Welcome to FeedBlitz! Congratulations on taking the next step in your email marketing journey. We're pretty excited you've chosen to work with us and want to make your welcome as smooth as possible.
This post will show you how easy it is to get things started. We're going to walk you through setting up your account, creating your first mailing list, editing an email template and subscription form, and uploading your subscribers. If you'd prefer to watch the video version of this process, check out our Welcome to New Users video.
Key Steps in Getting Started
1. Tell us about yourself.
2. Create your first mailing list.
3. Edit your template and settings.
4. Design your subscription form.
5. Import your subscribers.
When you log in for the first time, you're here, the FeedBlitz dashboard which has three main areas: My account, the Site Dashboard which will show once your account is set up, and the Left-hand menu on the side of your screen.
1. Tell us about yourself.
The first thing you'll need to do is tell us a little about yourself. Do you have a website and if so, what's the URL of your site? If your site is under construction or you haven't gotten there yet but want to start collecting email addresses and sending emails, hit No, enter a name for your upcoming site or business.
2. Create your first mailing list.
When you hit Next you'll be ready to create your first mailing list. There's a few different ways to create a mailing list as you can see. We're going to get started with Create From Scratch.
Give your list a name and brief description. Keep in mind your subscribers can see this information when they go to update their preferences or unsubscribe. We suggest keeping it simple and to the point.
3. Edit your template and settings.
Now you're ready to edit your basic email template in our drag and drop visual template editor. This is used for activation emails and other transactional emails. This is *not* the template you’ll use for your newsletters unless you choose it to be. You'll be able to edit or create a new template for your campaigns later.
With our visual template editor, you can easily upload your logo, change the colors, switch fonts, edit social icons, and more. When you're ready to work in the VTE, be sure to be sure to check out the guided quick tour that's here in the corner for more tips.
Once you have things in place, you can preview this email on desktop and mobile at any time as well as send a test email.
When your template is ready hit next to enter the information for your envelope settings, letting subscribers know who the email is being sent from and the sending address for replies.
As a side note, you can always see your setup progress and upcoming steps here on our progress bar.
4. Design your subscription form.
Up next is to create your first subscription form. Just like our template editor, there are many adjustments you can make when creating your forms. You can see a beginning form and ending form below:
To begin collecting email addresses, navigate to the code tab and select the code for sidebar widget, a full page or popup and add the code to your website accordingly.
5. Import your subscribers.
Hitting continue takes you to our next step which is importing your subscribers where you'll find three options to choose from:
- Yes, I want to upload my subscribers now. Choose this if you're ready to start the import process now.
- No thanks, I'll import my subscribers later. This option is great if you'd prefer to tinker around a bit before importing your subscribers. You can hold off on importing while you work on your subscription form and template, no problem. Hit next to return to your site dashboard.
- I don't have any existing opted-in subscribers yet. If you're growing your list from scratch, choose this option, hit next and you'll return to your site dashboard.
Choosing option 1, you can import your subscribers by uploading a file, pasting them in individually or conducting a silent import through FeedBlitz and a few of the main ESPs.
On this page, we also remind you of our dual opt-in policy and terms of service. We take protecting the deliverability and sending reputation of our clients seriously. These policies and measures work to support this effort.
We'll select Upload Text File and get ready to upload our subscribers. Before any imports, we remind you of our importing policy and terms of service. Again, we're pretty serious when it comes to these items, so you'll need to select “I agree” before you can proceed.
When importing a list of subscribers you can choose to overwrite existing field values, which is ideal if the users are current subscribers and you have edited their custom field information, or create fields on import. If you're creating this list from scratch as we are right now, you'll want to choose this option to bring over any tags and custom field data you've gathered in a previous email provider.
If you ever forget which option is which, hit one of these blue question marks for a brief reminder:
Hit Upload Subscriber File to begin your import:
You'll see your success message once your import has begun and an email will be sent to the email address on your account when the import is complete.
And that takes you through setting up and getting started in your Feedblitz account! Now it's time to get started! Head back to your starting Welcome screen, tell us a little more about yourself and create your first mailing list.
As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to let us know. You can find all of our great support resources and how to get in touch with us via email, chat or phone on our Support Page.