Welcome! So you're ready to make the jump from your current provider to FeedBlitz. Congratulations! We're happy to have you and want to make this transition as smooth as possible for you. Below you'll find the steps to make your migration smooth.
This guide assumes you wish to send RSS-based mailings. You can safely skip steps five through seven if you wish only to send single mailing (traditional newsletter style) campaigns.
Remember the FeedBlitz Support Team is here to help if you have any questions along the way.
Getting started in your FeedBlitz account:
1. Setting up your account
2. Creating your first mailing list
3. Editing your email template
4. Designing a subscription form
Followed by migration-specific steps:
5. Removing any RSS feed redirects on your site
6. Creating a FeedBlitz RSS feed
7. Creating your automated campaign.
8. Exporting your subscribers from your current provider
8. Importing them correctly into FeedBlitz
10. Setting your automated campaign schedule or sending your first single mailing campaign.
Ready to get started? So are we. Let's go!
1. Setting up your account
>The first thing you'll need to do is tell us a little about yourself. Enter the name and URL for your website and click Next Step.
2. Creating your first mailing list
You'll be ready to create your first mailing list when you hit Next. There are a few different ways to create a mailing list, as you can see. We're going to get started with Create From Scratch.
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Give your list a name and a brief description. Remember that your subscribers can see this information when they update their preferences or unsubscribe. We suggest keeping it simple and to the point.
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3. Editing your email template
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 VME, 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 and send a test email.
As a side note, you can always see your setup progress and upcoming steps here on our progress bar.
4. Designing a 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 a sidebar widget, a full page or popup and add the code to your website accordingly. Don't forget to remove any existing forms for your current provider.
Hitting continue takes you to our next step, which is importing your subscribers, where you'll find three options to choose from:
Since you're coming over from another provider, select Option 2 - No thanks, I'll import my subscribers later. as we'll pause here on your setup to grab everything from your current provider and complete the setup process. You will be asked to send a Test Email to finish the onboarding process.
5. Removing any RSS feed redirects on your site
If you used a feed service such as FeedBurner in the past, check your website for any possible RSS feed redirects that point to FeedBurner. This is usually found in a FeedSmith plugin but can also be in the theme.
Doing this lets your site know you're not using FeedBurner anymore and will be automatically updated once you finish up the process listed below in creating a FeedBlitz RSS feed.
6. Creating your New FeedBlitz Feed
You're almost there! Now it's time to head back over to your FeedBlitz account and create a new RSS feed for your website.
Start from the Left-hand menu and select Feeds > New Feed.
Tell us where to go to find your RSS feed information by entering the URL of your website. We'll search your site and pull your source RSS feed information. If you know your source RSS feed for your site already, you can enter it here as well.
On the next screen, you'll be asked to name your RSS feed and if you'd like to create a mailing list attached to the feed.
We already have a mailing list in place, so for right now, we're going to say No to create a new mailing list. Once we're all set up, you can come back and create a new Automated Mailing Campaign for this feed.
>And congratulations! You've created your FeedBlitz RSS feed.
Now select Customize the feed to finish up redirecting everything. If you had a FeedBurner feed, on the FeedBurner migration tab, change the drop-down to Enabled, send to the source feed as shown below and hit Save Changes. If not, you can safely skip this step.
When all of this is in place and your FeedBlitz RSS feed is set up, log in to your WordPress site and add the FeedBlitz FeedSmart plugin. This will tell your site to redirect the source feed to your newly created FeedBlitz RSS feed.
After this, if you'd like to test to ensure everything is connected and redirected properly — and we always recommend testing everything — select the Integration tab on your RSS feed's dashboard, and we'll walk you through how to check everything.
7. Create your Automated Campaign
Create a New Campaign > Automated Mailing. Use the list you created during set up, your newly created FeedBlitz RSS feed URL as the source, set your sending schedule to On Demand and edit the template if necessary.
Use this tutorial for guidance.
Now it is time to migrate any subscribers you have from your previous provider.
8. Exporting your subscribers into a CSV file from your current provider
Ensure that you are only exporting active subscribers, but also be sure to include any data such as names that you wish to keep. The steps for exporting subscribers will vary by provider. Please check out their knowledge base or support for instructions.
9. Importing your subscribers into your list.
Here is a step-by-step guide to importing your subscribers.
10. Set your automated campaign schedule or create your first single mailing campaign
Start at the List Dashboard.
Use the dropdown Settings menu and select Edit Campaign.
On the Schedule tab, you can edit your sending schedule to whatever you prefer.
As you can see, we offer a few different scheduling options:
- Once a Day is for daily mailings of new posts during the time frame you choose.
- ASAP is for immediate sends, this is only available for feeds with PubSubHubbub enabled
- On Demand is a manual delivery option, no posts will be sent
- The Express schedule sends new posts within 30-45 minutes of the updates going live in your feed
- We also have both weekly and monthly options listed, as well as hourly intervals if you post multiple times a day and your subscribers prefer to be updated frequently.
Learn more about our available schedules in this post: Automated Campaign Schedules.
Select your sending window, scroll to the bottom of the screen, hit Next Step and you're all set.
Note: You must finish the two-step process to apply changes to your campaign.
- Click Next Step: Campaign Summary
- Click Finish: Save this campaign
And that's it! You're all set. 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.