How to Automatically Send Your Blog Posts via Email with Aweber
Blogging is a great way to create an online presence, but the money is still in the list, right? Right.
How often do you check your RSS feeds? (Me? Never.)
How often do you check your bookmarks and favorite blogs? (Me? A few times each month, maybe.)
And how often do you check your email? (Uhh… lots!) Point made.
We also know that someone who visits your blog once and leaves may never find you again.
So, what's the solution? Do you copy and paste your important blog posts into an email and blast it out once in awhile? Or do a weekly recap email?
Sure, those are options. But, a much easier solution is to have your blog automatically email the people who want your info, right? Anything that saves me time also saves me money, so that'd be my preferred choice over doing it myself or paying someone to do it for me.
As I teach in Outsource Weekly:
Always Automate Before you Delegate — Unless you're Delegating the Automation!
Translation: Don't pay someone to do something that should be done by a computer, if the two services offer equally good results. The only exception would be paying someone to help you to automate a task, of course.
This is a case in point.
If you're counting on your website visitors to use RSS or bookmark a page — you're losing a lot of repeat visitors which means that those people are walking away without becoming a customer or even a fan of yours.
NOT GOOD.
So, how do you set up this automatic blog post notification system? Easy.
My preferred way is to use Aweber as you can then also take advantage of other features, they work really hard to get emails actually delivered, and you'll own your list.
The great folks at Aweber have put together a tutorial for you to show you how to set this up:
How to Send Your Blog Posts via Email
First, you'll create a signup form and place it on your blog as I have. (See in my side navigation?)
If you don't know how, again, Aweber has put together more fantastic tutorials.
How to Send Email Notifications from my WordPress Blog With AWeber? – Please note, this is for WordPress.org blogs which are the kind that you host on your own hosting account, not WordPress.com which does not allow email marketing.
How to Send Email Notifications from My Blogger Blog With AWeber? – This is for a Blogger blog. If you're using Blogger, you'll know it. Blogger is owned by Google and your original domain was probably .blogspot.com
Then, you'll find the Blog Broadcast tool in your Aweber account and will set it up to automatically send an email with new blog posts to subscribers as often as you wish. I chose a daily broadcast, since some of what I send it time-sensitive. Plus, who wants to wait for Weird Niche Wednesday? Not me! 🙂
The beauty of this system is that you can bring back your visitors again and again to build a relationship with them. And, Aweber offers click tracking and open rates so that I can see which of my blog titles are most enticing and which of the blog posts that I write get the most clicks.
We shall see when this one goes out whether you'd like more information on this topic or not, depending on how many of you open it and comment.
Here's hoping it was helpful!
Warmly,
Nicole
PS. You can set up email notifications from Feedburner, too, but I really recommend using Aweber because of the long-term potential of your list and the value of having control over it.
Susie James
September 28, 2009 at 9:07 amJust wondering if you know wether this will work with Getresponse?
Nicole
September 28, 2009 at 9:25 amHi Susie,
I checked their FAQ & knowledge base and it looks like they sure do. 🙂
Warmly,
Nicole
Laura
September 28, 2009 at 8:16 amThank you for your advice. I use Aweber for email marketing, list building etc. but never considered this function. I am going to try this soon.
Nicole
October 8, 2009 at 3:26 pmYou’re very welcome. 🙂
Dawnaurora
September 28, 2009 at 9:28 amI have been wanting to get mine taken care of. Now I am off to get it done. Thank you for the post.
Luca Di Nicola
September 29, 2009 at 4:15 pmHi Nicole,
This is a great feature that I’ll be implementing soon. I was a little confused about some of the templates and how the content gets populated (if that’s the right term) so I put it off. I’ll do a test first before sending it live.
Thanks,
Luca
Suzanne Cavataio
September 30, 2009 at 10:03 amThanks for the information. I already use Aweber for email marketing. Now I will be using it for my blog posts.
Lexi Rodrigo
October 8, 2009 at 3:10 pmHi Nik,
Funny you should bring this up. I used to do this with one of my blogs, but discontinued it when I began posting daily. I thought my subscribers might get tired of getting a notification every day. Another thing I didn’t like was not being able to customize each notification, since Aweber sends it out automagically.
Now I prefer to send a broadcast message when I publish a remarkable post that I feel my subscribers shouldn’t miss.
What do you think?
Thanks in advance!
Lexi
Nicole
October 8, 2009 at 3:25 pmI have set Aweber to send an update every morning at 6 am if I’ve had any posts in the last 24 hours.
I figure my readers can choose to peek or delete depending on whether they have time.
For me, the decision was based upon two things: saving time – and making sure the people who do want to know when I post to my blog get every opportunity to hear about it.
I’ve been watching my stats and get about 1/3 of the subscribers are opening the messages to read the excerpt. So, I think they’re enjoying the service. 🙂
Freida
October 28, 2009 at 2:52 pmHi Nicole:
Thanks for the information. I did not know this was possible. But, right now, my biggest challenge is that I have a site, but no visitors…thus, no opts-in and no names in my data base. I wish I could automatically post my blog posts to people in my ameritech.com contact list, then get them to opt in…so then I’d begin to create my aweber mailing list. It’s a catch 22 for me…any suggestions?
Freid
Nicole
October 28, 2009 at 4:16 pmHi Freida –
Can you contact the people in your ameritech.com contacts list? If so, just let them know they can sign up to get your blog posts via email, and offer them a bonus to do so. 🙂
If you’re giving them a great value, then you know the ones who you’re most interested in will – although they may need a reminder or two before they do it.
Hope that helps!
Nicole
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Doug Eikermann
January 7, 2010 at 11:19 amNicole,
I’m considering using Aweber, but I have one doubt. On my blog, I post two short posts daily and a longer one about once a week. Will the entire post appear in the e-mail message? Or is it a teaser that will direct the traffic to my blog? I want to avoid making it so easy that no one will click through to the blog once they’ve signed up.
Thanks,
Doug
Jesse Walker
May 8, 2010 at 8:37 pmThanks Nicole!
I was about to use a plug in but I didn’t see any point of keeping my lists in separate places. I appreciate the good information.