They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

From “For the Fallen” by Robert Laurence Binyon

For the benefit of my mostly US audience, in the UK and many other countries we buy paper poppies around the 11th to commemorate those who served and those who fell during the World Wars. The poppies specifically memorialize the killing fields in France and Belgium during WWI where the “lions led by donkeys” on both sides killed each other in unimaginable numbers. Day in, day out. Only the Spanish Flu of 1918 outkilled the machine guns, mustard gas and barbed wire.

Today, then, is a noteworthy day in Europe, where the slaughter of the horribly misnamed “Great War” mostly took place between 1914 and 1918. Today, entire countries largely fall silent at 11am on November 11th to remember the wars, their dead, the valor of those who served and the bravery those who still do. It’s a day of respect, retrospect and introspection.

In churches and schools, at services, memorials and cenotaphs in the cities, towns and villages, the stanza from Binyon’s poem, quoted above, is often spoken as part of memorial services and readings. The focus back in Britain is markedly different today – a day that’s somber, one of mourning not celebration – than Veteran’s Day is here in the US, my adopted home. It has always been this way: Armistice Day has never been a celebratory day off. It’s not a day to celebrate the military like it is here in the States (which is not to say it is necessarily better; it’s just a different perspective).

In that spirit then, no matter what your politics, no matter where you live today, no matter what else you are doing or celebrating this November 11th, I would ask only this: Please take a moment today to remember the Fallen and their sacrifices, no matter where they fell nor for what cause.

Let us make it so that, for today at least, we will remember them.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

        

Comments

• Lets just pray for the fallen ones. by Find Your Fine
• Giß?øi thiß?çu ?æß??n c c bß n ?æß?ïa chß?ë ... by hoahau1000000
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–

“My list doubled in two months and continues to passively grow every week, slow and steady.”

How does it all add up, you might wonder? SmartForms helped me expand my audience, first and foremost, and that’s priceless. They also help me gather key information about my clients and audience, via custom fields. But more than all of that, this self-running feature helps me generate income.

Because of the positive experience folks are having getting a free PDF and a tasteful, SPAM-free set of emails linking them to free trials they’re interested in, eventually a handful of those subscribers become paying clients. And it all started with the SmartForm…

Katey Schultz is an author, writing coach, and founder of Maximum Impact: Precision Courses for Writers, Artists, & Trailblazers. Learn more at www.kateyschultz.com.

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Easy enough for a blogger to set up in seconds, powerful enough for sophisticated corporate email campaigns, FeedBlitz is an RSS, Email and Social Automation Tool to take your email marketing to the next level. Visit us online to learn more or start your 30 Day Free Trial!

       

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To help clarify the differences in our various scheduling dates and times, we created the below list with detail on expected delivery and article inclusion:

Once a Day: You will be able to select which 3-hour time block in which you would your mailing to be sent. This mailing will include all new posts since the previous sending window.

Weekly: Select the day of the week and the time of day you would like your automatic mailing to be sent. This will include all new posts since the previous sending window.

Pro Tip: If you post often and offer a daily mailing, it is also a great idea to offer a weekly version for those who prefer to receive all updates in one email as opposed to multiple emails.

Monthly: Similar to Weekly Schedule, however, you will be able to select the exact day of the month an update is sent.

Express: Expect an email to be sent within 30-45 minutes of a new post going live on your site and being detected by our system. This is ideal if you do not post multiple times a day, on a regular daily schedule, or if updates are time-sensitive.

ASAP: Posts will send immediately. In order for this sending schedule to be activated, your must have PubSubHubbub enabled in your feed.

On Demand: This is a manual sending schedule and no automatic mailings will be sent to your subscribers.

Many publishers test their sending schedules to see the impact on their open rates. Should you alter your schedule to test open rates, we recommend only doing so every 3-4 weeks or so to gather proper metric data as well as to not alarm your subscribers with frequent changes.

If you have any questions, simply send our team an email at support@feedblitz.com, or you can chat or give us a call 1.877.692.5489 Monday – Friday, 9 am to 5 pm EST. We also have plenty of great support available 24/7 in our online Help Forum and YouTube channel!

        

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• Thank you very much for sharing by Circular saw guide

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Here at FeedBlitz we know not all emails are created equally, and not all emails are created to be sent to everyone. With this in mind, we offer Audience Segmentation for your Newsflash mailings.

To begin, create your Newsflash. From the text editor, you can select the Audience Inclusion tab or the Audience Suppression tab as shown below:

No matter which mailing list started the Newsflash, these tabs allow you to include and exclude subscribers from all of your lists, as well as working with Segments (such as those who have not opened for a certain period of time, for example) or any groups you may have in place.

Bonus tip: Using Groups to segment your list can help you further shape your audience should you have Custom Field-Specific Groups in place.

If you have any questions, simply send our Support Team an email at support@feedblitz.com, or you can chat or give us a call 1.877.692.5489 Monday – Friday, 9 am to 5 pm EST. We also have plenty of great support available 24/7 in our online Help Forum and YouTube channel!

       

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Video is an incredible tool to have on your site as well as use with your email marketing. If your email is set to send automatic RSS-to-email notifications and your post contains a video, our system will show the video’s placement in the post, linked to the embedded post on your site.

However, if you are sending a Newsflash email there is a simple and highly effective technique to increase video click throughs to your site or to the video on a platform like YouTube. As opposed  to sharing a “See the video now!” link, insert a screenshot image of your video with a faux play button added to the center.

        

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• Video streaming and playbacks ,are often not well set up to be ... by ramy george morcos
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Your FeedBlitz template is capable of pulling the three most recent Instagram photos for your subscribers to see. This is a great way to cross promote your brand, while broadening the views of your photos, without the hassle or worry about algorithm changes within the Instagram app.

With your three most recent photos, the template also pulls the captions of these photos. If you tend to post longer captions or use multiple hashtags in your captions, this can take up an increased amount of space in your template.

To easily remove Instagram photo captions in your email template, you will need to remove the <$BlogItemTitle$> element located in the Instagram section of the template. To do this your template will need to be in the Advanced Template Editor.

In the ATE, scroll down in the template to your Instagram box. This is where you will remove the tag  <$BlogItemTitle$> to remove the captions of your photos:

This will remove the captions while leaving the photos visible and still linked to your Instagram account. You can easily apply this to captions on your other social channels as well, should you wish to remove captions for your Pinterest, YouTube, Etsy, or Shopify feeds.

If you have any questions, simply send our team an email at support@feedblitz.com, or you can chat or give us a call 1.877.692.5489 Monday – Friday, 9 am to 5 pm EST. We also have plenty of great support available 24/7 in our online Help Forum and YouTube channel!

        

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• I see your site is similar to my page. Do you allow guest ... by Ashly91

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When integrating your email marketing into your overall marketing plan, it is essential to consider the intersection of social marketing and your emails. At FeedBlitz, there are three main areas to integrate your social media marketing with your email marketing. You can work with all three or simply focus on one at a time, whichever suits your audience best.

Autopost to Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn

All publishers have the ability to autopost new updates to Twitter, Facebook and/or LinkedIn.  This feature can be enabled by selecting your site from the site dashboard and choosing: I Want To…Set Up a New…Social media posting. You will be able to select which channel you would like to initiate or edit from here.

Pro Tip: With Twitter, you can automatically add hashtags to each post. This is a great feature if you post with one major focus, i.e. #emailmarketing, #DIY, #glutenfree, etc.

Not only does autoposting reduce the need to manually post new updates to each individual channel, it can add to the frequency of  your posting when used in conjunction with manual posts in order to reach a broader audience.

A few important notes on autoposting:

• Within the publisher dashboard, you can only connect one account from each channel. If you would like to add a second account to autopost updates, check out the steps in this Quick Tip on how to do that!

• Autoposting is not on the same schedule as your automatic mailings. Posts are sent to social channels once it is picked up in your RSS feed, so within 30-45 minutes of the post going live on your site.

• When your social accounts are linked to your FeedBlitz account, the number of followers are counted in your total audience found on your site dashboard. You are not charged for these followers, only unique, active email subscribers.

Add your Social Icons

When we  talk about adding social icons to your email template, there are two different ways you can do this.

1. Make your posts shareable by adding social sharing icons to each post. Your posts now are incredibly simple for your readers to instantaneously share without needing to visit your website first. You can able social sharing icons to your posts through your FeedBlitz RSS feed. Select your RSS feed then choose I Want To…Change…Per-post Sharing as seen below:      

2. 

   Add your social icons within your email template. Our EZ Template Editor is designed to easily add your social channels as well as change the icons themselves if preferred. *Note: We recommend changing the icons to match those on your website for branding consistency! The location of your icons can determine the response of your readers. If your focus is to increase your social audience, place the icons towards the top of your template will increase this likelihood, however, if this is not a priority, you can add these icons to the bottom of your template.

Incorporate Your Social Content

Our publishers spoke, and our development team listened! Within all email templates is the ability to incorporate your Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Etsy and/or Shopify accounts. Doing so will pull the three most recent posts of these channels and display them in your mailings. There are many different possible benefits and reasons to do this, so we listed just a few:

• Increase revenue within your Etsy or Shopify accounts by always having your newest products on display for your subscribers.

• No more worrying about algorithm changes within Instagram when your subscribers can easily see what you’ve been posting.

• Expand your audiences on these channels by introducing the content to your readers.

• Link to a specific Pinterest board associated with your blog or product launch.

• Capture audiences with your latest YouTube videos, enhancing your connection by incorporating visual and audible messages from you and your team.

It is important to know that pulling the three most recent posts from these channels also brings in the captions of these posts. If you would like to truncate or remove the captions of these images, send our Support Team a request, and we will walk you through the steps on how to do this.

Pro Tip: Do you find incorporating your social channels into your template creates too much content? Consider creating an automatic weekly newsletter with only your social updates! Think of it as a “What we’ve been up to around the Web!” update. Our team can work with you on setting this up as it is a great way to keep readers in the know, without overloading individual emails.

Working with all of the above are merely suggestions on how easily it is to integrate your email marketing with your social media marketing. It is our goal here at FeedBlitz HQ to make this integration as simple as possible.

While there is a fine line between over-socializing and under-socializing your newsletters, you will be able to determine the appropriate amount of social integration based on your unique audience. Spend some time testing what works best for you and your audience to find the ideal combination of social sharing, posting and integration.

If you would like for our team to take a look and offer suggestions on how to make your emails more social, just let us know! We’re here to help as the success of your email marketing is at the top of our priority list.

Questions on anything in today’s post or on any of our FeedBlitz features? Send our support team an email to support@feedblitz.com. You can also chat, check out our Help Forum, or give us a call at 1.877.692.5489. Our Support and Sales Desk is available Monday – Friday from 9 am to 5 pm EST.

-•-

Easy enough for a blogger to set up in seconds, powerful enough for sophisticated corporate email campaigns, FeedBlitz is an RSS, Email and Social Automation Tool to take your email marketing to the next level. Visit us online to learn more or start your 30 Day Free Trial!

       

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All FeedBlitz EZ templates are responsive which accommodates a variety of image sizes. However, should you notice your images bleed outside the borders of your template, there is a simple solution to avoid this in future mailings.

Best practices encourage the use of images no larger than 600 px wide in your posts. Following this guideline  will ensure your images are transmitted correctly to your email template.

Be advised, however, that some email clients will show the original image size, regardless of the adjusted dimensions specified by your template or blog post. The best method is to adjust the images in an editor before uploading them to your post or email template in order for the desired image size to be shown no matter which email application is used.

If you have any questions, simply send an email to support@feedblitz.com, or you can chat or give us a call 1.877.692.5489 Monday – Friday, 9 am to 5 pm EST. We also have plenty of great support available 24/7 in our online Help Forum and YouTube channel!

       

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If you’re looking to create a personal touch to your emails, adding the subscriber’s first name is a great place to start.

Before beginning we recommend brushing up on your Custom Field Knowledge and working in our Advanced Template Editor.

In order  to add  a subscriber’s first name to an email, you will need to have the custom field identified and switch your email template to the ATE.

In the ATE switch to the Custom Fields tab. Copy the Template Tag for your Custom Field to add to the template, above the <$BlogPosting$> tag as shown below:

Should you only have Custom Field information for a portion of your subscribers, but plan to gather it for everyone moving forward, you can still include a greeting, with their name, while having an alternative should the field be blank. To do this, use the following line of information:

<$if FirstName$>Good morning, <$FirstName$>!<$else$>Good morning!<$endif$>

This is using an “if this, then that” scenario that if a First Name is present, it will be shown, however, if no value is assigned to the field, you are listing an alternative.

Using this condition works to prevent this from happening:

A quick, simple way to personalize your mailings, you are able to add Custom Field information to your mailings as you see fit.

If you have any questions, simply send us an email at support@feedblitz.com, or you can chat or give us a call 1.877.692.5489 Monday – Friday, 9 am to 5 pm EST. We also have plenty of great support available 24/7 in our online Help Forum and YouTube channel!

       

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Creating engaging and meaningful content, and doing so consistently, isn’t always as easy as it sounds. We’ve been in the email marketing business for quite some time, and have published a lot of content along the way, so we know as well as you how frustrating getting stuck coming up with new content can sometimes be.

An editorial calendar helps tremendously with planning, but what happens when the idea well runs dry when filling out that editorial calendar? There’s the great standby go-to content ideas such as creating a list, writing a How To article, using video as opposed to a text post or designing an infographic, to name a few. Today we’re going to talk about a few of the content generation ideas we keep in our back pockets here at FeedBlitz HQ. Or in other words, how we avoid getting stuck creating new content! (Because no one likes screaming at their computer screen in frustration, right? Right.)

Repurpose Old Content

To some, this is a given while others aren’t so sure of the practice. Repurposing old or archived content is taking something you have previously posted and offering a new twist or a modern spin on it. Can you relate it to something happening today? Are there new tools or resources available you can use to update the information? Maybe you wrote individual posts that would be great grouped together for a monthly theme? You can even begin a greatest hits or oldie but goodie themed post once a month where you repost the content and add an updated introductory and closing paragraph to the text.

If your concern is readers noticing repeated content, know that when we say old or archived posts, we’re reaching back at least 8-12 months. Think of how many new subscribers have joined your list since then! Additionally, a good open rate is 20%, which means only 1/5th of your readers see any given piece. There has also been a lot of  new content added to your site. Should a subscriber receive the content a second time, they will most likely not remember its initial posting.

Tell Readers What NOT To Do

*Spoiler Alert: This is exactly what we are doing in this post right now. Check out the title again, How Not to Get Stuck Creating New Content. See what we did there?

Instead of telling your readers what they should be doing, try telling them what they should NOT be doing. A bit of reverse-psychology at it’s best, you are luring readers in by helping them avoid something negative. This post could have easily been titled Content Generation Ideas or How to Create Even More Great Content, yet we chose to re-frame it in telling you how not to find yourself in a very familiar (or annoyingly frustrating) position. It’s a small tweak but can easily grab your reader’s attention as you are offering great value in avoiding a common pain.

Another idea in this category is to share how you have failed at something. This is a big step for many publishers as it can be tough to admit our wrong-doings or failures, however, it not only offers a sense of humility on your part, but it connects with your readers as well. You are providing valuable insight and education to your readers by offering the opportunity of learning from your mistakes. This can save them both time and money, while it further establishes you as an expert resource in your field. That is a win-win in one blog post!

Check Your Support or FAQ Channel

A not-so-hidden gem for creating new content can be found sitting in your support queue or Frequently Asked Questions page on your website. A good portion of our content is based on questions we receive from our publishers. This method alone is the inspiration and motivation for our weekly Quick Tips  blog posts.

Is there something you could explain in a different way or highlight the answer in a new or updated post? How about a common question you notice frequently coming into your support channel? Not only will using these questions provide topics for new content, but the content provides a quick, easy answer for your readers to find on your site as well. Our Support Team often replies to reader questions with links to specific posts offering step-by-step directions, screenshots, videos and more to assist in their responses. If you are new to this practice, it is also a great way to begin training your clients and subscribers to check your site for answers before opening a support ticket.

And there you have it! Add these three tips to your arsenal and you’ll find yourself in a better place to avoid getting stuck when it comes to creating new content. It’s not fail-proof, however, it’s helped us here at FeedBlitz HQ when we’ve needed it! And besides, one of these ideas got you reading this post, now didn’t it? We practice what we preach. Now get to writing!

Stuck in a rut with your content? Send our team an email to support@feedblitz.com. We’ll take a look at your site and content and offer a few ideas to help keep you moving forward! You can also chat, check out our Help Forum, or give us a call at 1.877.692.5489. Our Support and Sales Desk is available Monday – Friday from 9 am to 5 pm EST.

-•-

Easy enough for a blogger to set up in seconds, powerful enough for sophisticated corporate email campaigns, FeedBlitz is an RSS, Email and Social Automation Tool to take your email marketing to the next level. Visit us online to learn more or start your 30 Day Free Trial!

      

To get started with this option, select the Subscribe by Text / SMS option under Lists. From here you will be prompted to select your mailing list, if you have more than one available.

Subscribe via text is enabled on all mailing lists. The default text code is your mailing list ID, however you can set this code to be any unique code like. Once a listener or viewer texts the designated code to the number 1.781.262.3877, they will receive an automated text message containing a link to your subscription form.

Click to set up the text as noted above. You are able to designate as many codes as you’d like, and can customize the message your listeners receive:

Pro Tip: Speaking or attending multiple conferences? Create new codes along with custom fields for each conference. This will tag your subscribers so you are able to easily differentiate which subscriber came from which conference.

Standard text message and data rates may apply for your subscribers. Separate codes will need to be used for individual mailing lists.

If you have any questions, simply send our Support Team an email at support@feedblitz.com, or you can chat or give us a call 1.877.692.5489 Monday – Friday, 9 am to 5 pm EST. We also have plenty of great support available 24/7 in our online Help Forum and YouTube channel!

      

The success of your email marketing isn’t always immediately obvious. More than having a growing list with 1,000s of emails on it, a successful email marketing program also focuses on open rates, click throughs and other key metrics to track its success.

Thinking about sorting through reports and working with numbers can cause even the most mathematically-inclined to develop an eye twitch. Here at FeedBlitz HQ, we work to make this as simple, and headache-free, as possible. Offering a full fleet of metrics you can follow, you’re able to decide precisely which metrics are most important and easily track the progress.

Types of Email Delivery Metrics and Reports

FeedBlitz offers three categories of email marketing reports: At-A-Glance, Summary and In-Depth Metrics. All accessible from your Mailing List dashboard, these reports are found in the Mailing Activity section:

At-a-Glance reporting comes in the form of the FeedBlitz Heat Map. This report allows you to quickly see what links were clicked in individual mailings. Learn more about our Heat Maps in this FeedBlitz Quick Tips blog post.

Pro Tip: Want more Quick Tips from FeedBlitz? We cover all sorts of email marketing and FeedBlitz-platform related questions in short, easy to digest posts. Subscribe here to get our next tip!

Summary reports can be accessed by selecting the Monthly Mailing Metrics as highlighted above. This report shows the Subscriber Stats along with Mailing Stats for the month selected. You will also be able to quickly identify which mailings for that month were deemed most and least engaging, opened and clicked.

 

      

We understand there are times you would like to post an item to your website without having it sent to your mailing list. Exclude tags are a simple way to do this in FeedBlitz.

Have you missed a tip or two? Catch up on all of our Quick Tips here!

You can find exclude tags in the Settings of your Mailing List. Look for the line “FeedBlitz sends All New Posts,” and click this to trigger the dialogue box below.

Here you are able to enter any tag you wish to use to exclude a post from your mailing.

The tags used here must be used in the exact same format as on your website. It is important to remember exclude tags are case, spacing and punctuation sensitive. Any posts published on your site tagged with your exclude tag in the FeedBlitz settings will prevent the post from being mailed to your subscribers.

Pro Tip: If you prefer using categories instead of tags, that’s no problem as tags and categories are treated the same by FeedBlitz!

A scenario for using exclude tags, other than for individual posts, can include sending category-specific posts, such as our Quick Tips posts. Both our main blog post mailing list and our Quick Tips mailing list are powered by the same RSS feed. For this, we exclude all posts tagged ‘quick tips’ from our main mailing list and only include posts with this tag for our Quick Tips mailing list. This prevents subscribers from receiving two emails, should they be on both lists.

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If you have any questions, send our Support Team an email at support@feedblitz.com, or you can chat or give us a call 1.877.692.5489 Monday – Friday, 9 am to 5 pm EST. We also have plenty of great support available 24/7 in our online Help Forum and YouTube channel!

      

Reporting metrics are key when it comes to evaluating the success of your email marketing campaigns. While FeedBlitz offers a fleet of metrics and data reporting with each mailing, as well as summarized monthly mailing metrics, our publishers also have access to what we call the Heat Map.

A heat map is available for each mailing and is a great, quick reference guide to see what were the most popular links in your mailings. Accessible from your mailing list dashboard, located under Mailing Activity, select Heat Map for any mailing you are curious about.

You will be taken to the web version of your mailing. Each link that has been clicked by a subscriber will be tagged with the percentage of clicks it has received. If there is no tag, that link has not received a click.

 

      

You know that the success of your email marketing campaign can be determined equally by what you send as it is by how you send it. Because of this, our EZ Template Editor offers publishers vast capabilities when it comes to customizing their email templates. Changing colors, fonts, layout of the content, social icons, social channels, all can be easily edited with a few clicks.

However, for more advanced editing options, we also offer the Advanced Template Editor (ATE). Switching to this template allows enhanced customization using our FeedBlitz Template Tags and full access to the underlying HTML coding.

What happens when I switch to the Advanced Template Editor?

We recommend getting as much of your styling and social preferences set while working in the EZ Template Editor. This will reduce the amount of code edits you’ll need to make after switching to the Advanced Template Editor. Once you have a majority of the information set, select the orange button towards the upper right corner of your screen which reads “Switch to Advanced Template Editor.” You will then see the following screen:

The Advanced Template Editor mimics the dashboard of many popular content management systems. Below editing buttons, you will see the rich visual text editor with your FeedBlitz Template Tags. Should you prefer to work with HTML, you can do so by selecting the Source button in the upper left corner of the editor.

Pro Tip: We recommend keeping a test list for template edits when working with the ATE. Once you are satisfied with your edits and have tested them on your own email accounts to ensure they render as expected, then copy your changes into your active list.

As with the EZ Template Editor, you can save and access prior drafts and versions of your template, which makes it easy to back-track your changes. If using multiple mailing lists or Autoresponders and you would like for them all to use the same template, simply check the box at the top of the editor making the template the Master Template.

The ATE also easily allows you to insert custom field information you have gathered such as a subscriber’s first name. Select the Custom Field tab and you will see a list of your custom fields, along with the appropriate Template Tag to use in order to insert them into your mailings.

What are Template Tags?

FeedBlitz Template Tags are used to tell the FeedBlitz platform when it should add specific information or take actions building your mailing.

The most common template tags you will see are:

• <$BlogPosting$>  - This tag notes the beginning of your blog post section. There will be two of these tags (opening and closing the section) and any information listed between these tags will be true for any blog posts in your mailing. If your mailing contains more than one post, all of the elements between these tags will repeat for each post insertion.

• <$BlogItemTitle$> – The title of your blog post.

• <$BlogItemBody$> – The body of your blog post.

• <$BlogItemURL$> – An automatically generated link to the post. You won’t see this tag unless you use the link tool to create a hyperlink.

• <$BlogNoLandingPage$> – This tag comes in pairs and prevents any content found between them from appearing on default FeedBlitz pages such as subscription confirmation pages and opt-out completion.

When working with the ATE, the style of the Template Tags will be applied to the content they insert into the mailing. (Think: font, size, color, placement, etc.) You can find a full list of tags by selecting the Template Tags tab at the top of your Advanced Template Editor.

Adding Content in the Advanced Template Editor

Many of our publishers enjoy adding a personalized note to the email subscribers in a weekly or monthly newsflash on demand mailing. To do this, we recommend having a separate list for your summary mailings. You can clone the original mailing list, which copies your current template, then work within the Advanced Template Editor to add this space for content. Our Support Team can assist you with this if you have any questions along the way.

This is also applicable if you wish to add a note after the content of your mailing. You can see how we used this feature in our Quick Tips Newsletter. We added the following note to the template:

      

Easily the most over-looked step in email marketing is the landing page which users see after confirming their subscription. FeedBlitz publishers are able to quickly redirect this page, guiding them back to their site for further browsing. Before beginning, choose the page on your site you would like for new subscribers to be directed to and copy the URL.

Begin by selecting your Mailing List. Then choose I Want To…Change…Settings, Schedule. On the next page, the third tab you will find Subscriber Interaction, Activation and Notification.

Navigate down to the line reading “When they click … they are sent to the FeedBlitz default landing page.”

The default landing page is what you will be changing. When you select the highlighted text, a box will appear where you can enter the URL of a page you would like for users to arrive at upon confirming their activation.

This redirect can simply be your homepage, a list of your most popular blog posts, even taking them to an additional bonus offer for having signed up to your list. The choice is yours! The goal in redirecting this page is to send subscribers back to your website to encourage them to continue browsing, reading and sharing your content.

If you have any questions, send our Support Team an email at support@feedblitz.com, or you can chat or give us a call 1.877.692.5489 Monday – Friday, 9 am to 5 pm EST. We also have plenty of great support available 24/7 in our online Help Forum and YouTube channel!

      

At FeedBlitz we are big fans of automating your email marketing tasks, freeing you to work on your business. Parsers play a key role when it comes to integrating third party applications into your email marketing. You may remember us briefly mentioning that a parser is what helps you complete the process of selling with Funnels, but they offer even more compatibility benefits than just shopping cart integration. As an advanced feature, parsers can be complicated at first glance. This guide will help you understand what a parser is, how they work, and how to make one work for you.

What is a Parser?

A parser, in computer terminology, is a program that  analyzes a string of incoming information and identifies the individual parts. Within FeedBlitz, a parser is used as a middleman sorting information between the third party and FeedBlitz. If an application can send an email notification with structured data, you can integrate it with FeedBlitz. Our parsers are created with long, unique email addresses. Notification emails are sent to these addresses to trigger a specific action within FeedBlitz.

In other words, a parser receives notice from the designated third party app, a subscriber notification or purchase completed for example, and tells FeedBlitz what to do next such as adding a subscriber to a particular list or sending an autoresponder.

How does a Parser work?

To walk you through the process of how a parser works, we’ll use a parser created for a shopping cart transaction. With this process, a parser is attached to an autoresponder. The autoresponder then delivers the download, eBook, eCourse, or other digital product.

When you create a parser we generate a long FeedBlitz email address. You may need to verify this email address within the application you’re using.

The parser receives the email and analyzes it for the designated information. The parser then pulls the information you have chosen (i.e. email address, name, etc.) and creates a subscription to the autoresponder for your customer which then triggers delivery of your product.

Visually, this is the basic workflow of what takes place:

As mentioned above, parsers can be used to work with many other applications in a similar fashion outlined above. If a third party application can be configured to send an email showing the user’s email address, a parser can be used to integrate it into your email marketing.

Pro Tip: You can use a parser to add email addresses from a third party application. Follow the steps in this post on how to set this in motion!

Creating a Parser

Before getting started, either select the funnel you would like to attach the parser too, or create a blank, one-sequence funnel. You will also need a copy of the email sent by the shopping cart or third party application on hand to reference the information available and the order of that information.

1. While in the funnel dashboard, select parser from Subscriber Management.

2. Name the parser (labeled below as Third Party Service)

3. State the “from” email address which is sending the email.

4. Assign the fields of information you would like to pull from the email such as email, name, country, and so on, according to your desired preferences. *This information comes from the example third party app email!

5. Select Create parser and you will be given a long email address. This email address is what you will enter into the third party application as an approved recipient.

Having a parser in place can automate your email marketing by removing the need to manually send purchased products or conduct daily imports, among other tasks. A parser is active as long as the email address is entered into the third party application so there is no maintenance once setup and in working order.

Ready to start working with parsers but have a few more questions? Send our support team an email to support@feedblitz.com. You can also chat, check out our Help Forum, or give us a call at 1.877.692.5489. Our Support and Sales Desk is available Monday – Friday from 9 am to 5 pm EST.

Did you find this post useful? Let us know! We enjoy hearing feedback on how we can better serve you. Send an email with your thoughts to support@feedblitz.com. Thank you in advance as we look forward to hearing from you!

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Easy enough for a blogger to set up in seconds, powerful enough for sophisticated corporate email campaigns, FeedBlitz is an RSS, Email and Social Automation Tool to take your email marketing to the next level. Visit us online to learn more or start your 30 Day Free Trial!

      

Email authentication communicates to your subscriber’s inbox that we (FeedBlitz) are allowed to email on the publisher’s behalf. While we handle the authentication for you, some of our advanced publishers enjoy having this added layer of authentication protection.

You can access and edit these records under Sites and select DKIM, SPF Authentication.

SPF (Sender Protection Framework) Authentication

• If you already have an SPF record on your domain, simply add:   include:mail.feedblitz.com

• If you do not have an SPF record, you will need to add a TXT record to your DNS. We recommend:  v=spf1 include:mail.feedblitz.com ~all

• A more thorough explanation of this can be found here.

      

We highly recommend testing any special promotions or emails to be sent over or on a holiday before the holiday arrives to ensure deliverability and format are up to your liking.

To send a test email of a Newsflash or Newsflash On Demand mailing, begin creating your mailing as usual, then:

1. Once your copy is ready, select the Audience Inclusion tab.
2. Switch to the second tab labeled Dynamic Segment Filters.
3. Click the Add / Edit Segment button.
4. Enter the following:   email=insert your email address here
5. Press Check Segment Syntax
6. Once the check is clear, click Count Included Subscribers
7. If the count = 1, you’re ready to test.

You will then be able to review your newsflash and either send the mailing immediately or practice scheduling it.When you use the segment filter to only include yourself, you reduce the risk of sending your rough draft to your entire audience.

Once you are certain your newsflash is ready to show the world, you don’t have to start from scratch. You can build your final draft from the test. Just start at the Send a Mailing step, select Newsflash and instead of building it from a Blank Newsflash or using the On Demand feature, scroll a little farther down the page and select your test from the previously sent newsflashes.

Taking the care to test your emails in this manner ensures your holiday emails and promotions arrive in your subscribers’ inboxes exactly as planned. The last thing you want to be doing over your holiday break is double checking your email marketing. Create it in advance, test it, schedule it and forget it. Our system will handle the rest!

If you have any questions, simply send our Support Team an email at support@feedblitz.com, or you can chat or give us a call 1.877.692.5489 Monday – Friday, 9 am to 5 pm EST. We also have plenty of great support available 24/7 in our online Help Forum and YouTube channel!

      

We briefly touched upon the many capabilities of our Funnels feature in a prior post, and today we are going to explore a few advanced options of Funnels available to our publishers.

*Please note: If you are currently not using a Funnel with your email marketing, please read both our introductory post and our post on creating your first Funnel before continuing.

Setting Triggers for Funnels

We’ll start with something simple, adding a trigger to your Funnel. A trigger is an event that sparks a secondary action. When working in FeedBlitz it’s helpful to think of triggers as an “if this, then that” situation. For example, if you would like a subscriber to be added to your main list after finishing the Funnel, you can use a trigger to automate the process.

Select the Funnel from your Dashboard you would like to work with and scroll down to Subscriber Management.

Select Triggers and you will receive the following pop-up:

From here you will be able to select the actions taken and completed. This eliminates the need to manually move subscribers between lists when they meet the specified criteria.

Adding Tags to Funnel Subscribers

When working with Funnels, you may find yourself wanting to quickly sort subscribers based on their subscription history, choices or actions. This can easily be setup by using our tagging feature. Tagging subscribers can also better help you segment your subscriber list as well as target particular subscribers for advanced email marketing and product offers.

To tag a subscriber you will first need to create a hidden custom field. A refresher on how to do that can be found in our prior blog post here. Once created,  select the Funnel your would like to work with and click the light grey Edit Articles and Sequencing button to be taken to the following screen:

 

Pro Tip: Automatically add subscribers who complete the Funnel into a new Group for targeted email marketing. You can do this by selecting the group icon next to the tag.

      

If you’ve ever wondered how to change the “sending” or “from” email address of your mailings, then today’s quick tip is right up your alley! The sending email address is shown to your subscribers even though FeedBlitz handles sending the mail. It is also the address which receives any replies you may have. To update this address, follow these steps:

Select your Mailing List -> I Want To… -> Change -> Settings, Schedule -> Mailing Settings and Schedule Tab

Here, select the email address listed and a pop up will appear, allowing you to edit both the email address and the “sender’s name.” Keep in mind that the “sender name” can be overridden by a name or nickname in a subscriber’s address book.

If you have any questions, simply send our Support Team an email at support@feedblitz.com, or you can chat or give us a call 1.877.692.5489 Monday – Friday, 9 am to 5 pm EST. We also have plenty of great support available 24/7 in our online Help Forum and YouTube channel!

      

FeedBlitz allows you to easily autopost your blog updates to a Twitter account of your choice, right from your publisher’s dashboard. While only one account is able to be linked in this way, there is another route to have additional Twitter accounts posting your updates automatically.

Bonus Note: This is great if you have multiple contributors, or owners, who would all like to autopost your content.

Follow the steps below add a second Twitter account for autoposting:

1.  Log out of your current Twitter account.
2.  Select the Mailing List you would like to work with.
3.  Choose    I want to….Grow This List….Subscription Forms and Links
4.  Select Classic Form.
5.  Change the answer on #2 to Any FeedBlitz Option.
6.  Click the link of your subscription form.

7.  When the form appears, select Twitter

A popup will appear, prompting you to enter your login information for Twitter in order to authorize the FeedBlitz App. Once completed, you will have successfully added an additional Twitter account to your site and updates will be sent starting with your next post.

If you have any questions, simply send our Support Team an email at support@feedblitz.com, or you can chat or give us a call 1.877.692.5489 Monday – Friday, 9 am to 5 pm EST. We also have plenty of great support available 24/7 in our online Help Forum and YouTube channel!

      

What are four letters that can send shivers down the spine of any email marketer?

S-P-A-M

Trust us, we don’t like the sound of it either, so today we’re going to lift the curtain on spam and talk about how and why it happens, along with what you can do to help prevent it from happening.

What is Spam?

Spam, defined by Wikipedia, is unsolicited bulk email, UBE for short.

Seems fairly simple, right?

Unsolicited: Something that is not asked for.
Bulk: Sent in a batch of more than one.
Email: Electronic communications you and I send on a daily basis.

So basically as long as I don’t send a whole lot of emails to people who don’t even want them in the first place, I’m in the clear, right? That would make the most sense, yet that’s not always the case.

How does an email get flagged as Spam?

There are the obvious phishing scams from our deceased second great auntie’s housekeeper in some far off land asking for our bank information to claim the $2 million inheritance waiting for us, OR the emails with blinking, animated emojis in the subject lines, which are both clearly spam. And then there are the more subtle forms of spam such as the instant deals we need to take advantage of right away, faux census surveys asking for personal information, make money online fast deals and more.

So what exactly classifies an email as spam and another as not? Unfortunately, there is no clear cut answer. Internet and email service providers diligently update security settings and increase protection to reduce the amount of spam which makes it’s way into inboxes across the world.

While there is not a clear guide to avoiding spam, things such as phishy content (i.e. something that reads of a scam or fraud), a poor sending reputation of your email address or email service provider, and even a clickbait headline are a few ways an email can be relegated to the  spam folder or bounced completely.

A Closer Look at Content: Words and Phrases to use Wisely

There are many resources available that list  spam triggers (words and phrases to avoid in email communication for fear of being labeled spam). After scouring page after page and reading about 99.9% of these lists, we highly recommend this guide from our friends at HupSpot. Divided into categories, it is an incredibly comprehensive list of words and phrases that when used repeatedly, or mixed too freely together, can trigger spam filters.

Print it out and highlight the ones you find yourself most commonly using throughout your content. This is also a great reference should any of your emails be categorized as spam. Scan through to see what content could have triggered this reaction and adjust your concept moving forward.

Is there anything I can do to prevent my emails from being marked as Spam?

As a publisher, being well informed of how spam filters work and what words and phrasing are possible triggers will help you tremendously.

Work from home!

Make money online TODAY!

Lots of unnecessary exclamation!!!!!!! points!!!!!

Emojis in subject lines

Are you repetitive with keywords and phrases? Is there another way you could state something as opposed to repeating it multiple times? This is where writing creatively can come into play as a publisher. Adjust your content as necessary to deliver your message while still staying in line with best email practices. Remember that SEO guidelines evolve and you no longer need to repeat your keywords like a machine to rank high in Google. This technique is now seen as keyword stuffing with concise readability being the clear winner.

What is FeedBlitz doing to prevent my emails from being categorized as Spam?

We work very, very hard to protect our sending reputation! Remember how we talked about that during the hard bounces post? These vital steps work to prevent your emails from landing in a subscriber’s Spam folder. Major ISPs like FeedBlitz, and we intend to keep it that way.

Another precaution we take is to have  our own spam filters and traps in place. If an email you craft pings a spam trap, it isn’t sent. You’ll be notified via email should this happen and can contact our Support Desk for assistance. Usually it’s a matter of simply rewording a phrase or two, however, in some cases a complete rewrite is necessary.

What do I do if someone marks one of my emails as Spam?

Ah, yes, hitting the spam button on an email. Maybe you’ve even hit spam on an email, intentionally or not, a time or two. FeedBlitz likes to consider what we call the “people factor” when it comes to a subscriber hitting spam on an email. Not all subscribers are aware of what selecting spam means and can select this if they simply are not interested in the content or wish to unsubscribe to your email updates. One or two occasional subscribers hitting spam on your emails falls into this “people factor” category and will not cause your account to be suspended.

An influx of Spam notices, however, will cause us to take a closer look at your account. Unless a large change has occurred (i.e. re-branding or increased advertising), this should cause you to reconsider your content as well. If your account is determined to be primarily focused on Phishing and Spamming your subscribers, it will be revoked. Why? Well, we have the sending reputation of all of our publishers to consider, and unfortunately, too many bad apples can ruin the bunch when it comes to email marketing. For more information, please read through our Terms of Service here.

Have you landed in a spam folder before but still aren’t sure why? Send us the email to support@feedblitz.com and we’ll take a look and offer insight for you. And as always you can chat, check out our Help Forum, or give us a call at 1.877.692.5489. Our Support and Sales Desk is available Monday – Friday from 9 am to 5 pm EST.

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Easy enough for a blogger to set up in seconds, powerful enough for sophisticated corporate email campaigns, FeedBlitz is an RSS, Email and Social Automation Tool to take your email marketing to the next level. Visit us online to learn more or start your 30 Day Free Trial!

      

The longer version…

A little over a year ago we made it super easy to include your latest Pins and Instagram photos in your emails. It’s pretty neat, adding visual interest to your mailings and exposing your email subscribers to more of your activity online on platforms other than your blog.

Since then we’ve extended the capability to include your latest YouTube videos and Tumblr.

And now, we’ve added e-commerce to the mix. Simply tell the FeedBlitz easy template editor your Etsy name, and / or give it the web address of your Shopify store, and voila! Every update to your readers reminds them of the latest and greatest on your e-commerce site. Every email we send for you just got more interesting, more compelling, and more valuable. Dare we say, more lucrative?

Since we don’t have an Etsy or Shopify store, if you’re getting this via email today, we’ve included a couple of examples for you. For Shopify, we’ve linked to “Death Wish Coffee” because I think they’re cool and we’re total coffee hounds here! For Etsy, I’ve linked to friend and FeedBlitz client StudioJewel‘s Etsy store. The live, mobile friendly responsive demos are at the foot of the email, if you’re an email subscriber, after the latest support videos.

If you’re reading this online instead, here’s what that part of the email update looks like:

One Last Thing

So this is a great way to add Etsy and Shopify content to your blog emails. It ALSO means that you can use us to send emails to subscribers where the latest store updates ARE the content. In other words, you can set up a “Be the First to Know” email list, and every time you add an item to your e-commerce site, we’ll email subscribers to that list with the news. Which makes them feel super special and more likely to buy from you.

Need help setting it up? Contact support – we’ll be happy to help.