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Why You Should NOT Encourage Email Feeds

Posted: 07 Mar 2010 10:19 PM PST

I still give an option for email feeds subscription because some still prefers that but I am not encouraging it anymore with free downloads and stuffs.

There was time when email feeds were very much encouraged because every subscription you get, the numbers will consistently show up in your stats. In the case of RSS feeds, your figures will fluctuate, sometimes to the tune of hundreds. It is said to be due to your subscribers not logging in that day so their feeds do not register. So the norm was and still is among many blogs, to lure would be subscribers to subscribe with their emails rather than their feed readers. That was the reason back then and there was no other ulterior motives, like plans to spam you with their sale pitches.

Then slowly, list marketing or email marketing became very popular and lots of bloggers cum internet marketers started building their lists of emails with fantastic freebies as a bait. Autoresponder services like Aweber became their main tool to do the job. Later on, Aweber let users infuse their list into their Feedburner counts and every subscriber through Aweber is also counted as a subscriber to their feeds. Many who had successfully build up their list saw their feed counts tripled overnight.

Email list building by giving away fantastic gifts and free downloads is a very very effective method. Everybody likes free lunches and the list builder do not mind giving as long as they get the emails in return. However, freeloaders are often very smart bargers. They will use a “spare” email addresses which they never log into, except to confirm their subscriptions, for these purposes. So the humongous figure that you see in their feed chicklet shown in their blogs often do not represent their true number of subscribers. A third of that will be a safe bet.

Of course they know, but they reserve the right to brag about their figures. So would I, if I had more than 10k to show. Never mind if only one third of those actually reads my feeds. LOL. Anyway, to counter this “bad habit” of subscribing with a “spare” email, many marketers took things a step further. They now gives away free monthly downloads. No more are you simply called subscribers.

You are now invited to be free members of their site that gives you free monthly downloads. Since it is a membership site, most will use their legitimate email to sign up as they do not want to miss the next free download. In between those 29 days when you receive the notice about that months freebie, expect more than 15 emails “notifying” you about “others products”. Funny thing is, so greedy are people for that monthly freebie that they will actually keep this subscription and keep receiving those “other” emails without the slightest complain in the world.

I too had my short span of time with Aweber before I decided that email marketing was not my plate of meat. I simply do not have the gall to write all those “super convincing” emails with full knowledge that the product might be of no use to them. Even though I can justify the action by stating that it is up to them to decide, I just do not want to party with those who gave them the chance to make the wrong decisions that I myself have made so many times.

So I went back to the old way of increasing my subscribers base. Showing a more than visible “Subscribe” link in a more than visible location. Include a email subscription form for my reader’s convenience. These were an age old advise from blog gurus that I have read umpteen times and let me tell you, it does not work. Maybe it worked years ago, but not now. People are as blind to those RSS logos as they are blind to Adsesne Ads.

More people are more interested in what they will get when they subscribe to your blog. So I tried that too. And like I say, freeloaders are smart bargers.

During the end of last year, I did a campaign to increase my subscribers by giving away a bunch of ebooks for anyone who subscribes during the festive season. I reported that it was a total disaster because I saw only minimal increase in my feed counts. One thing I did not take into account was the email feeds. Two days ago, I checked.

There was a huge list of unconfirmed emails in my list. Near to 200 to be precise. I was a fool not to have foreseen this. People these days are not interested in your contents, they only want the free stuffs, So they use “some” email to sign up hoping they will be be sent to the download page. However, this was not some autoresponder that I am using but Feedburner and Feedburner do not start sending emails feeds until the subscriber confirms, thus the long list of unconfirmed emails.

In view of this unhealthy trend, I have decided to go back to basics and hopefully the good old days of subscribing to blogs where people subscribes because they liked what they see here and not because they want what I have to giveaway. Of course, I realize the good old days are gone and will never be back. So be it then.

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