Comments on: Email Newsletters vs. Blogs vs. RSS

By: Idetrorce

Idetrorce — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 11:34:59 +0000

very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce

By: Matt Stevens

Matt Stevens — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 15:19:51 +0000

Is there any tool that allows you to compile an email not only of your own content, but also including RSS feeds from other content providers too?

By: Cathy Jenkins

Cathy Jenkins — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 10:42:38 +0000

I forgot to add consider if the newsletter is internal or external for everyone. If its for external use, consider all the relationships a blog can provide (tracebacks / comments from other sites).

By: Cathy Jenkins

Cathy Jenkins — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 10:39:06 +0000

Newsletter or blog. I feel there is a need to consider which format would deliver a high return on investment (ROI).

A blog would more likely come through as up-to-date and provides the opportunity for others to provide comments. It also makes life easy as your authors could write simple pages as required.

A newsletter is what people are used to.

Personally I feel inclined that sometimes people need to be pushed towards what’s better for them. Think of the costs, value and benefits.

Now getting back to your question. I used to work at a large NGO which I wont name but I can reveal they used phplist for their newsletters and they generated this newsletter based on articles people had written in their web site. Everything was opensource. They just did some php to accomplish what they required. They’ve been very successful.

By: Phil Hollows

Phil Hollows — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 06:00:50 +0000

… and I forgot to mention, one of our features is “On Demand” which lets you manually pick the posts to include from the contents of your feed as part of the delivery, which is exactly what you want (but, fair disclosure, that is a premium service). A related capability is to send a non-blog broadcast to your subscribers.

By: Phil Hollows

Phil Hollows — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 05:58:38 +0000

Using services like FeedBlitz your blog becomes your newsletter. FeedBlitz has options such as using tags to filter posts in our out, allowing you to be selective about which articles go by mail and which are strictly for the web. Plus lots of tracking, reports, widgets, OPML … For a modest fee you can apply your own graphics, layout and styling to the output as well. http://www.feedblitz.com

Phil

By: Mario Sundar

Mario Sundar — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 02:46:14 +0000

As Andy mentions, isn’t Feedblitz the easy solution.

I’ve been contemplating feedblitz for my own blog. Any drawbacks to using it?

By: Chris Webb

Chris Webb — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 20:15:09 +0000

The WordPress plugin Steven mentioned is likely ShiftThis. I have not used it personally, but it looks fairly robust. The demo they provide looks like it offers the features Scott was requesting.

By: Phil Gomes

Phil Gomes — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:46:25 +0000

My fiancee and I use TypePad + Feedburner + FeedBlitz + del.icio.us to generate a daily family email newsletter. It’s been working pretty well and, besides, it beats some relatives’ method of FORWARDING EVERY DAMN BIT OF URBAN LEGEND EVER PUBLISHED.

By: Andy Brudtkuhl

Andy Brudtkuhl — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 14:23:04 +0000

I’ve had clients request a solution for this but I don’t think one exists. The closest I’ve found are tools like feedblitz that essentially allow people to subscribe to rss feeds via email.

By: Dean Collins

Dean Collins — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 13:17:02 +0000

Yeh it’s called Cut & Paste :)

Stop being so lazy, it would take like 10 minutes to cut and paste 4 of your blog posts each month and them email them off to the whitelist.

Probably the best thing you could do is to change the ‘format’ of your email so people understand they are reading unedited blog posts via email and then they might even think…hmm what else am i missing and check out your feed.

Cheers,
Dean

By: oliverg

oliverg — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 09:39:09 +0000

I use rss2mail servives like rmail.com and ehm, I forget the other one. aside from some ISo/UTF issues this works fine.

and If you want to mail only some of the Messages you just subscribe to a certain tag.

I set the Mailnglist to forward either
a) max once a day
b) if 50/25 kB are full.

AFAIK there are allso rss2mail php-scripts around.

What you do NOT get is a beautifilly styled optimizes RSS-Feed, but you do get people who come from the Newsletter…

By: Steven Hodson

Steven Hodson — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 07:00:06 +0000

If they are using a Wordpress installation I know I read somewhere not to long ago about a plugin that would let you manage a newsletter right from your Wordpress Admin area.

By: The Chris Pirillo Show

The Chris Pirillo Show — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Personal Blog Iraq, Iran, War, Money, Me, and US Email Newsletters vs. Blogs vs. RSS Our Plastic Surgery Results Podcasts on TVs and Tablet PCs - MP3s Pirillo?s Picks for 03/31/2007 New Barenaked Ladies Videos Wireless Power How not to use a Gun I?m in a JibJab Cartoon!!! Pirillo?s Picks for 03/27/2007

By: pmeme - tracking people making news - following people in the blogosphere

pmeme - tracking people making news - following people in the blogosphere — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Email Newsletters vs. Blogs vs. RSS (Chris Pirillo)