The RSS email notifications that Feedburner sends out to your readers must be configured and optimized to gain maximum benefit for your blog. There are 2 golden opportunities to catch your subscriber’s attention and make them feel good about signing up with you – and first impressions do count! Or at least, you can make them count by customizing your Feedburner Email Preferences.

The first opportunity is to customize the message they receive when they first click on your ‘Subscribe to RSS Feed’ by email link – click the RSS Icon in the right hand sidebar on this blog. The second is controlling the appearance of the RSS feed emails they receive in their Inbox, every time you publish a new post.

I covered how to install and set up your ‘Subscribe to RSS’ via Email in Build List With Feedburner RSS ‘Subscribe Via Email’ Form. Now I’ll cover the customizing of your email messages received by your email subscribers.

First Marketing Opportunity: Customize Communication Preferences.

Here is how you take advantage of customizing the Welcome message readers receive with that first click on your Subscribe by Email Form. It’s done in Feedburner’s ‘Communication Preferences’ accessed from the left hand side of Feedburner’s ‘Opitimize’ screen.

It’s important to customize how your subscribers receive notifications from you, because you want to make your readers feel welcome, and impressed with your blog and it’s contents.

The ‘Email From’ text box is easy to fill in. It’s how your readers know that the email is from your blog.  The ‘Subject’ text box is also easy – I just went with the default that Feedburner suggested.

The next text box ‘Body’ is where you have a chance to personalize your first message to your readers. Of course, it’s just a ‘Hello, and thanks’ message but you can write a message that is in the ‘style’ of your blog. For example: formal, dry and factual, or informative but friendly, or even… informative, friendly and with a touch of humor if that is in keeping with your blog’s style – feedback always welcome!

Second Opportunity: Email Branding!

Alright! Here’s where I get an opportunity to shine – and let all my readers in on the answer to the problem that is being asked about all over the blogging forums – and until now has been unanswered……according to my researching anyway – so I had to solve it myself.

It’s all to do with that Email Title so called ‘Hot Tip’.

As my Email subscribers will already know, they’ve been getting some emails from me with some pretty weird titles!  But now I’ve worked it out.

Answer: That Hot Tip is…..errr…rubbish!  Don’t be fooled, it doesn’t work – not in any combination of wording or HTML tweaks.

If you use their ‘hot tip’ suggestion, your readers receive a notification email for any new post which says

• From: My Second Million
• Title: ${LatestTitle}

which is just silly….and uninformative.

The Solution: Every time you have finished writing a post, and BEFORE you click ‘Publish’, got to your Feedburner Account’s Email Branding option and just type the title of your new post in that Email Subject/Title text box.  It’s that easy.  It does mean you have to remember to do that, and it has to be done for each new post, and before you actually publish it, but if you do that, it will work.

Then, when you click Publish, an email will be sent to your subscribers with a sensible ‘From’ and ‘Title’, not gobble-de-gook – which never looks good, and certainly doesn’t create the sort of impression we strive for!

Once you’ve customized those 2 opportunities to personalize your emails, the important configuring is done. There is another option The Delivery Option which is less important.

This option is where you decide when your RSS email is sent out to your readers – I don’t think it matters very much. I’ve configured mine so they are sent out overnight using American time zones.  That means they are already delivered to American Inboxes at the start of the day, they arrive in Aussie Inboxes early afternoon, and European Inboxes at 6am – who knows if that matters in the least.  You decide.

As always, remember to click the Save button after you’ve changed your Email settings.

   …..Cue Motto!

Plan Well Start Small Think BIG!