdog communications and the dreaded read receipt.

Reward employee engagement and interaction.

Create captivating call to action buttons, easily add images or gifs to your emails, and track click-throughs and forwards all from the comfort of your email marketing platform. These are simple ways to liven up your office communications while keeping tabs on their effectiveness.

This makes it easy to find and reward team members who take specific actions like clicking a link to read more or who reach a threshold of opening five emails in a row. (Just because you’re remote doesn’t mean you can’t still create fun surprises for your team!)

Your email marketing platform was built for reliability and strong deliverability.

Your email marketing platform works diligently to protect their sending reputation and deliverability rate. Individual, corporate email servers, usually don’t have this specialized support.

If you’re already using an email marketing platform to reach your audience and customer base and doing so successfully, why not use it to communicate with your now-remote team more effectively?

Be the hero of your email marketing and your office emails. Learn more about our free trial and reach out to us on our Support Page to contact us via email, chat, or even over the phone. Live support is available Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern.