Marketing your business using regular newsletters, email updates and other forms of electronic communication can be very effective. The trick can be finding the right mix of electronic communication – the mix that allows your existing customers to stay up to date on your latest offers while encouraging new customers to walk through your virtual doors and see what you have to offer.
Many marketers find that maintaining a compelling and engaging blog site is a good way to complement their existing email and newsletter campaigns. The problem is that keeping all of that data up to date and providing fresh and original content can be a time-consuming endeavor. That is why smart marketers are always looking for ways to work harder and not smarter.
FeedBurner is aimed at bloggers who are looking for a convenient way to get the word out about their business and drive traffic to their sites. FeedBurner allows users to track blogs in real time and instantly receive updates each time their favorite site is updated. That can be a very handy feature for both businesses and individuals, but it does have its limitations. It is important to look at FeedBurner as an adjunct to traditional email and newsletter marketing – not as a true replacement.
One of the biggest limitations of FeedBurner is that users need to already know about your blog in order to get the updates. That of course makes it difficult to attract new clients. A better approach would be to the traditional newsletter approach to reach new clients and maintain the attention of existing ones.
Despite the widespread adoption of blogs, instant messaging, social media sites and other new technologies, most people still rely on email for at least part of their daily communication. Publishing your own newsletters is still the best way to communicate with the greatest number of people – and the greatest number of potential customers.
Services like FeedBurner certainly have a place in the world of marketing, but they are certainly not the only answer. It is generally better for marketers to publish their own original content through newsletters and manage their own email lists to send those newsletters out. This approach gives companies a better feel for their customers, and a more effective way to sell to them.
If you are already using FeedBurner and are planning to start sending regular newsletters on your own, you should consider to export your FeedBurner Email Subscribers. It’s easier than you think because FeedBurner allows you to export your subscribers in CSV file format automatically.
Here’s a video tutorial that shows step by step how to export your FeedBurner Email Subscribers in a CSV file format.
FeedBurner may be a good choice for those who truly do not have the time or inclination to send out their own newsletters or manage their own lists – but for everyone else there is simply no substitute for a well-crafted manual newsletter.